Context, negotiation and activity in Physics class

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to deal with the role of context in Science classrooms within a sociocultural framework. From this point of view, we explore the communicative activities in Physics classrooms. Through a case study, we delineate some peculiarities of discursive interaction that are reflected in the social practices and relations. We start from the premise that a closed relation among the communicative discourses developed during a communicative activity and individuals’ concepts learning exists. We take the notion of context as a central element in the analysis of the discursive activities in the classroom. Here, context is used as a complex system composed by several different elements interacting dynamically, determining meanings at hierarchical levels. In this perspective, we study how the activity is structured in a Physics class, analyzing the dynamics of interaction between the students, and identifying interaction patterns between teacher and students. Then, we privilege diverse aspects of the communicative activity, presenting some evidence of the importance of include context in the analysis of the communicative interactions, in particular if we considers the necessity to include, in teacher’s training, the competence of considering students life contexts.