“O corpo humano é...”: discursos sobre o corpo em livros didáticos de ciências do ensino fundamental de escolas municipais de São Luís – MA.

Abstract

The human body is a structure that carries symbols, ideas, representations and the most varied nature of speeches. The Science Didactic Book is a cultural artifact that carries information about the human body. Faced with this argument we observe the need to reflect on in what way has the subject “Human body” been presented in Science textbooks around public elementary schools of São Luís, Maranhão? The objective of this research is: 1) to describe the contents on "human body" in Science textbooks; 2) to understand ideas and representations about the "human body"; 3) to characterize the types of discourses constructed by the authors when exploring the "human body" in Science didactic books. This research is characterized by having a qualitative and documentary perspective. The Science textbooks were acquired in nine schools around Itaqui-Bacanga district, totaling sixteen books (four collections) from the 6th to the 9th grade. The books were analyzed as having theoretical-methodological perspectives of Cultural Studies in Education and the Content Analysis of Bardin (2011). Two categories were built: "Biological Body" and "Cultural Body". In the collections, it is possible to see that the 8th grade book is the one who presents/displays a greater amount of contents destined to the researched subject, conceding general information that qualifies the human body as a biological structure by excellence. The socio cultural body was presented inferiorly to the biological body, and was typically presented using complementary images or texts. In this research, it is observed some characteristics regarding to the Science textbooks: the idea of biological body with greater expression in the contents, emphasizing a main focus on structure and physiology of the human body. With these results we conclude that reflecting on the construction of these books is important, since the content that is presented in it sometimes directs the student's view on certain subjects, which can provide the formation of prejudiced citizens or not.