Eduardo Fleury Mortimer- Emeritus Professor
- Professor (Full) at Federal University of Minas Gerais
Eduardo Fleury Mortimer
- Emeritus Professor
- Professor (Full) at Federal University of Minas Gerais
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134
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Introduction
I'm a professor of Science Education at the School of Education of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. My research interest includes Science Classroom Discourse and Representational Pluralism. I'm working now on finding ways of determining semantic gravity and density in higher education science lessons
Current institution
Additional affiliations
September 1983 - present
September 1983 - present
Publications
Publications (134)
We assume the existence of conceptual profiles as a manifestation of pluralism in science education. This means recognizing the heterogeneity of thinking and speaking, that is, the coexistence of two or more meanings of the same word or concept that are accessed and used by the individual in appropriate contexts. Science is not a homogeneous way of...
Over the past decades, languages and literacies have become a
prominent focus in science education research and practice.
While there is broad consensus on the central roles of
disciplinary, representational, and cultural languages and their
associated literacies in learning and teaching science, the field
faces a critical moment. An ever-growing n...
Background: Science teaching and learning, as discursive practices , occur through the utilization of various semiotic modes. Gestures play a pivotal role as an embodied mode that acts in conjunction with speech in oral communication settings, such as classrooms. Previous research on gestures in chemistry and science education has illuminated how i...
Neste estudo aplicamos a dimensão da Especialização da Teoria dos Códigos de Legitimação (TCL) como uma ferramenta metodológica para analisar os discursos de agricultores com diferentes origens de formação do conhecimento especializado envolvido em uma capacitação de técnicas agroflorestais, uma das principais práticas da agroecologia. Foram entrev...
A noção de mediação é central na psicologia sócio-histórica, como originalmente adotada por Vigotski e ampliada por Wertsch com a apresentação da sua Teoria da Ação Mediada. Algumas propriedades da ação mediada são usadas neste artigo como princípio organizador ao analisarmos relatos, em uma perspectiva histórico/processual, de seis professores de...
Teaching Chemistry is often compared to teaching a foreign language. The subject is renowned for its complexity, requiring students to move between the macroscopic, the microscopic and the symbolic, known as Johnstone‟s triangle. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the variation of semantic density – the degree to which meaning is condensed i...
RESUMO | Este texto é o relato de uma mesa redonda, online, entre professores e investigadores, tendo como (pre)texto o artigo de Valéria Vieira Moura Paixão, Carlos Batista e Maria Clara Pinto Cruz que relata uma prática educativa de construção de um biodigestor durante 22 aulas. Participaram na mesa redonda duas professoras (1ª e 2ª autoras), doi...
This research draws on Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) to understand the epistemic dimension of the higher education classroom discourse of a professor who is well evaluated by his students. In expository science classroom discourse, concepts are loaded with different meanings, a process that is called “condensation of meanings” in LCT, and are expr...
In this article, we analyze the reflective process of a Higher Education Organic Chemistry teacher on the history of the use of educational resources in her professional career. For this, we conducted an interview with her, which produced reports of memories/reflections about the processes mediated by resources, the changes that occurred in these p...
Teachers face challenges when building the concept of substance with students because tensions of meanings emerge from students’ daily life and canonical ideas developed in classrooms. A powerful tool to address learning, pedagogical, and research challenges is the conceptual profile theory. According to this theory, people employ various ways of c...
In comparison to teachers from Argentina and Uruguay, Brazilian teachers face greater difficulties in teaching biological evolution, due to religion. While Argentina has an official religion set in its constitution, Uruguay and Brazil are considered secular countries. Despite being a self-proclaimed secular country, Brazil tolerates and encourages...
RESUMO: Neste artigo, discutimos a formação acadêmico-profissional de professores de ciências para atuar no ensino fundamental. Consideramos que o docente que leciona nesse nível deveria contar com uma formação exclusiva, que atendesse às necessidades pedagógicas do ensino fundamental e que subsidiasse a concretização, em sala de aula, de um curríc...
This volume of the World of Science Education gathers contributions from Latin American science education researchers covering a variety of topics that will be of interest to educators and researchers all around the world. The volume provides an overview of research in Latin America, and most of the chapters report findings from studies seldom avai...
The clash between religion and biological evolution has resurged in several parts of the world, notably in Brazil. To investigate how Brazilian high school teachers of biology conceive of evolution, a European questionnaire, BIOHEAD-CITIZEN, was applied to 62 teachers and seven questions were selected. Barbour's categories and the teachers' religio...
Este texto traz uma entrevista realizada com o professor Dr. Eduardo Fleury Mortimer durante o evento “Jornadas da Educação em Ciências e Matemática”, realizado no ano de 2017 pelo Programa de Pós-Graduação em Formação Científica, Educacional e Tecnológica da Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná. Nesta entrevista o professor Mortimer discute...
This paper intends to investigate whether the differences in country religiosity can influence biology teachers’ views about biological evolution, especially the human origin. Since Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay have differences in religiosity, teachers from these countries were asked to answer to the question of the European questionnaire BIOHEAD-...
Neste trabalho, investigamos como a utilização não usual de objetos mediadores por professores de Ciências Naturais do Ensino Superior possibilita novas significações para esses objetos durante o ensino em sala de aula. Os dados foram gerados a partir da gravação em vídeo de aulas de professores de Física e Química, ministradas em uma Instituição F...
This article presents an analytical tool for studying the epistemic dimension of the classroom discourse of Chemistry. Based on the concept of semantic waves derived from the Theory of Legitimation of Codes and the notion of pedagogic link-making, the analytical tool seeks to explore the forms and the organization of chemical knowledge in the instr...
The aim of this study is to better understand how teachers use various embodied semiotic modes – speech, gestures, gaze, and proxemics – when they present scientific content to the entire class. To analyse the multimodal practices of these teachers, we integrated the social semiotic theory of multimodality and the joint action theory in didactics....
Resumo: O objetivo desse artigo é identificar e quantificar se os professores materializam o elo que a Patologia Geral representa entre as disciplinas básicas e as profissionalizantes, e se eles reconhecem esse feito. Usamos um referencial teórico-metodológico que analisa relações pedagógicas (RP) para avaliar aulas de cinco professores de Patologi...
The plural features of society can be perceived in education through the analysis of school curricula. This paper analyses curricula from three Latin American countries with different links between State and Religion: Argentina constitution refers Catholicism has its official religion; Brazil assumes secularism officially but there is considerable...
span>Este trabajo tiene por objetivo presentar el análisis de una secuencia de enseñanza que utiliza el perfil conceptual como instrumento de análisis de la dinámica discursiva en un aula de química. Se propuso un perfil conceptual para la segunda ley de la termodinámica aplicada a las transformaciones fisicoquímicas centrado en los conceptos de en...
span>Educación Química, Química Nova na Escola y Alambique son revistas que mantienen una estrecha relación de colaboración y suman esfuerzos para ser vehículos de comunicación entre el profesorado de ciencias y/o de química de México, Brasil y España, y de otros países iberoamericanos. Las tres revistas son relativamente jóvenes: Alambique celebró...
The chapter analyzes discursive interactions in science classrooms to characterize teaching strategies adopted by teachers when addressing environmental issues. We studied classes taught at three different public elementary and secondary schools in Escada, a town located in Pernambuco, Brazil. We analyzed six episodes extracted from 6 of 28 video-r...
RESUMO Este trabalho teve como objetivo identificar, em uma amostragem de professores do Ensino Superior de diversas áreas do conhecimento, as estratégias pedagógicas mais citadas, a forma como planejam suas aulas e como atraem os estudantes para a participação nas atividades propostas em sala. Para isso, concebemos um instrumento de coleta de dado...
The higher Education, when compared to basic Education, deals with much more specialized knowledge, usually thought in more technical terms. This specialization of the disciplinary fields that are objects of the graduate courses and the technical character present in most of these courses tend to compartmentalize the knowledge. We developed this wo...
Editorial de abertura do primeiro número da ACTIO, em homenagem à memória do Prof. Dr. Wildson Luiz Pereira dos Santos, o qual apadrinhou, incentivou e colaborou com a criação da ACTIO: Docência em Ciências.
In the last years, higher education teacher training has received more didactic-pedagogical attention. Despite numerous criticisms to professors' work, some practices present differentials that make them a reference to students, even among university professors with undergraduate and graduate degrees in their specific areas of knowledge. To analyze...
Resumo Apenas nas últimas décadas a atuação dos formadores de professores, que cursaram programas de pós-graduação em campo específico do saber, tem recebido atenção, em termos de pesquisa. Com o objetivo principal de analisar as estratégias usadas por professores de Ensino Superior que atuam na formação de professores, selecionamos quatro professo...
Apenas nas últimas décadas a atuação dos formadores de professores, que cursaram programas de pós-graduação em campo específico do saber, tem recebido atenção, em termos de pesquisa. Com o objetivo principal de analisar as estratégias usadas por professores de Ensino Superior que atuam na formação de professores, selecionamos quatro professores de...
Nas últimas décadas, a pesquisa em educação no Brasil tem procurado compreender também o que acontece no Ensino Superior. Porém, as aulas do Ensino Superior não têm sido objeto de análise sistemática. Neste trabalho dirigiu-se o olhar para uma estratégia específica usada por uma professora de Química Orgânica em um curso de graduação: o uso de gest...
The relationship between science and religion has been marked by historically constructed movements of proximity and conflict. We have investigated how high school biology teachers from three countries with different relationships between State and religion, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, conceive the science-religion relationship. Uruguay has cons...
In this paper, we briefly address the theoretical and methodological grounds of the conceptual profile theory and discuss two empirical studies aiming at constructing conceptual profile models and using them to analyze classroom discourse in different sciences, chemistry (entropy and spontaneity) and biology (adaptation). The basic idea is to illus...
Nos últimos anos tem crescido o interesse em investigar a contribuição da linguagem
na construção de significados em sala de aula. Neste trabalho investigamos como duas
professoras do Ensino Superior mobilizam diferentes modos semióticos e promovem
interações entre eles para a construção de significados em aulas de Química Orgânica.
Gravamos um con...
Conceptual profiles are models of the heterogeneity of thought and language in the classroom, embedded into a theoretical structure that addresses school science social language learning from a sociocultural perspective. They are related to an understanding of concepts that denies its interpretation as entirely internal mental structures and concei...
In this chapter, we discuss the charge that the conceptual profile theory would be relativist. After contrasting rationalism and relativism, we elaborate the epistemological grounds of the theory in terms of an objective pragmatism, drawing on Peirce’s and Dewey’s philosophies, and discuss the differences between this philosophical position and rel...
In the chapter we present findings from a research program in which we propose a conceptual profile combining the concepts of entropy and spontaneity of physical and chemical processes. This conceptual profile can be helpful to understand the reasons for the spontaneous occurrence, or not, of processes, highlighting how energy can be distributed in...
In this chapter we present the different methodological options that can inform the research on conceptual profiles. These options include studies aiming at identifying possible zones to build a conceptual profile model, investigations conducted in order to understand how the different zones of a conceptual profile model evolve in a specific popula...
In this chapter, we argue that a conceptual profile of adaptation may be a theoretical-methodological tool for investigations about the understanding of Darwinist explanatory models in the sociocultural sphere of the classroom, when used as a tool for classroom discourse analysis, integrated to the analytical structure developed by Mortimer and Sco...
The chapter presents a study on the evolution of undergraduate students’ conceptual profiles in different semesters of biological sciences and pharmacy courses. This study is presented as a proposal to develop a new methodology for the study of profiles from questionnaires. The methodology includes the use of statistical methods and focused on (a)...
This chapter reports the building of a conceptual profile of life. We took as a starting point the hypothesis that the concept of life is polysemous, showing several possible meanings and, thus, admitting a conceptual profile. We attempted to demarcate the zones that constitute this conceptual profile through a dialogic interplay between theoretica...
Resumo Introdução: A voz é a principal ferramenta de trabalho do professor e está intimamente relacionada ao seu bom desempenho profissional. Diversos recursos vocais e corporais são empregados pelo professor durante a aula para despertar o interesse do aluno, facilitar a memorização e potencializar seu aprendizado. Objetivo: Estudar o desempenho c...
In this talk we use the notion of communicative approach, as outlined in our book (Mortimer & Scott 2003), as a way of highlighting the science teaching practices carried out by two teachers, one Brazilian and the other British. The characteristics that emerge from these practices demonstrate that teaching for meaningful learning involves progressi...
In this chapter theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches for the study of physics and chemistry teaching and learning practices are illustrated through the use of three studies. These studies, based on the analysis of videotaped classroom discourse and actions, concern conceptual change, students’ meaning making, and inquiry based scien...
Neste artigo, apresentamos reflexões de um estudo desenvolvido para propor o perfil conceitual de morte e identificar aspectos da abordagem pedagógica do ciclo de vida, no Ensino de Ciências. Discutimos, mais especificamente, aspectos sobre a seguinte questão:quais as possibilidades da escolarização do conceito de morte por meio da abordagem pedagó...
This chapter discusses the issue about origin of life and biological evolution: the hypotheses of Young Earth creationism and intelligent design. The data obtained in Brazil regarding this issue were compared with British results. Two categories were considered in the analysis of the respondents: religion and education. Velazquez describes in this...
Resumo: Este trabalho faz parte de uma investigação sobre as práticas pedagógicas bem-sucedidas usadas por professores universitários. Com o objetivo de investigar as estratégias usadas por um professor bem avaliado pelos estudantes, registramos, em vídeo, um conjunto de aulas e fizemos a análise das mesmas. Esta análise permitiu um entendimento in...
This chapter deals with one of the most important concepts that help establishing the onto concept of matter: the concept of molecule. To understand modern chemistry, we cannot resort only to the classical molecules or to its modern counterparts: dynamic, polynuclear, or supramolecular frameworks. All of them are complementary views of the chemical...
In this chapter we present a study of a concept that is not included in the school curricula: the concept of death. Nevertheless, the study of death is justified because it is a concept that is at the heart of people’s existence through its opposition to the concept of life. In this article we address the historical and epistemological construction...
The language of science has many words and phrases whose meaning either changes in differing contexts or alters to reflect developments in a given discipline. This book presents the authors’ theories on using ‘conceptual profiles’ to make the teaching of context-dependent meanings more effective. Developed over two decades, their theory begins with...
Resumo Este artigo, a partir da constatação de que o processo de categorização é básico para a cognição e, portanto, fundamental no processo de ensino/aprendizagem de ciências, apresenta o modelo clássico de categorização e a concepção metafísica subjacente a ele. Visando apontar algumas críticas e alternativas ao modelo clássico, o presente
P e s q u i s a e m E d u c a ç ã o e m C i ê n c i a s V o l u m e 0 2 / N ú m e r o 2 – D e z e m b r o 2 0 0 2 Resumo: Desde a década de sessenta, currículos de ensino de ciências com ênfase em CTS – ciência, tecnologia e sociedade – vêm sendo desenvolvidos no mundo inteiro. Tais currículos apresentam como objetivo central preparar os alunos par...
In this chapter, we address the heterogeneity in thinking and talking in science classrooms from the perspective of the conceptual profile approach. In order to model the different ways of conceptualizing objects and events that a person can employ, we introduce the conceptual profile approach and discuss learning from that perspective, as the rela...
This article presents the steps that compose the construction of the conceptual profile model of death that resulted in the identification of three zones: naturalistic, in which death is interpreted as a result of biological processes or biological properties; religious, in which death is understood as a fact or phenomenon that results from a "divi...
Neste artigo, discutimos
bases teóricas e epistemológicas da abordagem dos
perfis conceituais, concebida como uma maneira de
modelar a heterogeneidade do pensamento e da linguagem
em salas de aula de ciências. Nós distinguimos
entre duas visões sobre conceitos: (1) conceitos como
modelos ou esquemas mentais de objetos ou eventos;
(2) conceitos como...
This study investigates the decision-making processes experienced by a group of students
who did a module of their Biological Sciences course, offered by the Department of
Biochemistry and Immunology from a University located in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The
students were engaged in inquiry-based teaching and worked in a research project which they
cho...
Estudos vêm demonstrando a importância da argumentação no ensino de ciências, em particular, nas discussões de aspectos sócio-científicos. Neste artigo, apontamos como a argumentação pode contribuir em tais discussões e a necessidade do desenvolvimento de intervenções pedagógicas pelo professor que contribuam para aumentar a capacidade argumentativ...
This article reports on the construction process of inclusion/exclusion for high school chemistry students in two schools in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais State, Brazil. We examined the interactional accomplishment of inclusion/exclusion of four students, two from a private school and two from a public school. The aim of this article...
This paper provides an introduction to the concept of pedagogical link‐making in the context of teaching and learning scientific conceptual knowledge. Pedagogical link‐making is concerned with the ways in which teachers and students make connections between ideas in the ongoing meaning‐making interactions of classroom teaching and learning. First o...
The chapter of Wolff-Michael Roth, Thinking and Speaking: A Dynamic
Approach, offers a fundamental contribution to the analysis of the relation between thought and word. Based mainly on Vygotsky’s Thinking and Speech
71 (1934/1987), particularly on the final chapter Thought and Word, Roth analyses a physics lecture given by an experienced professor...
In this article we analyse the interaction between a high school chemistry teacher and her students from two different classes, emphasizing how emotions, affects and feelings contributed to, or obstructed, the dynamic of interactions. The data come from an ethnographic research approach and include videotapes of the lessons, interviews and field no...
The oral arguments of 12th grade students while solving tasks related to evolution are examined. Two groups (N=45), taught by the same teacher, were studied during a complete teaching sequence. The paper focuses on data from the last
sessions, devoted to solving problems in small groups, problems related to different dimensions of the evolutionary...
This work presents an analysis of the enunciative strategies articulated by a teacher in an 11th grade Chemistry classroom, where the concepts of exo and endothermic processes and enthalpy were discussed. The characterization of these strategies is oriented to the configuration of speech genre of Science classrooms, according to a Bakhtinian view....
This article presents the results of research on the introduction of socioscientific issues (SSI) in classroom, in order to identify potentials and constraints of the process and implications for the curriculum and for the teacher training process. The research was a case study, in which, the data were collected from of interviews, observations reg...
In this study we present an analysis of classroom interactions initiated by students' wonderment questions. Our interest in such events arises from their potential to stimulate active intellectual engagement in classrooms, which can impact upon the subsequent development of the classroom discourse. In investigating this issue we shall address the f...
This work reports on study about the expressiveness of the teacher. The specific aim of the analysis reported here was to investigate the verbal and non-verbal resources used by thirteen university teachers from the "Instituto de Ciências Biológicas da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais". The methodology was oriented by a combination of quantitat...
This chapter considers the notion of educational research quality and evaluation from an international perspective. We consider how and why these approaches differ from the US-based Gold Standard design (i.e., research based on randomized controlled trials [RCTs] mimicking third-stage drug trials; see Shelley, Yore, & Hand, Chap. 1). The Gold Stand...
In this paper we aim at establishing a link between two theoretical frames: modelling and its use in the design and analysis of scientific teaching sequences, and the communicative approaches as they alternate in classroom activities. In this case study, we follow the interactions between the teacher and a pair of students during an entire teaching...
This article discusses the inclusion/exclusion of students in chemistry classrooms based on singular histories. These histories were constructed from a set of data that includes interviews, socio-economic and cultural questionnaires, classroom observation and video data taken from one teaching sequence in two high schools from Belo Horizonte. The d...
This article discusses the inclusion/exclusion of students in chemistry classrooms based on singular histories. These histories were constructed from a set of data that includes interviews, socio-economic and cultural questionnaires, classroom observation and video data taken from one teaching sequence in two high schools from Belo Horizonte. The d...
The aim of this investigation is to analyze how secondary school teachers appropriate the discourse of chemistry curriculum innovation. The study is based on interviews carried out with 12 teachers who have taken part in the PRÓ-MÉDIO and PRÓ-CIÊNCIAS programs of continued training and innovation implemented in Minas Gerais State in Brazil, from 19...
In this paper, we offer an intermediate position in the multiculturalism/universalism debate, drawing upon Cobern and Loving’s
epistemological pluralism, pragmatist philosophies, Southerland’s defense of instructional multicultural science education,
and the conceptual profile model. An important element in this position is the proposal that unders...
This paper reports the building of a conceptual profile of ‘life’. We took as a starting point the hypothesis that the concept of life is polysemous, showing several possible meanings, and, thus, admitting a conceptual profile. We attempted to demarcate the zones that constitute this conceptual profile through a dialogic interplay between theoretic...
In this paper, we draw upon a framework for analyzing the discursive interactions of science classrooms (Mortimer & Scott, 2003, Meaning Making in Secondary Science Classrooms, Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press), to probe the movement between authoritative and dialogic discourse in a Brazilian high school science class. More specifically, we ar...
O trabalho é parte de uma pesquisa de doutorado concluída em fevereiro de 2004, que teve por objetivo analisar as interações construídas nas práticas de letramento em sala de aula do primeiro ciclo. Busca articular dados quantitativos com os dados da sala de aula e traçar o perfil descritivo dos professores do primeiro ciclo da rede municipal de Be...
This paper will examine how the conflict between the scientific point of view and the students’ everyday point of view can be perceived and overcome by the students with the mediation of a teacher. For this purpose we analyze a science class episode, which was recorded when a teaching sequence on heat and temperature was carried out with students a...
In this paper, we introduce and exemplify aspects of a tool for analysing the various forms and functions of discursive interactions
in high school science classrooms. This tool, or analytical framework, is based on a sociocultural view of teaching and learning,
and consists of five linked aspects: Teaching purposes; Content of the classroom intera...
