Problematization and concept development in the classroom: considerations from the question-answer pair

Abstract This article discusses how the process of building meaning has been treated in the early years of Elementary School based on the analysis of pairs of questions and answers triggered by specific situations in which a case of meaning negotiation between students and teachers in daily classroom’s dialogues could be observed. The corpus consists of the records of the observation of Portuguese language classes of the third grade of Elementary School in a public school located in São Miguel Paulista, a district near the city of Guarulhos. The analyses indicate that both the questions planned by the teacher and the ones spontaneously made up by the students were treated as closed-ended questions, with unique and precise answers, usually involving the act of identifying one possible example of the concept in question. This observation indicates the need of having activities planned aimed to develop a work with concepts on higher levels when it comes to abstract thinking and the generalization process.

摘要 本文基于特定情境引发的问答对分析，探讨小学低年级阶段意义建构过程的处理方式，此类情境中可观察到师生在日常课堂对话中开展意义协商的实例。本研究的语料库（corpus）取自位于巴西瓜鲁柳斯市近郊圣米格尔保利斯塔区的一所公立学校的小学三年级葡萄牙语课程课堂观察记录。分析结果表明，无论是教师预设的问题还是学生自发提出的问题，均被视作封闭性问题（closed-ended questions），仅要求给出唯一且精准的答案，通常涉及识别所讨论概念的某一可能范例的行为。该观察结果显示，有必要规划相关教学活动，以开展针对抽象思维与概括过程相关的更高层级概念的教学实践。