Patterns of science teaching practice with the use of an instrument designated “X ray of practice”

Abstract The article describes a proposal for an instrument for collecting a description of the operational practice of teachers, allowing for access to essential educational events that structure their practices, the physical bone of their theory practice, designated X-ray of the practice. The methodology previously proposed to identify the teachers’ pedagogical sequences is, in this work, used as an interpretive matrix by the investigator of the descriptions of the teachers’ practice, experiencing its usefulness and contributing to the validation of the assumptions in its construction. The article describes the methodological procedure in the application with a group of teachers, the process of inference by the investigator, and examples of the practice patterns found in the studied group: a pattern radically more transmissive, a transmissive pattern based on a practical activity and a pattern with constructivist indications.