Abstract

CALADO, Sílvia  and  NEVES, Isabel Pestana. Curriculum and textbooks in a context of curricular flexibility: Analysis of recontextualizing processes. Rev. Port. de Educação [online]. 2012, vol.25, n.1, pp.53-93. ISSN 0871-9187.

This study analyses the message of two textbooks of the Natural Sciences curriculum for middle school, regarding specific pedagogic characteristics. It also analyses the recontextualizing processes that transform the science curriculum message in the textbook message. The study has epistemological, psychological and sociological theoretical bases. Bernstein’s theory of pedagogic discourse is the main theoretical framework. A mixed methodology is used with dialectical process between the theoretical and the empirical. The results revealed that, in both textbooks, the metascience is poorly valued, there is a weak conceptual relation between knowledges, the conceptual demand is very low and the text to be transmitted/acquired is implicit. The textbook mostly selected by teachers had the lowest results. The recontextualizing processes changed the message contained in the science curriculum. These results raise questions about the level of scientific learning in a context of curricular flexibility, where textbooks’ authors and teachers have greater control.

Keywords : Textbooks; Science education; Recontextualizing processes; Curricular flexibility.

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