From school to home, from home to the school

the science textbooks as a link between the scholar dynamic and the local community

Abstract

The research investigates the engagement between the scholar's knowledge and the local knowledge by the use of textbooks by a Science teacher in two students’ classes of the 6º grade from the Elementary School (students between eleven and twelve years old). The research, of an ethnographic nature, was performed during a school year in a Countryside School in the state of Paraná (Brazil), with the collaboration of a Science teacher, the school principal, the pedagogue and the students’ parents. The empirical work contemplates the classroom observation, the research school collaborators’ interview and the analysis of the current official normative documents and an investigation along with the parents or the students' caretakers concerning the textbooks used by their children. The results made it possible to determine that is expressive the presence and use of textbooks in classes and the students are going to use it inside and outside of the scholar space, including their own residences. Inside them, the textbooks become part of the family circle and they promote the exchange between the school and local knowledge, changeable due to the social, economic, political and cultural changes experienced by its subjects.