Interdisciplinaridade na prática pedagógica de microbiologia nos cursos bacharelados de Ciências Biológicas e Enfermagem

Abstract

Among the philosophical and technical-methodological principles advocated in the development of the Institutional Pedagogical Project of the State University of Maranhão (UEMA) is the assurance of high-quality educational and professional training, with an emphasis on the inseparable link between teaching, research, and extension; interdisciplinarity; and curricular flexibility as processes for building knowledge and fostering innovative pedagogical practices. The main objective of this study is to develop an interdisciplinary methodological proposal for a more up-to-date and innovative pedagogical practice in the Microbiology urriculum component of the Bachelor’s Degree Programs in Biological Sciences and Nursing. To this end, the study first addresses the concepts and conceptions of interdisciplinarity from the perspective of various authors to provide greater clarity regarding the object of study. The methodological procedure employed was a structured interview using the Free Word Association Technique (FWAT) to identify the perceptions of professors in these programs regarding the trigger word “interdisciplinarity,” based on Serge Moscovici’s Theory of Social Representations, associated with Jean-Claude Abric’s CentralNucleus Theory. The institutional documents, that guide teaching practices at this institution, such as: course establishment documents, the Institutional Pedagogical Project (PPI), the Pedagogical Project for the Nursing and Biological Sciences Courses (PPC), teaching plans for the Microbiology course, as well as others such as: the National Curriculum Guidelines for Courses and the Undergraduate Course Evaluation Tool according to INEP, which refer to the adoption of interdisciplinarity as a principle of teaching practice, were analyzed. Analysis of the research results with the teachers reveals that: although interdisciplinarity is reconized as an essential principle in the guiding documents, the teachers’ social representations still reveal a predominantly theoretical and polysemic understanding, with difficulties in translating this into everyday pedagogical practice. The core of these representations highlighted the word ‘knowledge’ as the most frequently mentioned by teachers, but followed peripherally by the words interaction, integration, and exchange, indicating that their conceptions are strongly linked to the idea of ‘uniting knowledge,’ yet lack systematized methodological trategies to implement this dialogue in the practice of the Microbiology curriculum component. To address this gap, a Digital Guide with Interdisciplinary Pedagogical Proposals for the Teaching of Microbiology was developed as the Technological Product of this dissertation