The problem which motivated this research was the lack of chemistry practical work in many Mozambican junior secondary schools. This problem is so critical that quite often learners finish the three years of junior secondary school without performing even one experiment. In an attempt to contribute to the solution to the problem, the microchemistry kits are introduced. For this purpose a study of the influence of kits on the teaching and learning of chemistry in a Mozambican context was conducted. The study involved four out of five public secondary schools in the city of Beira, the second largest city in Mozambique. Two schools were chosen to be the experimental group, in which chemistry was taught using the RADMASTE microchemistry kits. Two other schools, in which chemistry lessons were taught normally, were chosen to be the comparison group. In each school one Grade 9 class was used for the study. Before starting the study, 18 secondary chemistry teachers of the four schools answered a questionnaire and 163 Grade 9 learners answered another questionnaire. These were used to determine teachers’ and learners’ opinions about the importance and aims of practical work. Before the intervention a pretest was administered to 181 Grade 9 learners within the four classes. After eight weeks of intervention, the same post-test was administered to 171 learners from the same classes. A questionnaire was also administered to the two teachers of the experimental group and another questionnaire was administered to 86 learners from the experimental group. Both questionnaires were used to find out teachers’ and learners’ opinions about the microchemistry kits. Practical work is viewed as an important method for teaching and learning chemistry, mainly to link theory and practice or use practical work to support theory. There was a statistically significant difference between the pre-test and the posttest scores in all four schools. But, learners from the experimental group performed better than learners from the comparison group in the questions which required conceptual understanding and in laboratory-based knowledge questions. The practical work also contributed to increase learners’ interest towards chemistry. It is recommended that the microchemistry kits be implemented in chemistry teaching in Mozambique, both in schools with laboratories and schools without laboratories, and that further studies should be carried out to identify effective ways of doing this.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:42:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 GilberlandioNS_DISSERT.pdf: 1649647 bytes, checksum: 34b4c44283fc70f12bbd88843af8f3cf (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-02-27 / The aiming of this work is linked to chemical education, focusing organic chemistry classes of Chemical Engineering, Pharmacy and Zootechny graduate courses of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. For that, teaching-learning process related to basic chemical subjects which support the understanding of organic chemistry concepts was evaluated in a research period of two years. The education proposal linked to the theoretical content of the cited classes, pointed out the process of knowledge construction, in which educational commitment as well as dedication in the teaching-learning process was also valued. In that approach several didactic tools were applied, among them scientific articles were used as supplementary studies of the basic organic chemistry concepts and related. The acceptability of students, as well as their motivation, performance and learning process was justified by the data collection of the applied teaching methodology. The acceptability and commitment of the students facing this teaching interactive approach, which transversely contributed to the intellectual maturity growth of the students, as well their professional development, were evidenced by satisfactory obtained results that will be herein discussed / O enfoque deste trabalho est? vinculado ao ensino de qu?mica, com abordagem espec?fica para disciplinas de Qu?mica Org?nica ministradas nos cursos presenciais de gradua??o em Engenharia Qu?mica, Farm?cia e Zootecnia da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte. Para tanto, realizou-se uma pesquisa com dura??o de dois anos consecutivos, objetivando-se a avalia??o do processo ensino e aprendizado referente aos conceitos qu?micos b?sicos que d?o suporte ao entendimento da qu?mica org?nica. A proposta de ensino vinculada aos conte?dos te?ricos dessas disciplinas valorizou o processo de constru??o do conhecimento, que sinaliza para a necessidade de comprometimento educacional no processo ensino e aprendizado. Neste estudo, diversas ferramentas did?ticas foram aplicadas, dentre elas, destaca-se leituras complementares de artigos cient?ficos que abordam assuntos pontuais ou correlatos aos conhecimentos b?sicas de qu?mica org?nica. A proposta para o instrumento de coleta de dados consistiu em avaliar o desempenho e aprendizado dos alunos. De acordo com os resultados obtidos foi poss?vel comprovar que os ?ndices satisfat?rios de aprova??o nas turmas avaliadas, demonstram o comprometimento do aluno diante da metodologia aplicada, que de forma transversal contribui para a forma??o profissional e o amadurecimento intelectual do estudante