Este trabalho trata da questão de aprendizagem presente frequentemente entre estudantes do ensino médio e de um curso de Licenciatura em física: a dificuldade em empregar corretamente concepções científicas em questões que se referem a fenômenos termodinâmicos, mesmo tendo já passado pelo ensino desse conteúdo na escola. A pesquisa considera a importância de estabelecer conexões entre áreas de conhecimento complementares e essenciais para promover um ensino consistente; o resgate das raízes filosóficas da termodinâmica, fazendo emergir as estruturas que permitem a elaboração de seu arcabouço teórico em diferentes períodos históricos constitui uma base da pesquisa. Esse resgate nas aulas de física proporcionaria as condições para a emergência das potencialidades criativas dos sujeitos envolvidos no processo de ensino/aprendizagem e poderiam talvez possibilitar aos estudantes fazer uso dos conceitos científicos quando necessário. A análise das pesquisas de Kuhn sobre a conservação da energia e do conceito de obstáculo epistemológico de Bachelard reforçou nossa crença na importância de revolver o passado da ciência na busca das estruturas que sustentam a produção científica de uma época. Essas estruturas orientam a análise do corpus da pesquisa constituído pelas respostas escritas dos estudantes, para questões de termodinâmica e pelas ideias encontradas nos originais de Carnot e Clausius; o levantamento dos estruturantes, bem como as contribuições de outras pesquisas didáticas, resultam em subsídios relevantes para o planejamento de boas situações de ensino. Assim espera-se poder reverter as percepções prévias inadequadas dos estudantes em outras percepções mais amplas apoiadas nos princípios organizadores do conhecimento. / This work is concerned with a Physics learning problem that frequently appears both among secondary school students and also with scienc teaching students: the difficulty for adequately using Physics conceptions regarding to thermodynamics phenomena even after this content has been seen in their scholl activities. The research considers the importance of establishing connections between complementary knowledge areas that are essential for consistent teaching; a recall of the thermodynamical philosophical roots may favor the emergence of structures that have led to its theoretical framework in different historical periods and this has been taken as the basis for this research. This recall in Physics classes favors conditions for the emergence of a creative potential involved in the teaching/learning process and could perhaps enable students do use scientific concepts when necessary. The analysis of Kuhn\'s research on energy conservation and on Bachelard epistemological obstacle concept strengthened our belief on the importance of looking into the past of science in search of structures that sustain the scientific production of na epoch. These structures pointed towards an analysis of the research corpus a constituted by students answers and to thermodynamics questions found in Carnot\'s and Clausius\'s originals; the identification of such structures as well as work by other didactic research authors as relevant contributions for planning favorable teaching situations. Therefore it is expected that students inadequate previous conceptions may be reverted into broader perceptions based on knowledge organizing principles.

Este trabalho trata da questão de aprendizagem presente frequentemente entre estudantes do ensino médio e de um curso de Licenciatura em física: a dificuldade em empregar corretamente concepções científicas em questões que se referem a fenômenos termodinâmicos, mesmo tendo já passado pelo ensino desse conteúdo na escola. A pesquisa considera a importância de estabelecer conexões entre áreas de conhecimento complementares e essenciais para promover um ensino consistente; o resgate das raízes filosóficas da termodinâmica, fazendo emergir as estruturas que permitem a elaboração de seu arcabouço teórico em diferentes períodos históricos constitui uma base da pesquisa. Esse resgate nas aulas de física proporcionaria as condições para a emergência das potencialidades criativas dos sujeitos envolvidos no processo de ensino/aprendizagem e poderiam talvez possibilitar aos estudantes fazer uso dos conceitos científicos quando necessário. A análise das pesquisas de Kuhn sobre a conservação da energia e do conceito de obstáculo epistemológico de Bachelard reforçou nossa crença na importância de revolver o passado da ciência na busca das estruturas que sustentam a produção científica de uma época. Essas estruturas orientam a análise do corpus da pesquisa constituído pelas respostas escritas dos estudantes, para questões de termodinâmica e pelas ideias encontradas nos originais de Carnot e Clausius; o levantamento dos estruturantes, bem como as contribuições de outras pesquisas didáticas, resultam em subsídios relevantes para o planejamento de boas situações de ensino. Assim espera-se poder reverter as percepções prévias inadequadas dos estudantes em outras percepções mais amplas apoiadas nos princípios organizadores do conhecimento. / This work is concerned with a Physics learning problem that frequently appears both among secondary school students and also with scienc teaching students: the difficulty for adequately using Physics conceptions regarding to thermodynamics phenomena even after this content has been seen in their scholl activities. The research considers the importance of establishing connections between complementary knowledge areas that are essential for consistent teaching; a recall of the thermodynamical philosophical roots may favor the emergence of structures that have led to its theoretical framework in different historical periods and this has been taken as the basis for this research. This recall in Physics classes favors conditions for the emergence of a creative potential involved in the teaching/learning process and could perhaps enable students do use scientific concepts when necessary. The analysis of Kuhn\'s research on energy conservation and on Bachelard epistemological obstacle concept strengthened our belief on the importance of looking into the past of science in search of structures that sustain the scientific production of na epoch. These structures pointed towards an analysis of the research corpus a constituted by students answers and to thermodynamics questions found in Carnot\'s and Clausius\'s originals; the identification of such structures as well as work by other didactic research authors as relevant contributions for planning favorable teaching situations. Therefore it is expected that students inadequate previous conceptions may be reverted into broader perceptions based on knowledge organizing principles.

This study is based on the presumption that language is fundamental to the construction of knowledge. In addition, linguistic demands are incorporated in the policy documents of the upper secondary edu­cation of Sweden; students shall, during their education, be given the opportunity to appropriate certain linguistic tools. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how teachers and students in upper secondary education manage and utilize the discourse of social science in both speech and writing. More specifically, two classes are studied during three terms. The teachers’ ability to organize and support the students vocally and in written is examined, so are the effects of the teaching on students’ writing. The origin of the study is constituted by a sociocultural stance provided by Vygotskij, Bakhtin and Halliday. A combination of a functional perspective on language and a cognitive is probed, where the study is comparative in nature consisting of an experimental class and a control class. The importance of language for the creation of knowledge has been communicated to the teachers of the experimen­tal class, with provided complementary subject didactic literature. This literature offers support for teachers to augment the use of explicit teaching and enhance student awareness of how conceptual structures mould social science. Qualitative analyses are performed on the basis of teacher-student dialogue and written tasks by a group of selected students. The ana­lytical tools object language – metalanguage, linguistic operations and knowledge structures are developed for the purpose of processing data, and have been combined with the tools activity analysis, subject-related concepts and text activity. The results from the analyses display no difference in the handling of the discourse of social science between the experimental class and the control class. The teachers of the experimental class, like the teacher of the control class, are primarily utilizing object language where knowledge structures are visible, as opposed to a combination of object language – metalanguage. Furthermore, they exhibit diminutive use of dialogue in their teaching. The students of both classes, on their hand, demon­strate an equal progress in textual development. This study concludes that the experimental class has not been provided with sufficiently explicit support to advance in the struc­turing of knowledge and in level of reasoning. A more efficient support to teachers to manage these analytical tools would, in all probability, give them, and through this the students, an increasingly profound insight into structuring of text activities, the meaning and signalling of linguistic operations, the construction of subject-related concepts and, most importantly, how these three tools are interrelated.