CONCEPTUAL MAPS IN TEACHER TRAINING: challenges and didactic-pedagogical possibilities
Conceptual Maps. Knowledge Organization. Teacher Training. Assessment. Collaborative Learning.
Conceptual Maps (CMs) are graphical tools that help organize and present knowledge. They emerged in the context of investigating students' prior knowledge about scientific concepts and are now applied in the most different sectors of society. However, in the Brazilian educational context, especially in teacher training courses (initial and continuing), the didactic-pedagogical potential of this tool is still little known and explored. Thus, the objective is to investigate the use of concept maps in the context of teacher training, as well as to promote continuing education in order to explore the CMs as evaluative instruments. For this, short-term workshops were developed and applied in different training contexts, resulting in an educational product structured in six stages and with a total workload of 20 hours/class. Among the main results obtained, the following stand out: in fact, there is a gap in the training of the investigated teachers with regard to concept maps and their use in the classroom, especially among those in continuing education; it was possible to develop and implement six short-term training activities for teachers from different areas; in general terms, it was observed that the professors completing the workshops presented a qualitative leap in the development of conceptual maps; there is an urgent need to adapt and apply the workshop from an inclusive perspective, especially for people with hearing impairments; development of an educational product entitled “Conceptual maps: theory and practice in teacher training”.