Learning proteins through teaching by inquiry

Abstract

Teaching biology is challenging and has had a great impact on the increasing spread of fake news. When it comes to teaching biochemistry, the process becomes even more complex since it is a subject of high complexity and abstraction. In this sense, there is a strong appeal for the development of diverse resources for the teaching of biochemistry in high school to facilitate the teaching process and minimize the degree of abstraction that makes learning so difficult. Thus, the present work proposes an investigative didactic sequence on protein content to bring the subject closer to the daily life of students. The investigative didactic sequence consists of four stages, namely: a) the first stage, called “What are proteins?”, a video followed by problem situations that will be investigated by the students; b) the second stage, called “Discovering proteins through practical experiments conducted at home”, in which the groups will perform experiments researched by them and/or indicated by the teacher and will record videos demonstrating the experiments to ascertain the hypotheses raised in the previous stage; c) the third stage, called “Perceiving the structure of proteins”, in which the teacher will explain the constitution and structure of proteins; d) the fourth stage, called “Re-signifying experiments”, where the groups will record new videos explaining the results obtained in the experiments after the third stage. Due to the pandemic, the activity could not be performed with students because of the low adherence to online classes with Google Meet and the lack of face-to-face time for its application when traditional classes resumed. Still, the didactic sequence can be a different way of treating the subject “Proteins” in high school.