As representações sociais dos álcoois por pessoas com e sem instrução química

Abstract

The term "alcohol" has been around among humanity for thousands of years. Some alcohols are quite popular, however, the best known is ethanol, ethyl alcohol. There is such a close link to this particular type that, for many, the term alcohol seems to be restricted to ethanol. In the teaching-learning process, this generalization error can cause serious problems, including in teacher training. This problem generated interest in carrying out the research proposed here, whose main objective was to analyze how the applications of alcohols are presented in the social representations of different social groups, professionals and customers of a supermarket, with and without chemical instruction. The investigation was based on the Theory of Social Representations, by Serge Moscovici. The research focus was qualitative, with a quantitative bias, and followed two aspects. The first consisted of a documentary analysis of the work involving TRS, published in the proceedings of the National Meeting of Research in Science Education and the National Meeting of Chemistry Teaching, over a period of 15 (fifteen) years, from 2007 to 2022, and in a survey of alcohol sold in supermarkets. The other aspect investigated the social representations of alcohol among the 2 (two) groups that work and/or consume products, including those containing alcohols in their composition. Data collection in this second aspect used the Free Word Association Technique, in a questionnaire format, later analyzed in the IRaMuTeQ software, and semi-structured interviews. In the first investigative aspect, 87 (eighty-seven) works involving TRS were found in the annals of the events and more than 30 (thirty) types of alcohols present in the compositions of products sold in the supermarket. The evocations showed that the expression “alcoholic drinks” constitutes the central core zone of the social representations of the groups studied, regarding the inductive term “applications of alcohols”, and the interviews confirmed this homogeneity. The results bring some pedagogical-didactic reflections, as they point to evidence of reductionism of the term alcohol to ethanol, by the participants, exposing a low mastery of the concept of alcohol.