Cooperation or competition? Assessment of a strategy to play Teaching Biology for Secondary Education and Higher Education / Cooperação ou competição? Avaliação de uma estratégia lúdica de ensino de Biologia para o Ensino Médio e o Ensino Superior

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2009

RESUMO

Games and other playful activities may help to create favorable situations for the acquisition of knowledge. However, most of the games have the competitive component . An alternative for competition is the use of cooperative games, which favor the game with each other rather than against each other. In the present work, we comparatively evaluated a problem-based- learning investigative board game for Biology teaching. The game was evaluated in one competitive and two cooperatives approaches: Collective Effort (CE) and Tasks Division (TD). Parameters concerning the acceptance and applicability, as well as the effectiveness in learning were evaluated. Evaluations in high schools were conducted with 675 students (organized in pairs or groups) from private and federal public schools from the Rio de Janeiro State. The same evaluation was conducted with 630 students from the first semester of Biomedical careers from a Federal Public University of the State of the Rio de Janeiro. The results with all the strategies utilized showed that the majority of the participants were able to present a correct solution for the problem proposed. The CE cooperative strategy had the lowest acceptance among secondary students, being considered less dynamic and fun. Moreover, students had the perception that they have learned less while playing under this strategy. Indeed, those students had the worse individual performance in solving a posterior question related to the Case. The overall results concerning the TD cooperative strategy were similar to those obtained with the competitive strategy. The results obtained with higher education students show that there are no differences among the three strategies both concerning acceptance and learning. The results indicate that, for the students of secondary education, the playfulness and dynamic features are of extreme importance for their involvement and acceptance of the activity, with effects also in the acquisition of knowledge. The cooperation with task division was shown, therefore, to be not only valid as a strategy of education but was even considered by the students as being more fun than the competitive strategy. Altogether, our results highlight the potential of cooperative learning in Biology Education.

ASSUNTO(S)

biologia/educação teaching/methods ensino/metodos biology/education ensino e aprendizagem na sala de aula play and playthings jogos e brinquedos

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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