Reading of Scientific Popularization Texts in Secondary Education: Exploring Teaching Practices

Abstract

The teaching of reading has received special attention, particularly in the wake of national and international assessments that reveal a low level of reading comprehension among Brazilian secondary school students. This research focuses on the incidence of reading as decoding that underlies pedagogical practices in the classes of scientific popularization reading at the secondary level. The aim is to understand the relationship between this concept and the selection of didactic and pedagogical procedures that teachers employ in their practices, focusing on the student's role in constructing the meaning of the text. This article aims to reflect on the didactics of reading scientific popularization texts and describe the path from the selection of texts and activities proposed by teachers to reveal the dimensions and categories of analysis that demonstrate the viability of content analysis in analyzing the corpus. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, observation of teaching practices, and focus group discussions. The concept of the text as a finished product and reading as decoding or expression of thought overlapped with the concept of reading as interaction. Thus, it was observed that in the academic-scientific reading classroom, the text is not understood as a process, nor is reading seen as a co-production of meanings. Hence, the need for ongoing teacher training and further research on this issue at pre-university educational levels