Abstract
Chemistry teaching in Brazil has been evolving and undergoing changes since the 1930s, the so-called Vargas Era. There has been a steady transmission of information through the textbooks throughout this period, sometimes as a protagonist or supporting character. Thus, a careful analytical look at these transformations is essential. This paper aims to provide an overview of the National Textbook and Teaching Materials Program (PNLD in Portuguese) in the current context of chemistry teaching, in the New High School, based on the National Common Core Curriculum, by using an important historical technology as a marker: the periodic table. Following this analysis, we have noticed a loss of conceptual and historical content regarding this topic somehow, which leads us to infer that the history of chemistry, understood by authors in the field as one of the main contextualization tools, may be going through critical and worrying moments.
Keywords
Chemistry teaching; PNLD; Periodic table; BNCC