Narratives of thermodynamics in Angolan textbooks and the conceptualization of their readers

Abstract

The recent Angolan Educational Law assigns textbooks a central role in the learning process. In the current period of peace and prosperity in Angola, the country looks for an education that goes along with the country’s social and economic developments. An education that contributes to scientific and technological innovations in Angolan society, and prepares critical and active citizens. Angola is one of the largest exporters of crude oil in the world, and hence, energy is an important subject to be included in science teaching.Since, in Angola, science teaching is mainly based on textbooks, this study aimed at analysing the thermodynamics approaches provided in physics textbooks. From this analysis, we also aim to infer to what extent textbooks´ proposals convey a relationship between scientific knowledge and an individual’s standpoint in society on energy. The review of the thermodynamics texts, which took into account the socio-cultural context of their production, revealed that they hold a closed discursive structure, with a focus on conceptual content; and that there is an absence of methodological proposals for promoting divergent thinking. Furthermore, the reader is conceptualized as someone belonging to an elite group, “pre-specialist”, with high “scientific capital”, and intrinsically motivated.

Angola; Discourse analysis; Textbook; Thermodynamics