ELECTROMAGNETISM IN PRACTICE: ACCESSIBLE EXPERIMENTS WITH DIGITAL SUPPORT FOR HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION
Physics Teaching; Electromagnetism; Meaningful Learning; Low-cost experimentation; Digital technologies.
This work presents the development and application of a didactic proposal for teaching electromagnetism in High School, combining low-cost experimentation and the use of digital technologies as support for learning. The research was guided by the following investigative question: How can the use of low-cost experiments associated with digital technologies contribute to the meaningful learning of concepts related to electromagnetism in High School? Based on this question, the general objective of the study was to optimize the teaching and learning process of electromagnetism topics, especially magnetic fields generated by electric currents and electromagnetic induction, through a didactic sequence grounded in experimentation and the use of digital resources. The specific objectives were to relate electricity and magnetism through experimental activities, qualitatively demonstrate the relationship between electric current and magnetic field, quantitatively present the relationship between current intensity and the magnetic field generated by a straight wire, and qualitatively explain Faraday’s Law. The research was based on Ausubel’s Meaningful Learning Theory, with contributions from Novak and Bruner, promoting the active construction of knowledge through the relationship between new content and students’ prior knowledge. As an educational product, an electromagnetism experiment was developed and applied, enabling the determination of the magnetic field generated by an electric current, as well as the observation of the emergence of an induced current resulting from the variation of magnetic flux inside a coil. The results indicate that the adopted approach favored the conceptual understanding of the studied phenomena, contributing to more meaningful learning. It is noteworthy that, in one of the analyzed items, there was an increase of 51.4% in the percentage of correct answers between the pre-test and the post-test.