Teoria de Toulmin: análise da qualidade da argumentação presente nos resumos das Feiras de Ciências intermediadas pela Unipampa Campus Bagé

Abstract

When we came across the undeniable importance of Science Fairs for Basic Education, through an initial research, we identified how scarce are the number of publications about them, and how is the construction of the abstracts of the works presented, which leads us to investigate the importance of this dissertation. When we looked for subsidies related to the evaluation of abstracts submitted to Science Fairs, which could contribute from the perspective of Toulmin's Argumentation Theory (2006), we did not identify guidelines to guide the preparation of abstracts for submission and presentation of work in Science Fairs. Thus, we identified as pertinent the construction of an instrument that could provide this structure of evaluation and construction, and we considered it possible and consistent to meet our purpose to do so through a rubric. The theoretical foundation for this elaboration considered criteria designated as: problematization and complexity, acceptability and relevance, and coherence and sufficiency, in an adaptation of the proposals of Toulmin (2006), Penha and Carvalho (2012, 2015) and Bertusso, Wendling and Malacarne (2018). The form of analysis adopted was documentary, because, according to Gil (2002), primary documentary analysis occurs when the material has not had a previous study or treatment, which is where the abstracts of the Science Fairs of the Bagé Campus in the years 2018 and 2019 fit. We selected and analyzed 49 high school abstracts, using the constructed and adapted Rubric to verify the levels of Problematization and Complexity, Acceptability and Relevance and, also Coherence and Sufficiency. We sought to identify if there was an intentionality in producing knowledge in an innovative way, presenting an authorial investigation and that there was a clear connection, presenting not only the problem, but also the development, results, and conclusions. The analysis of the abstracts showed that despite the potentiality present in the categories, there is little incidence of criteria that establish a complete cycle containing the structure mentioned and proposed by the rubric, because it is noteworthy that there was no proposal of guidelines for construction and/or presentation of the abstracts of those years. As a result, there was little incidence of what we consider the most adequate and complete structure of the submitted abstracts, pointing to the need for a guideline and/or beacon for their elaboration.