Semiotic Analysis of Didactic Representations of Tectonic Plates in Geography Education

Abstract

This article proposes to carry out a discussion that contributes to the teaching of Geography and related areas that make use of the contents related to the Tectonic Plates. The aim is to demonstrate how the different signs that represent the same type of phenomenon situated in the geographic space are manifested, since each sign that denotes the dynamics of the Tectonic Plates has as its characteristic a certain Semiotic potential to be developed by the subject. With regard to methodology, this study adopts a qualitative approach, whose method is consolidated in bibliographic research from textbooks intended for students in the 6th year of Elementary School of Geography – Final years. To carry out the analyses, this article uses considerations from Peirce's Semiotics theory and Bardin's Content Analysis. About the results, it was verified that the understanding of the dynamics of the tectonic plates are not compatible with the processes involved in the dynamics of semiosis established by the Peircean theory. It was analyzed that the content addressed was mainly based on presenting only the geological particularities of the phenomenon of Tectonic Plates, and that in this sense, it proposes the student to see the phenomenon in an isolated and, consequently, distant way because it is not part of their half lived.