Perguntas na sala de aula: relações de poder, tópico discursivo e conhecimento

Abstract

This article aims to show the relationship established between power, questions, topic and construction of knowledge in the classroom. We defend that the teacher has the institutionally conferred power to control discursive topics and that such control is implemented by means of questions designed so as construct knowledge. In order to investigate this claim we analyzed a corpus formed by recordings of science classes to control questions-answer pair, social actors and their relationship to the discursive topic. The results point that 96% question from the corpus (435 in total) were devised by the teacher, 95% of the questions are open, 92% are “didactic” and 94% questions are related to the development of the discursive topic. The teacher asks more because he has control over the topic of discourse, and questions – mostly didactic – are related to development of topic. The data confirm the initial claim that there is a relationship between power, questions, topic and construction of knowledge.