ANALYSIS OF THE DIDACTIC TRANSPOSITION OF KEPLER’S LAWS IN HIGH SCHOOL: A PERSPECTIVE ON THE DIDACTIC CONSTRAINTS THAT ARISE FROM THE KNOWLEDGE TO BE TAUGHT AND THE TAUGHT KNOWLEDGE

Abstract

This study examines the process of internal didactic transposition of Kepler's three laws of planetary motion in high school education. The research was conducted in five public high schools within the Regional Education Center of Maringá, Paraná, Brazil, involving five Physics teachers. Data were collected through field journals and audio recordings of the classes, enabling a detailed analysis of the teachers' discourse. The results reveal that the didactic material (Knowledge to be Taught) used contains inconsistencies, simplifications, and factual errors that lead to the decontextualization, depersonalization, desyncretization and publicity of the original scientific knowledge, without adequate epistemological vigilance. For example, regarding Kepler's first law, the material inaccurately presents planetary orbits with high eccentricity and incorrectly states that the three laws were introduced in the work Astronomia Nova. As for the Taught Knowledge, that is, the classes taught by teachers, the critical analysis revealed that most teachers also do not carry out the necessary epistemological vigilance when transposing the content, thus perpetuating the errors present in the Knowledge to be Taught, and in some cases, aggravating them. An example of this is the treatment of the law of periods, where teachers fail to mention Kepler's pursuit of harmony in planetary motions based on music, or when they blend Newtonian concepts of gravitation with Kepler's ideas. These results suggest a lack of more active epistemological vigilance on the part of both teachers and the creators of the didactic materials, which ultimately amplifies the impact of didactic constraints during the transposition process. Therefore, this study highlights the need for a more careful and rigorous review of educational materials and for continuous professional development of teachers to ensure that scientific knowledge is transposed with consideration of its historical, social, cultural, and epistemological context, thereby ensuring that school knowledge is less simplified and more closely connected to its origins.