The notion of praxeology as a tool to analyze exhibitions in science

museums
The scientific and technological development, the modernization of society and
the redefinition of time and social space arising from globalization imply new
educational requirements, with repercussions both in the interface of education with the
world of work, and in education with the exercise of citizenship.
Over the years, both research and educational practices related to museum
education have intensified, becoming increasingly a field of knowledge production. In
this way, studies and strategies in these fields have been used in an attempt to provide
scientific knowledge in an accessible manner and with quality to visitors of museums
(CAZELLI; MARANDINO; STUDART, 2003).
Museums have, for some time, being thought of as educational institutions and,
since its origin, changed the focus of their performance in the care of the collections to
the attention of the public, (FAYARD, 1999; OUTROS?). Several discussions about the
role and social responsibilities of these institutions emphasized the need of assembling
of didactic and purposeful of exhibitions, what resulted in the expansion of educational
services in museums
From the second half of the twentieth century museums have been recognized as
intrinsically educational institutions and the axis of museum activities migrated from the
conservation - documentation binomial to education-communication binomial (Martins,
2000). This new order transformed the museum exhibit, both point of view as
conceptual as technical. The exhibits have gained, in addition to existing explanatory
panels and labels, new information media such as photographs, models, dioramas and
backgrounds, diverse sound reinforcement, audio, guides and other media resources,
forming a vast range of languages multisectoral support.
Many researches were done under the influence of certain currents of
educational thought. The idea of learning in museums, so, is not new. For many years,
research on museum education sought to produce educational strategies such as: divide
the exhibition spaces for families getting together, facilitating learning (Borun et al
1996); and structure the scientific content of a presentation to make it educationally
coherent to the visitor (Miles, 1986).
According to Marandino (2004), the transformation of scientific knowledge for
purposes of education and dissemination, can be analyzed in order to understand the

production of new knowledge in these processes. Accordingly, we find in

Anthropological Theory of the Didactic (ATD), proposed by Chevallard (1991), the
theoretical framework that will identify which knowledge is produced by the museum,
through its educational activities, and that they can or cannot be observed by the visitor,
through a praxeological Organization (OP).
My research aims to characterize the intended and observed praxeology of the
diorama "Amazon Forest" which exhibition is in Museum of Zoology of USP. The
methodology is based on field research and it includes the preparation of a
praxeological framework from the data obtained by three collection tools: documents
about exhibitions and dioramas; interviews with designers and/or responsibles for the
exhibition; observation, description, filming and photography of the dioramas.
The Anthropological Theory of the Didactic, the way it is constituted, is
presented through various notions (levels of didactic codetermination, didactic
transposition, praxeology, epistemological reference model), among them, the notion of
praxeology was chosen to be used as a theoretical tool of analysis of the intentions and
of the elements related to biodiversity present in the diagram of the Amazon Forest,
since the study of praxeology in museums has been recently developed in order to
analyze the learning environment in museum exhibitions, produce practical principles
and theoretically grounded, with conditions to be applicable to the alignment between
the design of exhibitions and the educational outcomes (Mortensen, 2010).
Therefore, it is expected that the Anthropological Theory of Didactics can
contribute, so that important elements of interaction (theory x practice) can be perceived
and considered during the preparation of an exhibition at the Science Museum, with the
intention that the discussion generated can help the museum community to understand,
explain and discuss more deeply the tasks performed and, hence, the techniques
involved in the execution of the tasks related to specific contents - in this case, the
biodiversity - across from an exhibition object.
The relation of ATD with educational practices in science museum
Chevallard (2005) situates the ATD in the field of Anthropology for being, the
Didactic, a human action, so, it must, belong to the field that studies the Mankind (the
human race). In this field of study, Chevallard seeks to describe and to analyze human
activities relating to the production and dissemination of knowledge and mathematical

knowledge in specific and particular contexts of everyday society, through formal and /
or informal education.
Furthermore, the object of study of ATD is the manipulation of knowledge with
didactic intent, and the knowledge, being a human construct, is called by Chevallard as
a work that includes all production of the society. As an example, he cites the school, a
human work that provides the student to be in contact with other works such as:
Curriculum of the disciplines of biology, physics, history, mathematics, etc.; didactic
materials; educational programs; among other works, and take ownership of them.
So that, we can also establish as an example of human work, other spaces such
as non-formal education, such as science museums, seeing that they are places where
visitors can live experiences that go beyond the pleasure and the entertainment.
Educational programs and projects are generated at these sites, based on social and
cultural models, in which selections of part of the produced culture are performed in
order to make it accessible to the visitor (Marandino, 2005). This work also proposes
the visitor's contact with other works, such as exhibitions, objects, scientific apparatus,
guides and manuals of exhibition, among others.
Marandino (2011) in his free teaching thesis, opens discussion about the object
of study of Didactic and he extends to other educational contexts, not the school, such
as museums, considering, for this, peculiar aspects of the museums from elements such
as: language, place, time and the importance of the objects. The author points out the
idea that exposure is a media, different from school and from other media, even when
they use common communication techniques. These elements compose the pedagogical
specificities of these local and, to the author, they constitute a museum didactic. This
museum didactic is defined by the researcher as follows:
[...] the didactic museum is defined by considering the tension
between the prospect of a general didactics, it holds own
knowledge, which are the pedagogical knowledge, referring to a
field of knowledge production in the field of education, and the
prospect of a specific didactic concerning to knowledge of
disciplinary fields, which aggregates specificities of the
reference areas in conjunction with the practices

and the

knowledge genuinely produced in the teaching and learning

processes of these disciplines (Marandino, 2012: 145).

In this sense, to support the anthropological concepts of ATD, Chevallard (2006)

developed a concept of the theory, which name had already been used by others (eg, von
Mises, 1949): the praxeology. The use of this word contains, etymologically, the size of
the practice and the theory. All uses of it seem to imply the amalgamation of the practice
and of the theoretical discourse, or the relationship between the taught knowledge and
that one of reference. Chevallard seems to use this word to create a more refined entity
to incorporate it to the ATD.
As indicated Chevallard (2005), the teaching should be defined as the science of
dissemination of knowledge in a social group. The nature of knowledge can certainly be
expressed in terms of "bodies" of knowledge: if we do, the didactic then becomes the
scientific study of how bodies of knowledge seep through human groups. This is
essentially the formulation Chevallard used in the context of theory of didactic
transposition. However, to go beyond the concept developed in this theory, it is
necessary to get an almost primordial question, which is: the knowledge transformation
which should be studied is the knowledge of what? In other words, what is the object of
this knowledge?
The answer to this question Chevallard is formulated in terms of the notion of
praxeology, which the author describes as follows:
Some dictionaries define praxeology as the study of human
action and conduct. Up to a point, this is not foreign to the use I
will make of that key word of the anthropological approach to
didactics provided we include in praxeology the study, not
only of what people do, and how they do it, but also of what
they think, and how they do so. In that sense, didactics includes
praxeology, or at least some part of it, because the knowledge
percolating through society is about human ways of doing and
thinking: the didactics of mathematics, for example, is bound to
accommodate a praxeology of mathematics, that is, a
scientific description and analysis of what we, human beings, do
and think when we do mathematics (CHEVALLARD, 2005:
3).

What Chevallard (2005) calls praxeology is, somehow, the basic unit by which
to analyze human action. After all, what exactly is a praxeology? We can rely on the
etymology of the word to guide us: praxeology used to analyze the human being into
two main interrelated components On the one hand, praxis, i.e. the practical part, and on
the other hand, the logos. "Logos" is a Greek word, since pre-Socratic times, has been
constantly used to refer to human thought and reasoning - particularly about the cosmos.
To complete this thought, we know that, in the anthropological approach, all
forms of human activity should result in a set of praxeologys. A simple example from
everyday life, which can exemplify this relationship, is brought by Chevallard (2005) as
follows: how each person blow their nose can generate a praxeology which will vary
according to culture with which each person is located, as well as gait also composes a
praxeology which may well vary according to gender, the environment in which it is,
and so on. That is, as the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss (1872-1950), Chevallard
compares the praxeology to a "social idiosyncrasy", i.e., an organized way of doing and
thinking that was created within a given society - people do not walk, much less, its
blow their nose in the same way around the world.
Another point that we can establish on the concept of praxeology is based on the
previous thought and refers to a generalization of the concept of "body of knowledge".
For most praxeologys of ordinary life are denied the status of "body of knowledge" would accept that blowing your nose or walking in a park means bring some "body of
knowledge" properly learned. In general, describes human action without asking if
people generally regard it as "real" bodies of knowledge or just as a simple know-how,
or even as a "natural" gift. For example, most people think that breathing is natural and
not something learned in the culture in which it operates. However, this practice implies
a "body of knowledge" learned.
One last note about praxeology, concerns the need to be open to change,
adaptation and improvement of the didactic process. We can then define that the
praxeology arises as a tool of ATD, and it describes the study of the structure of the
simplest human activity, or better, it is a man made organization, that, in biological
language, means that it is the human action over the environment. The translated
meaning is: practice grounded in knowledge from Greek praxis (practice, action) and
logos (fundamentals, knowledge).
In this sense, we will use praxeology as a tool for analysis of the study in the
production and comprehension of a museum object. In other words, from the

description of praxeology proposed by those responsible for producing the diorama of

praxeology and understood by visitors will be able to answer the central question of this
research: how is the process of teaching (and apprehension), so the didactic process,
from an exhibition object - the diorama biodiversity - in an exhibition of science
museum?
We believe that, based on the ATD, in particular, the notion of praxeology, the
theoretical perspective is potentially important to express both scientific (biological) as
didactic / museographic intentions of dioramas. At this work, we are considering the
museografical organization as didactics, due to having objects in space / time in order to
teach and disseminate through the exhibits.
After identifying the intended praxeology, it is possible to characterize in an
objective manner, biological and educational purposes involved in drawing such objects
to teach and disseminate the museums. The qualitative analysis will identify the theory
and the technology of the diorama in the context of their exposure, and also the
identification of tasks and techniques proposed, constituting the praxeological
framework of the object in analysis. The results may contribute to the comprehension of
the educational role of the objects in science museums, and to the development of
processes for producing exhibitions.
The aspects mentioned above show that the proposed research considers the
Anthropological Theory of the Didactic an important tool for uncovering the theoretical
- practical structure of expositive activities present in Museums, because it makes
possible to identify the tasks (praxis) proposed for the exhibition object, correlating
them with a body of conceptual knowledge that maintains its implementation (logos).
This is important because by identifying tasks that involve the object of the exhibition,
in the case of the diorama "Amazon Rainforest" with the elaboration of a framework
intended praxeology, it will be possible to characterize in an objective manner, the
purposes involved in drafting such an object to teach and publish in science museums.
Based on this identification it will be possible to provide information for possible
reformulations of the objects presented in exhibitions at science museums, making its
discourse closest to the initially intentions, intended by the organizers of the exhibition,
and better understood by the visitor discourse.
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