According to QUADROS and MORTIMER (2014) when science teachers organize their class around concepts, not relating them to the social context, nor valuing the role of students in the construction of their knowledge, end up promoting a mechanical and contentious learning dislocated from reality and thus inhibiting critical thinking. To combat this form of learning, since the 1970s, methodologies are proposed using the student’s social context, activity, which combine theory and practice turning the student a more active part of the learning process. Inquiry-based learning is an approach which emphasizes the student’s role in the learning process. Rather than the teacher telling students what they need to know, students are encouraged to explore the material, ask questions, and share ideas. Inquiry-based learning is known in literature, ZÔMPERO e LABURÚ (2018), also as teaching by discovery, learning by projects, teaching by question, problem centered teaching. Inquiry-based learning and teaching-as-research enables the improvement of students' reasoning and cognitive abilities, the improvement of working (learning) in a team, besides enabling them to understand the nature of scientific work.

Realizing the need of an alternative teaching metodology that attends demands of science teaching, this works develops a proposal to realize teaching-as-research in the biochemistry class in the graduate course of chemistry at Universidade Federal do Pampa (UNIPAMPA) during the first semester in 2020.

The proposed activity will be divided into three distinct parts: First, students will receive a research problem which should be done throughout the semester. During the semester students should find answers using books, articles and other means, in addition to information presented in biochemistry classes. Second, students will propose answers and should socialize/discuss their ideas with other students in dates defined in the class schedule. Third, students should write abstracts with the findings/proposals and present them at the 1^st Investigative Exhibition of Biochemistry of UNIPAMPA, to be held at the end of the semester. Results will be observed and analized during the realisation of our teaching proposal by questionnaires before and after writing the aforementioned abstracts. We expect to show that our students are able to construct knowledge, develop their capability in biochemistry and appropriate more specific chemistry skills.

By this activity, we expect that students develop autonomy to build a new look at phenomena that are presented in the biochemistry class, linking scientific concepts to effects in vivo. In addition, as the graduate course of chemistry trains teacher to act in primary and secondary education, it is also intended that teaching-as-research will be part of the day-to-day toolbox of those future teachers, who, once graduated, can use this approach of teaching in their classes.