Valéria Pereira had a personal memory that ended up becoming a research topic. When she faced acne attacks, she heard a simple suggestion from her grandmother: use cherry tomatoes on her skin. The experience aroused her curiosity and, years later, it gained another meaning when she entered high school at a public school in Guanambi, in the southwest of Bahia.
In 2024, in her third year of high school at Colégio Estadual Governador Luiz Viana Filho, Valéria needed to form a group to participate in the school's science fair. Recently arrived from another city in the region, she still didn't know her colleagues. That's how he joined Eduarda Diamantino Neco, who had also just arrived at the public school system after studying in private schools.
At first, the two didn't expect the work to go much further than an activity to get a grade.
"To tell the truth, we just wanted the note and that was it", remembers Eduarda.
The change happened when Biology professor Elizângela Souza Vieira proposed that students start from everyday problems to formulate research projects. Valéria told her colleague about her experience with cherry tomatoes, and it was then that the idea stopped being just a homemade recipe and started to be investigated by the students.
With the teacher's guidance, the students began to research what had already been published about tomatoes and their components. They studied, among other aspects, the presence of lycopene in the fruit and came up with the idea of developing an experimental cream based on cherry tomatoes and glycerin.
The most important step, however, was not simply arriving at a formula. It was learning that an observation of everyday life is not, alone, scientific evidence.
The students needed to research, organize information, record the work steps and follow the tests. The teacher also began to guide the bibliographical research and monitor the development of the project.
"Conceiving a scientific research project is a huge difference in the lives of these students. The experience of writing, researching, the stages of the project as a whole present a new face of education that opens doors and is different from the everyday experience in rural schools", explains the teacher.
The work product was tested for around a month by six volunteers close to the students. According to the students' reports, they observed changes in skin oiliness and acne lesions.
The results, however, do not allow us to say that the cream is effective against acne. The project itself is still experimental and does not replace scientific studies conducted with a larger number of participants, appropriate methodology and safety assessment.
This care is important because a school survey can be a starting point for an investigation, but it does not mean that the hypothesis has been proven.
It is precisely at this point that the experience of the Guanambi students connects to a larger discussion about scientific initiation in basic education.
Instead of just receiving a ready-made answer, the student is asked key questions:
Why does this happen?
What is already known about the subject?
How to test a hypothesis?
What evidence can confirm or contradict an idea?
Professor Elizângela has been following this type of work for years. According to her, every year there are very different projects.
The experience also requires the teacher to take on a role other than simply conveying content. It needs to help students formulate questions, find reliable sources, organize procedures and interpret results.
In practice, however, doing this is not always simple.
During the development of the cream, both the students and the teacher had to overcome difficulties to continue with the project.
The students needed to invest out of their own pockets to pay for the ingredients used in the research. According to them, the school laboratory did not have all the materials needed for the project.
"There is financial support, but the bureaucracy is so huge and the delay is so long that it hardly reaches us here at the school", explains Elizângela.
For her, the problem is not just having or not having money. It means ensuring that resources, materials and working time are available when students need to develop projects.
The teacher, in turn, reports difficulty in reconciling work orientation with other school activities.
"Today, we have a workload of 26 class hours in the classroom and another 8 hours of planning, and with each passing day the demands on us, teachers, increase even more. And, to guide a work like this, I need to do readings, I need to research and check if it is not plagiarism. And this all adds up to the work, especially with the variety of work", she details.
The situation helps to explain why scientific initiation at school depends not only on the students' curiosity, but also on the conditions offered so that this curiosity can be transformed into investigation.
The students' trajectory was also frustrating. The cherry tomato cream project was not selected for FECIBA, the Bahia Science, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Fair, which discouraged the students a little.
"That's why I thought it wouldn't come to anything, because it wasn't approved. We even got discouraged", recalls Eduarda.
But, even without the selection, the work left a consequence that does not appear in an award: the experience of doing research became part of the students' trajectory.
Eduarda is currently studying Dentistry, and Valéria intends to pursue training in the area of aesthetics. For both of them, the main change brought about by the project was the realization that a question that arose at home or at school could turn into an investigation.
"I think learning is about believing. Always believing that one day it will work out", says Valéria.
Guanambi's story also helps to show that scientific initiation in basic education does not necessarily depend on a university structure within the school.
The starting point can be a question asked by the student. What makes the difference is the process: seeking information, formulating hypotheses, testing ideas, recording procedures, analyzing results and recognizing the limits of what was discovered.
This type of activity is also part of federal policies to encourage scientific education.
The National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), for example, maintains the Junior Scientific Initiation Program (ICJ), aimed at basic education students, especially from public schools. The initiative seeks to awaken scientific vocations and allow students to participate in scientific or technological research activities under the guidance of researchers.
Another federal front is the Mais Ciência na Escola program, developed by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI), in partnership with the Ministry of Education and CNPq. The program seeks to expand scientific and technological education in public schools, with maker laboratories, teacher training and research activities. In 2025, the forecast announced by the federal government was to reach 2 thousand participating schools; Bahia was among the states covered, with 90 schools in the then-found stage of the program.
In 2026, CNPq also launched a specific call to support science fairs and scientific exhibitions across the country. The notice foresees actions throughout the academic year aimed at scientific initiation, research and training of basic education students and teachers.
In Bahia, there are also state initiatives to encourage scientific education. According to the State Secretary of Education, Marcius Gomes, the network maintains actions in this area and intends to expand support mechanisms for projects developed by students.
"Today, Bahia has led this protagonism that involves scientific education at a national level. In the latest events that take place annually in our network, more than 2,000 scientific works are submitted distributed throughout all Bahian territories; works that are closely linked to territorial vocations, local problems and that are part of the daily life of public schools in Bahia", he details.
Currently, Valéria, Eduarda and Professor Elizângela dream of an opportunity to study the dermatological properties of cherry tomatoes in more depth and the possibility of patenting a formula.
But, even without this achievement, they consider the project to be a success. For them, this research shows what can happen when a personal doubt finds a teacher willing to transform it into a scientific question. What started as an ancestral tip and a task to get a grade turned into a research experience, with reading, tests, records, frustrations and learning.
They conclude that it is this journey — and not just the final product — that makes scientific initiation a learning tool.
For Eduarda, the experience also changed the way she sees the effort required to study.
"What started as just the search for a grade went beyond that. We had the opportunity to research and deepen our knowledge. We had support from the teacher who guided us. And this showed that it is important to be interested and pursue it, because studying is the only thing we have", he concludes.
