The inclusion of activities that encourage cultural mediation in classes of scientific disciplines, articulated with the traditional didactic approach, can contribute to extend the goals of scientific education. The reading of scientific divulgation texts is a viable strategy to develop mediations in formal educational environments. In this paper, we analyse the production of meanings by first-year students in a university course by reading of a text about thermodynamics' evolution. Using French Discourse Analysis, we identified slips in students' conceptions and indications of formation of news representations, analyzing written registers of students' answers to a questionnaire about the text. The collected reports reveal a wide variety of statements that considerably support the teachers' role.
Reading; scientific divulgation; production of meanings; thermodynamics.