STS pedagogical practices in the early years of science teaching: a study based on Brazilian academic researches

• Autor(a) principal: Fernandes, Rebeca Chiacchio Azevedo
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Outros Autores: Neto, Jorge Megid
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.34624/id.v8i1.4712

The study of Natural Science, from an STS perspective, may contribute to enhance the publicunderstanding of the Nature of Science and to aid in the construction of students’ active citizenship, ifconducted through a contextualized teaching methodology that implicates critical decision-makingon socio-controversial themes and solving problems from the social reality (Cachapuz, Paixão, Lopes & Guerra, 2008; Vieira, Tenreiro-Vieira & Martins, 2011). In Brazil, the number of educational researchesfollowing this approach has increased since the mid-1990s. On a database of Brazilian essays andtheses in the area of Science Education, developed between 1972 and 2012 (www.fe.unicamp.br/cedoc), we identified only 87 researches that investigate pedagogical practices related toscience teaching during the five initial years of formal education, out of a total of approximatelyfive thousand researches. From these 87, only five were developed following an STS perspective. Thisstudy discusses the main characteristics and innovations of the pedagogical practices investigatedon those researches. The research was motivated by an interest to analyze scientific argumentationand literacy, as well as, by the need to integrate the Science-Technology-Society approach and thedesire to teach in a motivating way. The five analyzed researches tended to use didactic sequencesfocusing problem-solving situations relevant to the students’ reality and to employ varied didacticresources, such as scientific newspaper, magazines or films. These investigations generally sought thestudents’ active involvement under teacher mediation. Finally, it discusses contemporary society’schallenges within school context, through critical, reflexive, active and contextualized teaching,enhancing learners’ understanding on the importance of science and technology in society.