E-waste as an STS theme: exploratory study on students’ conceptions

• Autor(a) principal: Lacerda, Nília Oliveira Santos
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Outros Autores: Lopes, Eloisa Assunção de Melo, Queirós, Wellignton Pereira de
• 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.v8i1.6697

The dynamics of scientific-technological progress causes changes in contemporary society, demanding new perspectives on how to conceptualize educational processes. From this perspective, there are a number of studies concerning the teaching of Sciences that argue for the incorporation of a teaching and learning process that integrates discussions on the Science-Technology-Society (STS) relationship, an approach which according to Santos and Mortimer (2002), aims at developing scientific and technological literacy as well as at helping build knowledge and making responsible decisions on STS issues.. The aim of this research was to identify elements that characterize the STS approach, through the development of a didactic proposal, whose theme was e-waste. For this purpose, we used a qualitative participant research methodology, which requires direct and prolonged contact of the researcher with the environment or the situation under investigation. The study was conducted in 4 different moments; the present work focuses on the two first moments. Ourpublic target corresponds to 23 pupils enrolled in the discipline of Fundamental Chemistry II of the Chemistry Degree Course of the ‘Universidade Estadual de Goiás’, Anapolis Campus, Goiás, Brazil, in the second semester of 2015. In order to analyze the data we used the three educational purposes of Strieder: (i) Scientific Rationality, (ii) Technological Development and (iii) Social Participation, from the viewpoint of the development of social commitments. Results show that initially students presented a less critical vision of e-waste and that, during the development of the STS approach, they evolve into an intermediate stage of questioning, evincing a more critical approach to social commitment.