Identification of university students’ conceptions about Natural Sciences from semantic basins

• Autor(a) principal: Sousa, Jennifer Caroline de
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Costa, Otávio Crozoletti, Infante-Malachias, María Elena
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista de Ensino de Ciências e Matemática - REnCiMa
• Texto Completo: https://revistapos.cruzeirodosul.edu.br/rencima/article/view/1978
• topic: Ciências da Natureza; Formação de conceitos; Filosofia da Ciência; Ensino Superior; Nature Sciences; Concept formation; Philosophy of Science; Man-Nature Relationship; Higher Education

Biology, Chemistry and Physics are so-called “Nature Sciences” because have the nature as their point of confluence. However, this assumption escapes to the issue of how these sciences have specified conceptions of "science" and "nature" in science education. Bearing in mind such conceptions are crucial to the purposes of scientific literacy, here we identified and analyzed the students’ conceptions about Nature Sciences in the context of a subject named “Nature Science” belonging to the Basic Cycle of the School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities of the University of Sao Paulo. We applied a questionnaire at the beginning and at the end of the subject, analyzed individually the concepts of “science” and “nature” presented in the answers, and drew the students' imaginary about “Sciences of Nature” through semantic basins. An empiricist view of science predominated among the students’ answers, as well as a view of nature as the set of all natural elements, in which the human being is not necessarily present, interacting and modifying it through science and technology. The results signal that the understanding of the complex relationships between Science, Technology, Society and Environment in science education is still an aim to be reached.