How medications and self-medication are addressed in biology textbooks?

• Autor(a) principal: da Cunha, Liane Lima
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Leite, Romualdo Lunguinho, dos Santos, Francesca Danielle Gurgel, Pinto, Márcia Freire
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Actio (Curitiba)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.utfpr.edu.br/actio/article/view/15333
• topic: Ciências Biológicas; Estudo e Ensino.; Educação e Saúde; Ensino de Biologia; Alfabetização Científica.; Education and Health; Teaching Biology; Scientific Literacy

The research aims to check the approaches of the themes related to the use of drugs in high school biology textbooks, in two public schools in the city of Russas, Ceará, Brasil. Allied with this, the approaches of these themes were analyzed, creating subsidies for the criticality of the practice of self-medication and thus contributing to the formation of strategies for health promotion. For this, the research was configured as an applied nature, with an exploratory character in relation to the objectives and bibliographical outline regarding the technical procedures. Six textbooks from two collections were analyzed. It was verified that three books had adequate contextualization with regard to the investigated themes in the research. All analyzed books mention different classes of drugs, with antibiotics being the most cited. However, the topics that addressed the Rational Use of Medicines (RMU) were only observed in three works. In addition, the essential criticality for the promotion of well-being was only found in a textbook. Interdisciplinarity was verified in three textbooks. From this perspective, the approaches to the topic of medication are dealt with in a vague and superficial way in the analyzed textbooks, not providing subsidies for the criticality of the practice of self-medication and the formation of strategies that enable health promotion. Therefore, the teacher must see the textbook as one of the instruments to be worked with the students, and not the only one, seeking other pedagogical means to enable an effective and contextualized teaching-learning process. In addition, a review and adequacy of these subjects worked in the books is suggested.