Questões sociocientíficas na formação de professores: caminhos para uma educação científica intercultural

Abstract

Considering the perspective of intercultural science education, we carried out a research project to investigate theoretical and methodological approaches to socio-scientific issues in the context of training biology teachers who are sensitive to cultural diversity. Intercultural science education reads school reality from a cultural perspective and brings us face to face with the understanding of science as one of many existing cultures. It approaches the school as a space for cultural encounters, which often reverberate in conflicts and convergences, when in dialog with the students' cultures. Teaching science is therefore teaching another culture and the way we teach this culture makes all the difference to learning. Teaching in this way also presupposes the development of intercultural, or even culturally sensitive, teacher training. In the search for ways to provide this training for future teachers, we investigated how socio-scientific issues can be productive in promoting this training. To achieve this goal, we considered the following specific objectives to be productive: 1) Delimit an understanding of intercultural science education and the training of teachers sensitive to cultural diversity; 2) Discuss the nature of socioscientific issues, their pedagogical directions and didactic uses in dialogue with the training of teachers sensitive to cultural diversity; 3) Develop design principles and an educational intervention in the training of Biology teachers involving socioscientific issues and the development of sensitivity to cultural diversity; and 4) Evaluate the validity and suitability of design principles based on the analysis of an educational intervention. At the convergence of these two research sites, design principles and an intervention proposal emerged, built on the methodological path undertaken by Educational Design Research. Four design principles were developed which together structured a short course applied between August and October 2021 in the context of the Pedagogical Residency Program at the State University of Feira de Santana. The development of the design principles was based on a review of the literature on intercultural science education, teacher training based on it and social and scientific issues. Three of the four design principles were validated based on the analysis of teaching episodes and the researcher's field diary. The design principles were given names that summarize their aims in terms of training teachers who are sensitive to cultural diversity: 1) Plurality of reasons; 2) Epistemological reflections and negotiation of meanings; 3) Intercultural dialogue. In addition to validating these principles, we also found that the intervention time should be extended to include the fourth design principle - Intercultural Sensitivity. Finally, we believe that our design principles and our intervention can advance cognitive, affective, behavioral and ethical aspects of science teachers and that they are oriented towards respect and consideration of the diverse cultures found in classrooms.