Critical scientific education: transforming research results into reference practices in schools

• Grant number: 24/09052-8
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: March 01, 2025
• End date: February 28, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Education - Educational Teaching and Learning
• Principal Investigator: Denise de Freitas
• Grantee: Denise de Freitas
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Alessandra Miguel Kapp ; Alice Helena Campos Pierson ; Christiana Andrea Vianna Prudencio ; Genina Calafell ; JULIANA CRISTINA CORREA ; Maria Celina Cardoso Tenreiro Vieira ; Mariana dos Santos ; Rui Marques Vieira ; Tassya Hemília Porto Bernardo
• Associated research grant(s): 25/07443-2 - XII International Congress on Research in Science Teaching, AR.EXT

Abstract

This project is guided by the "umbrella" research, which has provided and continues to provide support for various other investigations currently being developed by our research group, EmTeia. This research aimed to identify aspects that science education specialists considered fundamental for the development of a critical, reflective, and complex science education that could compose an evaluative tool. This tool, which we named FACTS (Ferramenta Avaliativa Ciência, Tecnologia e Sociedade - Evaluative Tool Science, Technology, and Society), is based on the frameworks of Critical Thinking, Complexity Studies, and STS (Science, Technology, and Society). As a result, we were able to offer the academic and educational community a valuable instrument, in the form of rubrics, to guide educational and pedagogical actions with the scope to plan and evaluate teaching plans, projects, programs, and didactic materials. In this new stage of our investigations, we will develop intervention and research actions within the school context to construct reference practices guided by FACTS, aiming at the development of science education from a critical perspective. In a national and international effort, we seek partnerships with public basic education schools to, in collaboration with teachers from a collaborative research perspective, build reference practices based on school curricula, aiming at both the continuous training of teachers and the training of students for active, conscious, and critical participation in society, which is so necessary in today's world. Thus, our general objective is to develop, implement, describe, and evaluate reference practices for teaching Natural Sciences in Basic Education, in a joint action between researchers and teachers from universities and basic education networks. This research is configured as intervention research with a formative nature, aiming to collectively (teachers and researchers) construct transformation processes of scientific education practices in schools. It is considered a type of participatory methodology, in which researcher and participants are co-authors of the problem-situation diagnosis process and the construction of knowledge that can solve it. This proposal also has, as a theoretical-methodological orientation, the assumptions of narrative research, seeking to understand the experiences of the teachers and researchers involved in the training process. It is important to highlight that the training and research actions in this proposal intersect and interconnect with the scenarios and realities of each collaborating university and partner school. The research actions adopt as a reference, both for the construction of training actions and data analysis, the criteria presented in FACTS. The main expected results of this proposal advance the production of knowledge about Natural Sciences education and teacher training in search of the collective construction (researchers and teachers) of training actions and the production of knowledge, practices, and knowledge about science teaching from a critical and creative perspective. Thus, in addition to publishing articles in well-qualified journals and presenting at area congresses (at least 2 per year), the production of results in other formats that are more recognized and used within the basic education school space is expected. The goal is to publish a book of narrative collections and/or articles produced in collaboration with the teachers participating in the training actions. Furthermore, other forms of texts are expected to be produced for dissemination in the media about the training experience/living and the knowledge and practices produced. (AU)