Didactic-Epistemological Foundations for Risk-Uncertainty -Oriented Science Education

• Grant number: 25/02996-3
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: November 01, 2025
• End date: April 30, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Education - Educational Teaching and Learning
• Mobility Program: SPRINT - Projetos de pesquisa - Mobilidade
• Principal Investigator: Mauricio Pietrocola Pinto de Oliveira
• Grantee: Mauricio Pietrocola Pinto de Oliveira
• Principal researcher abroad: Olivia Levrini
• Institution abroad: Università di Bologna, Italy
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos Avançados (IEA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 22/06977-5 - Implementation research of curriculum innovation, pedagogical strategies, and emerging technologies for quality-equity in basic education, AP.TEM

Abstract

At this juncture in history, we are immersed in profound societal transformations that are touching the heart of the relationships between science, technology, nature, and human beings. We are living in a Risk Society (Beck, 1992), where advancements in science and technology not only provide solutions but also introduce new uncertainties and risks to society. The climate crises challenge the longstanding illusion of human dominion over nature and show the weaknesses of our cultural systems to understand what is happening (Magnasson, 2021). Simultaneously, the advance of artificial intelligence shakes the pillars of our understanding of the nature of science (Erduran, 2023), and reshapes our relationship with technology, blurring boundaries between human and machine. AI, in its pursuit of efficiency and innovation, questions norms and confronts us with the ethical commitments of our systems of knowledge production. Moreover, calls for equitable science education and practice challenge and problematize the structure and epistemology of science and create tensions that should be acknowledged and resolved.These transformations are challenging the traditional foundations of scientific thought, that were deeply concatenated with the conception of modernity that was established since the Enlightenment. Values like certainty, faith in linear and unlimited progress and in the positive impact of technologies, ethical and gender neutrality, historically debated within the philosophical debates on science foundations, are now clashing against the difficulties of contemporary science (and culture) in dealing with the complexity of the world. Within this fast-changing society of acceleration (Rosa, 2013), formal educational systems and their curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment practices often remain static, rigid and do not appear able to keep the pace of change. The goal of this SIG is to discuss, from epistemological, sociological, axiological, and educational points of view, the intricate interplay between scientific advancements, and new societal uncertainties. Education-oriented analyses of the epistemological foundations of science are stimulated to recover patterns of thinking that are in tune with sustainable ways of being.Activities of networking with other research fields will be promoted, with particular attention to the fields of History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science (HPS), Science and Technological Studies (STS), Futures Studies and, more in general, all the research fields that are involved in interpreting the "great derangements" we are experiencing (including arts, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, and policy). (AU)