Reconstructing the history of soap production from a Marxist perspective: popular and scientific knowledge in historical critical pedagogy

• Grant number: 17/01540-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2017
• End date: December 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Education - Specific topics in Education
• Principal Investigator: Luciana Massi
• Grantee: Andriel Rodrigo Colturato
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 18/07209-6 - Soap production in the 18th century: a study of Nicolas Leblanc's contributions and his historical context, BE.EP.IC

Abstract

The research proposal, presented in this project, aims to produce a historical search and to reconstruct the history of soap production, considering the popular and scientific knowledge and based on a Marxist and externalist perspective, in order to discuss its implications a Historical-Critical Pedagogy (HCP) object in Science Education (SE). The HCP is a pedagogical theory in development with a modest insertion in SE, a new research area with important contributions from History and Philosophy of Science (HFC). Both of them points to the non-neutrality of scientific knowledge and the problem on its definition in relation with other kinds of knowledge, such as popular. Therefore, we understand there is coherence between SE and HCP in our proposal to analyses historical episodes aiming to reveal its dialectical and externalist aspect. The choice for the "soap production" theme is justified by its direct relation between popular and scientific knowledge and because that's the theme of our communitarian project recently approved. To develop this investigation we will collect data from primary, secondary and tertiary sources, such as national and international databases, of history of science. These results will be analyzed by the Marxist materialism historical-dialectical. We believe that this research represent an original contribution for HFC, that hasn't explored the Marxist perspective in their analysis, and for HCP, that hasn't developed yet a discussion about the nature of science. (AU)