Communication strategies in chemistry as epistemological indexes: semiotic analysis of textbook images throughout the 20th century

Author(s)

Karina Aparecida de Freitas Dias de Souza

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Conjunto das Químicas (IQ e FCF) (CQ/DBDCQ)
• Defense date: 2012-11-22

Examining board members

Paulo Alves Porto; Maria Eunice Ribeiro Marcondes; Flavio Antonio Maximiano; Eduardo Fleury Mortimer; Luciana Zaterka

• Advisor: Paulo Alves Porto

Abstract

This work starts from four assumptions which stand as the background for the research aims and methodological strategies: (i) in the process of construction of scientific knowledge, the access to the reality of Nature is necessarily mediated by interactions that we establish with it; (ii) the interpretation of the results of such interactions leads to theoretical and scientific constructs; (iii) such constructs are not identical to reality itself, since they are possible interpretations, constrained by the performed interactions; (iv) an explicit account of the relationships between reality - interaction - interpretation - representation is essential to a science education that intends to be emancipatory, since it allows to transcend the boundaries of content-centered teaching. Such relationships need special attention from chemical educators, given the essential role played by models and representations in the processes of construction and communication of chemical knowledge. An extensive literature search revealed various attempts to describe chemical activity and chemistry teaching that do not satisfactorily address the relationships between reality, interaction, interpretation and representation. Since such relationships are of semiotic nature, the present research aimed at: reconceptualizing the different attempts to describe the chemists\' activity and the teaching of chemistry, in the light of the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce; characterizing, within the developed theoretical framework, the strategies employed in General Chemistry textbooks to communicate chemical knowledge; and establishing correlations between such strategies, the historical evolution of chemical knowledge and the different conceptions about chemistry. Peirce\'s theory showed to be useful for elucidating philosophical problems identified in descriptions of chemical activity and in chemistry teaching. Realizing that experimental evidences act as signs of an object (reality), to which we can only have partial access, contributes to the understanding of scientific activity as an ever-evolving process. From this perspective, 31 textbooks were analyzed and it was possible to identify different approaches to chemical knowledge: chemistry as an applied and practical science (early twentieth century), chemistry as the science of the microscopically invisible (emphasis on principles, from the 1950s) and, currently, chemistry as the science of interfaces. Passing from one approach to the other involved changes in the strategies for representing chemical content: illustrations of experiments and apparatus were almost totally neglected in favor of the representations of atoms and molecules, whose \"reality\" was built along the century with increasingly elaborated graphics and semiotic strategies such as increasing iconicity. The 1980s brought a huge number of illustrations, distributed among directly inaccessible phenomena and applications of chemistry in our daily life. The discursive strategies used throughout the century, as well as their implications for the teaching of chemistry discussed in this thesis, suggest that Peirce\'s semiotics is fertile and promising for research in chemical education. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 08/03866-0 - Trends in chemical education as revealed by illustrations in twentieth-century textbooks: historical and epistemological approach
• Grantee: Karina Aparecida de Freitas Dias de Souza
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate