Controvérsias científicas em ambientes educacionais: percepções dos estudantes e suas potencialidades

Abstract

The decision-making in the face of scientific and technological products that permeate the life of the population is increasingly necessary, but conflicting in the presence of social, ethical and moral issues. In this context, teaching with a STSE (Science, Technology, Society and Environment) approach has been inserted in different educational spaces, aiming to prepare citizens to deal with these products, understanding the scientific nature and being able to take decisions and participate in debates present in society, since science takes on controversial issues from the social point of view. In view of this challenge, the development of educational actions and syllabus that work with this focus are essential objects for the restructuring of teaching, therefore, the present work aimed to identify what the school public thinks when participating in an educational action, with focus on scientific controversies, in interface with a non-formal space, in addition to the influence of this approach for the perceptive construction of students. For this, a qualitative research was carried out through observational monitoring and the application of questionnaires, being a pre- test and a post educational action, which sought to work on pre-defined aspects of scientific controversies, being their definition, the social actors, the institutions involved and the impact on society. The answers obtained were transcribed, tabulated and analyzed according to the students' perceptual change. The results demonstrated the potential of this type of approach, since before the educational action the students had a deficit of knowledge in the subjects covered and a stigmatized view of science, as a neutral and untouchable image, and subsequently demonstrated a significant change in this perception, presenting a broader look in all aspects and reaching the objectives of the STSE approach, such as scientific literacy, active participation, among others. It is concluded that the application of an educational action designed in the STSE approach is able to add new knowledge, stimulate the active participation of citizens in society and make them able to make conflicting decisions.