The socio-scientific theme “Use and abuse of psychoactive substances” and the seminar as a teaching strategy

Abstract

In this paper, we present an educational intervention under the science, technology and society perspective (STS), focusing the socio-scientific theme “Use and Abuse of Psychoactive Substances”. This intervention was applied to Chemistry teaching, using group seminars as a teaching strategy. This was an action-research project, with a qualitative approach, aiming to identify possible contributions of the seminar for chemistry teaching with an STS approach. The seminar, taken under an STS education perspective, was found to be a teaching strategy that: favoured student participation in the education process, valued the teacher’s role as a mediator, and that promoted education focused on citizenship and social participation.