An approach agrotoxics in a collaborative didactic sequence based on socioscientific issues

Abstract

Traditionally, science teaching has often been based on ‘scientistic’ assumptions, resulting in fragmented and uncritical science perspectives. Education based on socio-scientific issues (SSI) is a way of organizing curricular proposals and actions according to the assumptions of the movement Science, Technology, Society and Environment (STSE). This article aims to evaluate the mobilization of conceptual, procedural and attitudinal (CPA) contents to the collaborative construction and application of a didactic sequence focusing the socio-scientific issue (SSI) of agro-toxics, following an STSE approach. This study was conducted in a course of Agriculture, focusing on its teacher and its fifteen students. The data was collected through direct observation, field journals, discussion of texts with the supervising teacher, as well as through questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews. We ascribed meaning to the data based on discourse analysis. The application of the teaching sequence generated the mobilization of conceptual, procedural and attitudinal contents by the students. The SSI-based intervention, from the STSE education perspective, had a positive contribution in the participants’ political, scientific and civic development, which occurred through the mobilization of these contents and culminated in socio-political action taking. From the collaborative standpoint, we observed that while teachers feel responsible for the moral education of students, they face challenges posed by the subjects’ curricula.