Science, Technology and Society in Ibero-America: first steps in mapping through keywords

Abstract

We present an initial overview of the survey of doctoral theses in Science, Technology and Society (STS), in Brazil and in 22 other Ibero-American countries. We expanded the research initiated by Toledo (2017), which mapped 79 Brazilian theses on STS published in 1993 and 2017, to Ibero-America, as part of a broad mapping project on Brazilian STS Teaching, carried out by the research group to which the authors are linked. Next, the new theses were cataloged, entering information into Excel spreadsheets such as: author of the thesis, title, institution in which the thesis was defended, keywords, members of the defense committee and their institution. To interpret the collected data, we used Social Network Analysis (SNA). In the search exercise, we have recorded: 203 theses. We considered the 10 keywords with the highest centrality values ​​in the Ibero-American panorama, namely: “STS”; “TEACHER TRAINING”; “SCIENCE TEACHING”; “SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION”; “STS EDUCATION”; “STS APPROACH”; “TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION”; “FREIRE”; “PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION”; and “SCIENTIFIC LITERACY”. It is possible to consider that these words maintain a strong link with what has been produced about the STS triad, maintaining a collateral relationship with it through themes characteristic of the STS Approach, such as training for citizenship, fostering critical thinking, rapprochement between Freire and STS, scientific literacy, initial and continuing teacher training, among others. We hope that this research will allow us to learn about the institutions and authors that produce STS and, through keywords, identify the most relevant themes in the area.