Relationship between teaching agency and science teaching in the CTS perspective: interviews with teachers after continuing education

Abstract

Critical Scientific Education (CCE) is a concept for teaching science based on STS studies and complex thinking, and which proposes multidimensional teaching oriented towards sustainability and social justice. The ECC, presented here, was prepared with the help of experts and disseminated to science teachers in Brazilian territories through a continuing education course. The problem of our work was to investigate how this course inspired the speeches of some of these professionals about their own practices. To this end, semi-structured interviews about teaching agency were carried out with two professionals who completed the course, nine months after training. The analysis of the teachers’ reports indicated that, even with the difficulties in the school environment, there are behavioral and personal aspects that brought the teachers’ discourse closer to ECC. In relation to behavioral aspects, the following were identified: i) the dialogical relationship with theoretical references; ii) the choice to reflect on one’s own training and practice and; iii) the search for a human and anthropological conception to support professional practice. Personal characteristics aligned with ECC refer to: i) self-reflection; ii) dedication; iii) pleasure relationship with work; iv) clarity about professional responsibility and; v) choice to align with the ECC. In view of our results, we consider that debates on attitudinal aspects of teaching work can be useful for teacher training, especially in relation to the proposal of Critical Scientific Education.