Public understanding of Chemistry: tendencies and research perspectives based on the public understanding of Science

Abstract

This paper presents preliminary results from a Master’s Thesis research in Chemistry Teaching, being
developed at the National Pedagogical University in Bogota. Its aim is to analyze the trends and perspectives permeating the public understanding of science and chemistry and its social and environmental impact, by contrasting this within two different geographical contexts: the European and Anglo-Saxon one, and the Latin American one. For this purpose, content analysis is currently being applied to published magazines on this subject, between 2010 and 2015. The preliminary results show that the research field on Public Understanding of Science has focused its investigations on the understanding of science in general, with only a few studies focusing on the public understanding of chemistry and its social and environmental impact. Within this field, six categories of analysis were identified: Communicative, Educational, Social, Cultural, Historical and Ethic-Moral. In this article, we present the results obtained from the communicative category and its subcategories.