Controversies and STS: analyzing the texts of scientific production in STS Teaching in Brazil

Abstract

This paper aims to extract from articles in journals which textual terms best translate the relationship between scientific-technological controversies and STS Teaching in Brazilian academic production. To do so, we selected, from a database composed of 244 articles of STS Teaching published until 2016, 15 texts that represent the controversy as thematic and, after that, we use the technique of Text Mining (with the aid of Sobek tool) on them to generate a network of more relevant textual terms contained in them. In the results, the terms “science”, “society” and “teaching” emerged as the most central, surrounded by other adjacent terms that show a frequent relationship with them. In addition, we note the absence of other more social, philosophical and political elements, such as environmental issues, ethics, decision making, economics and public policies, which are the main elements of the controversies. We hope that the data from this research can be observed for a field improvement through knowledge management actions.