Critical Scientific Education: The Contributions of Specialists in the Area

Abstract

This article presents and discusses the results of a research still in development that has as global goal to construct an evaluation tool that allows analyzing practices, didactic materials and educational processes in basic education and in the training of science teachers, supported in a perspective of critical and reflective scientific education.

Taking the framework of the STSE studies and the Complexity Paradigm, and supported by the Delphi Method, the study involved the participation of 37 specialists, researchers from the field of science education in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia) and Europe (Portugal and Spain). These specialists reflected and gave their opinion on diverse aspects of critical scientific education. Specifically, in this work, we will show how these specialists understand and give meaning to scientific education at the present moment and what aspects are added to characterize it in this perspective; namely, in relation to their assumptions, problems, contributions and challenges. They emphasize their understanding of the long path to be taken in developing a critical scientific education, considering the permanent adoption of traditional practices with specific disaggregated content approaches and limited interactions with students’ lives. The experts are unanimous in considering that the goal to be achieved by a critical scientific education is the student’s political participation, based on an understanding of the current society and the fight against the different forms of discrimination and inequalities, and the need for an interdisciplinary curriculum that prioritize an approach to knowledge contextualized from its problematization.