Clube de ciências como estratégia para uma abordagem intercultural na educação científica

Abstract

In the historical and social context of a techno-scientific society, it is of the utmost importance to understand the sciences in their complexity to participate actively, autonomously, and critically in society. The process of scientific development is a socio-historically determined human activity, thus a cultural process. For this reason, it makes sense to work on science teaching from the perspective of science as culture, reintegrating the possibility of working on science close to those who build it and live it: human beings in their cultural diversity. In the society in which we live, dialogues with knowledge can take place in different ways, often tending towards a monocultural dynamic. Thinking inter-culturally can be a catalyst for overcoming such a perspective. In this sense, teachers must know how to mediate the cultural diversity inherent in the educational act. This qualitative, participant-based study aimed to analyze the contributions of the experiences of a Science Club with an intercultural approach to the initial training of Chemistry, Physics, and Biological Sciences teachers. Eighteen undergraduates took part in the research. Based on the three pedagogical moments, they built four activities for the science club in Museum Park, hosting three classes from a public school in the diversity of Natal, RN. Different cultures, apart from the scientific one, were recruited throughout the research, and this trajectory made it possible to provoke the students into constructing critical and culturally diverse ways of teaching science. In addition, the undergraduate students' experiences, recounted in interviews, reverberated in three categories: creative spaces and strategies in science education; horizontality and interest in science education; and professional performance: practicing teaching. Most of the teachers said that working at the Science Club helped them to think of strategies to overcome traditional forms of teaching. The Science Club at the Museum Park proved pertinent for thinking about and debating science in dialog with other cultures, expanding the ways of seeing and working with it. Therefore, we believe it's important to encourage actions of this nature, both in teacher training and in various educational spaces.