SOCIOSCIENTIFIC ISSUES IN TEACHER TRAINING: PATHWAYS TOWARDS INTERCULTURAL SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION
Intercultural science education; ISS; trainning teachers; design research.
Considering the perspective of intercultural scientific education, we developed research that aims to think about the possibilities for training teachers sensitive to cultural diversity. Intercultural scientific education reads school reality from a cultural perspective and confronts us with an understanding of science as one among many existing cultures. It approaches the school as a cultural meeting space, which commonly reverberates in conflicts and convergence, when in dialogue with the students' cultures. Teaching science is, therefore, teaching another culture and the way we teach that culture makes all the difference in learning. We defend science teaching that is capable of establishing dialogues capable of negotiating meanings and expanding students' world views. Guiding teaching like this also presupposes the development of intercultural, or even culturally sensitive, teacher training. Our research is inserted in the context of the initial training of science teachers sensitive to cultural diversity and was developed based on the following general objective: to investigate the theoretical and methodological paths for socio-scientific issues in the context of the training of Biology teachers sensitive to cultural diversity. To achieve these objectives, we consider the following specific objectives to be productive: 1) Define an understanding of intercultural scientific education and the training of teachers sensitive to cultural diversity; 2) Discuss the nature of socio-scientific issues, their pedagogical directions and didactic uses in dialogue with the training of teachers sensitive to cultural diversity; 3) Develop design principles and an educational intervention in Biology training involving socio-scientific issues and the development of sensitivity to cultural diversity; and 4) Evaluate the validity and adequacy of design principles based on the analysis of an educational intervention. In the convergence between these two-research locus, design principles and an intervention proposal emerge built from the methodological path undertaken by Design Research. Four design principles were developed that together structured a short course applied between the months of August and October 2021 in the context of the Pedagogical Residency Program at the Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana. The elaboration of the design principles was based on a literature review about intercultural scientific education, teacher training and socio-scientific issues. Three of the four design principles were validated based on the analysis of teaching episodes and the researcher's field diary. The design principles received names that summarize their purposes regarding the training of teachers sensitive to cultural diversity, they are: 1) Plurality of reasons; 2) Epistemological reflections and negotiation of meanings; 3) Intercultural dialogue. In addition to validating these principles, the result was the indication of an extension of the intervention time in order to contemplate the fourth design principle – Intercultural Sensitivity. Finally, we consider that our design principles and our intervention can advance cognitive, affective and behavioral aspects of science teachers and that are oriented towards respect and consideration of the different cultures that are found in classrooms.