When world views meet: religion and science in the formation trajectory of protestant students in a biological sciences teacher preparation course

Abstract

This paper analyzes how religious and scientific backgrounds interact in the educational development of protestant students enrolled in a teacher education undergraduate course in Biological Sciences, in the State University of Feira de Santana (UEFS), Brazil. The analysis was based on the mapping of the students’ conceptions of nature and the characterization of their strategies for managing the coexistence of scientific knowledge and religious beliefs in their world view. We employed as tools for gathering the data semi-structured interviews about conceptions of nature, adapted from the methods developed by William Cobern , and personal statements of the students about their lives. The treatment of the data involved, first, the construction of first person interpretive narratives, by means of an organization of literal passages of the interviews about conceptions of nature in order to arrange them in a coherent order which preserved, nevertheless, the students’ original discourse. These narratives were shown to each interviewee, so that he or she could verify the accuracy of the narrative as well as suggest possible modifications, introduced or not in the narrative after critical appraisal by the researchers. We built, then, general characterizations of the students’ conceptions of nature and science, and, also, of the strategies they were employing to manage the coexistence of their scientific and religious knowledge. The second procedure used for treating the data consisted in the construction of general characterizations of the students’ trajectories of religious and professional education, based on the personal statements. The results showed that protestant students react to the scientific discourse in different ways. It was possible to clearly discriminate, in the sample investigated, two distinct groups, one showing a total and systematic refusal of that discourse, the other apprehending it by means of a synthesis between scientific knowledge and their theistic world view. The findings were discussed under the light of theoretical grounds resulting from the history and philosophy of science, and science education research, which are discussed throughout the paper.