Practice is different in theory: a theoretical study on practices in science education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22600/1518-8795.ienci/2025v30n2p220Keywords:
Scientific Literacy, Science as social practice teaching, Domains of scientific knowledgeAbstract
Scientific literacy, as a formative perspective for social participation, aligns with teaching practices that approximate scientific practices to educate individuals for their roles and participation in society based on knowledge of scientific reasoning and critical evaluation processes. This theoretical study explores how different conceptions of scientific practices can influence teaching practices. To this end, we present the diversity of conceptions about scientific practices and their manifestations in school contexts, based on a brief historical contextualization of science education in Brazil. This allowed us to characterize three main ways of conceiving practices in science classes: practice as a manipulative activity for executing procedures (PEP), practice as an action for solving problems (PRP), and practice for evaluating and understanding situations and contexts (PAC). Among these ways of conceiving practices, PAC aligns most closely with science education as a social practice and, therefore, with current perspectives of scientific literacy, as it allows students to recognize the modes of production of understandings in classroom and the ways to evaluate the adequacy of these modes based on the relevance of methods in relation to problems under investigation and established knowledge. Finally, we present the contributions of this study to both teaching and research in Science Education.References
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