How Science/Technology/Society relations are approached in the contents of organic functions in high school chemistry

Abstract

This paper aimed to verify how the relation between Science/Technology/Society (STS) is present in Chemistry textbooks recommended by the Brazilian Ministry of Education. The interest in textbooks is due to the fact that they constitute important resources used by teachers to prepare their classes. Thus, researches in this area are necessary to indicate how the authors could improve the quality of their books. We believe that one way to do this is the introduction of the STS relation, which took place because of the necessity in establishing new ways of teaching, specially the teaching of science. One of the goals of STS education is to create conditions to develop abilities and competences that qualify the students for discussions concerning scientific and technologic questions of everyday life. The analysis of testbooks used the descriptors and indicators developed by Fracalanza and Megid-Neto (2006) as reference. In order to carry out the study, we chose the area of Organic Chemistry, more specifically contents referring to organic functions, with great use in society. In general, the results showed that STS relations are not totally observed in the investigated contents, contributing to the development of Chemistry classes through activities apart from the students social context.