Enseñanza de las ciencias y cultura: múltiples aproximaciones

Abstract

This text constitutes the second volume of the research report for the project "Science Teachers' Conceptions of the Phenomenon of Cultural Diversity and its Implications for Teaching," funded by the CIDC of the District University and Colciencias. It covers the developments of the doctoral seminar "Science Teaching and Culture: Multiple Approaches" and its impact on both the research for the participants' doctoral theses and on their training as doctors in Education, as well as on the strengthening of this level of studies. The book is composed of eight chapters. The first contains a description of the seminar, using several of the texts discussed therein as reference. The following seven chapters correspond to essays written by the doctoral students, in which they reflect on science education, addressing topics such as conceptions of biodiversity, cultural artifacts, and learning objects culture-territory relations, scientific argumentation and literacy, alternative ways of thinking, cultural context and curriculum, and professional identity, which represent not only a contribution of the Seminar to their respective doctoral theses, but also broaden and enrich perspectives on the topic of science teaching and culture. As mentioned above, the first chapter offers a description of the doctoral seminar "Science Teaching and Culture: Multiple Approaches," offered by the Interinstitutional Doctorate in Education at the Universidad Distrital campus. This seminar was held in the second semester of 2011, in its third version. It was directed by Professor Adela Molina and included (in its three versions) contributions from Professor Charbel Niño El-Hani, from the Federal University of Bahia, as a visiting professor. Furthermore, this third version of the seminar was supported by Professor Juanma Sánchez-Arteaga, also a researcher at the Federal University of Bahia (Brazil), who participated in the conceptualization and writing of the text on scientific racism.The topics addressed in this chapter, which correspond to those developed in the seminar, are: (a) Discussions around the concept of culture; (b) Multiple meanings of the concept of scientific culture and its implications for teaching goals; (c) Multicultural debates in science teaching; (d) Scientific racism and science teaching; and (e) Cultural diversity, cultural context, and science teaching: the case of teachers' conceptions. In the second chapter, authored by doctoral student Rocío Pérez, the conceptions of biodiversity are addressed, considering the perspectives of science and cultural diversity in relation to teaching, essential aspects in the production of meanings and the configuration of relationships with the world. In this regard, biodiversity in its ontological constitution and the idea of ​​otherness, from cultural diversity, acquires political, social and epistemological dimensions of a historical nature that cross through strong debates between internalist and externalist approaches to science and epistemological discussions in relation to the sharp division between the context of discovery and the context of justification, which transcend the teaching of science and pose profound questions to society, among which the so-called biodiversity crisis stands out. It is proposed how we are currently observing the beginning of a shift towards local historical considerations that emerge in the configuration of conceptions closely related to cultural contexts and the recognition of the otherness, supported by constructivist referents, which put forward alternative educational proposals and show the need for an epistemological and didactic decentering, in addition to offering other options in the reassembly of nature-culture relationships as enclaves of a new social project that involves the recognition of the other and the reconnection between the human and the non-human, as possible perspectives for the care of life in all its expressions and a rethinking of biocultural diversity. In the third chapter, authored by doctoral candidate Oscar Suárez, some reflections are raised on "learning objects as cultural artifacts," where five aspects are developed: conceptions and representations, learning objects, cultural artifacts, the consequences of seeing learning objects as cultural artifacts, concluding with reflections on the conceptions of teachers and students in the use of learning objects as a field to explore. The arguments described lead to the proposal of the benefits of treating learning objects as cultural artifacts and the study of conceptions as a necessary element that could drive didactic changes in their use. In the fourth chapter, authored by doctoral candidate Edier Bustos, the reader finds a proposal oriented to the teaching and learning of science, whose vision maintains a close relationship between education, culture, and territory. The proposal is presented from a cultural perspective, considering the school as a socially constructed territory based on all the social relationships that individuals have within the territorial approach. Starting from the position of the territory as a space of articulation for the development of the communities that interact within it, where the territory emerges in terms of sociocultural relations, represented by their interactions/valued expressions of space with significance for the community, where identity is established in terms of the appropriation of the interactions that occur within it. These ideas are complemented by the recognition of social, cultural, and historical roots, as well as the conception that land has a symbolic meaning. Therefore, it could be affirmed that territory is a preponderant factor in strengthening cultural identity. In the fifth chapter, authored by doctoral candidate Pablo Archila, some of the contributions that argumentation in general offers to the teaching and learning of science are specified, and in particular, the foundations that position it as a language tool and that favor the management of one of the obstacles that scientific literacy must overcome: the language of science. At the same time, the idea is defended that argumentation, as a multidisciplinary subject, plays a determining role in the ways in which science students construct understandings and conceptions about school scientific knowledge (Stipcich, Islas, & Domínguez, 2006; El-Hani & Mortimer, 2007; Texeira, 2010). To this end, questions such as: What does argumentation contribute to science teaching? And what type of scientific culture is addressed in school when argumentation is used? The discussion of these issues allows us to go beyond the image of argumentation as a technique (Texeira, 2010) to consider it as an element that favors scientific literacy as one of the dimensions that could enhance alternatives that privilege a more committed education where school science results in the formation of critical and reflective citizens highly included in the society that they understand and transform (Cajas, 2001; Désautels, Jacques and Larochelle, 2003; Martínez and Molina, 2011) and not for the mass and imposed modeling of scientific minds. In the sixth chapter, authored by doctoral student Norma Constanza Castaño, the influence of Colonizing and modernizing processes as practices of domination, which influenced the forms of appropriation and invisibility of local knowledge, while simultaneously fostering the hegemony of worldviews based on Western thought. Likewise, the book studies the relationships between knowledge and power as organizers of social hierarchies; the importance of recognizing sociocultural contexts and recovering experience in science education as a way of fostering alternative forms, based on the possibilities of interculturality, in a country like Colombia, which is considered multiethnic and multicultural. In the seventh chapter, authored by doctoral candidate Rubinsten Hernández Barbosa, the relationship between cultural context and curriculum in science teaching is discussed around four aspects. The first addresses the relationship between culture and education; it is based on the idea that to understand this relationship, it is essential to recognize the importance of the cultural context in the educational process, since it is through it that individuals express their ways of relating, their interests and their ideas, among other aspects. This idea leads to a rethinking of the role of the school, which must be reformulated; moving from a unifying, neutral, universal, and extraterritorial space to one that recognizes cultural diversity and its implications. The second aspect refers to perspectives on science teaching that take cultural diversity into account. Some research approaches that consider context and cultural diversity are described, and four science teaching positions on this subject are also identified. In the third aspect, some ideas on teacher training are presented, since it has been established that one of the difficulties in developing educational processes that take into account the cultural context is related to traditional teacher training programs. Finally, the fourth aspect addressed is the relationship between teachers and the curriculum. It is noted that the curriculum has traditionally been developed without considering the cultural contexts of educational institutions. Chapter eight, by Andrea Aristizábal, presents some theoretical discussions on the relationships between cultural identity and teacher professional identity. This merits reflections on the conceptualizations of culture, cultural identity, teacher training, and, finally, teacher professional identity as a cultural product. The purpose is to characterize the variations in teacher identity in the country, as a manifestation of the cultural changes that have occurred.