Abstract:

Science education in the perspective Science Technology and Society (STS) suggests that students become protagonists of their learning and teachers become mediators of this process. Moreover, the social implications permeate the scientific and technological discussions. But, although there appeared about 40 years, this perspective does not have great range among teachers. Some reasons are: the vision rigid, dogmatic and neutral of science, without complexes relationships with the technology and society. To understand the apparent difficulty of future teachers to work with the STS relations was investigated his vision about the STS perspective, their concepts, applications and possibilities of resistance and use in class. Thus, an experiment was conducted with undergraduate students in Biology discipline of Teaching Methodology of a public university in the interior of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Thereby, the discipline has developed the themes of Curriculum, STS perspective in secondary school, controversial topics in biology teaching and the biology in daily life. Among the activities planned for the semester, the students should make a lesson plan and teaching activities in biology from the perspective STS. The chosen themes were decided by the students themselves. At the end of the course, students were asked to answer four open questions to identify their understanding about the prospect STS, the possibilities of their inclusion on the classes of science and biology, the possibilities to teach biology using this perspective, their experiences with the preparation of the seminar and how the experience of the discipline had changed his views or not in relation to that perspective. This work was carried out based on the answers given by these students. To analyze the data, were used the methodology of Discourse Textual Analysis proposed by Roque Moraes and Maria do Carmo Galiazzi. The categories that cracked the meaning of the questionnaires were: the difficulties of using the perspective and the possibilities for using it in the classroom. The results showed that part of the resistance to adopt a more integrated approach to science comes from the actual training of future teachers still grounded in concepts and isolated disciplines and the view that phenomena need to be separated and isolated in order to be studied. While in graduate courses the students learn about the theory of STS approach does not always have the opportunity to experience it in practical experiences of teaching and learning. However, students revealed that the difficulties faced by them, how little understanding of perspective, lack of time to implement other knowledge beyond those of the textbook, were not limiting the extent of future teachers wish to abandon the use of STS perspective and that they want to break with the view of scientific knowledge disengaged from society. The times demand a more integrated citizen with national events, more aware and critical of the scientific-technological subjects. However, it is essential to remember that the formation of this new citizen depends on the formation of the professionals responsible for their education.

Keywords:

Science Technology and Society perspective, future teachers, Discourse Textual Analysis.