Controversies about the nature of science as a curricular approach in physics teaching

Abstract

The importance of the study of episodes from the history of science as a way to teach not only science, but also about science, or about the “nature of science”, has been defended by science education researchers for a long time. However, it is well known that there are many controversies about the nature of science, which lead to divergent positions among educators, scientists, historians, philosophers and sociologists of science on what should be the most adequate view of science to be presented to future generations. During the so called “Science Wars” natural scientists opposed themselves to the questioning of scientific authority derived from historical, philosophical and specially sociological studies about science. We present a brief review of the influence of these debates in science education research about “the nature of science”, with attention to criticism on the so called “consensual view of the nature of science” that aims to eliminate controversies by building consensus. We argue that instead of avoiding controversial discussions in basic education, a pluralist philosophical position would be better in educating critical citizens. Aiming to illustrate how this attitude can be introduced in basic education, we present a didactic game that was constructed by a group of physics education researchers and high school physics teachers. Its goal is to use episodes from the history of cosmology to conduct discussions about the value attributed by students to science, including not only descriptions of its history but also debating prescriptive questions about how science should or could be.