A controvérsia agroecológica em uma abordagem intercultural de educação científica: a biodiversidade nos discursos de licenciados do campo

Abstract

The present work is focused in an intercultural approach in scientific education under the perspective of a group of undergraduate rural students that embraces the dialog and the diversity of knowledge that coexist in the classroom. Those rural students are a specific group that had to lead with a lot difficulties to be in the university, and their life experience must be considered during their academic formation. We aimed to evaluate how undergraduate rural students assimilate the concept of biodiversity through the negotiation of speeches on the agro- ecological controversy. An educational intervention formulated under an intercultural perspective of Science Education was performed in order to bring the discussions about the relationship among Science, Technology and Society in the controversial context of the agro- ecological theme. Investigational procedures were performed under an etnomethodological approach as: the description of the Ecology course and of the educational material that the teacher produced for the classes; annotations of classes’ events; audio and video recordings of the interactions between students along twelve classes split in two days of the course. We chose and transcribed some parts of the speech when students brought thoughts related to the concept of biodiversity. Those fragments of speech were split in episodes. The discursive interactions evaluated showed an increase in complexity of the notion about the biodiversity concept. This increase was related to the involvement of the students in the discussion mediated by the teacher. It is important to highlight that the discursive interactions allowed the students to cross the borders between the daily life culture and the scientific fundamentals, and they were able to assimilate the scientific elements related to the biodiversity concept.