STS educational practices: the search for social participation beyond the assessment of impacts of Science-Technology on Society

Abstract:

It is crucial to problematize the supposed neutrality of Science-Technology for the constitution of a culture of participation in decision-making processes. We have investigated which procedures have been deployed in Science-Technology-Society educational practices, in the Brazilian context, which take into account values and interests in how scientific-technological development is promoted. The analysis of the corpus was composed of papers from different editions of Encontro Nacional de Pesquisa em Educação em Ciências (ENPEC) and journal articles, Discursive Textual Analysis has been used. The findings can be summarized as follows: (i) shifts that go beyond scientific-technological determinism; (ii) values and characteristics of given space-time influence the research agenda, the scientific-technological product; (iii) social participation in setting the research agenda in Science-Technology; (iv) promising routes; (v) social participation limited to the implications/impacts of Science-Technology for/on Society. We point to the need to define new objectives in educational processes: leverage for participation in decision-making processes involving the formulation of Public Policies for Science-Technology.

Keywords:
Science; technology and society. Social participation. Scientific neutrality