La atención a la situación del mundo en la educación científica

Résumé

At the Conference of the United Nations for Environment and Development (1992) educators of every subject were asked to contribute to public awareness and understanding of the problems and challenges related to our planets future, in order to make possible citizens participation in well grounded decision-making. A first hypothesis of this research is that, in spite of dramatic appeals such as this, science education, including science education research, is not paying enough attention to the planetary crisis. As a first step we have made an effort to construct a global picture of the ensemble of related problems, possible causes and remedies that characterize the state of the world. Using this global view we have carried out a set of multiple and convergent experimental designs studying science teachers perceptions of the state of the world (N = 983, from Spain, Portugal and Latin America). We also have analysed the treatment of this problem in N = 304 textbooks and N = 1.261 papers published in science education journals, proceedings, etc. Our results show a serious reductionism in the treatment of these problems and also reveal that science teachers perceptions about the state of the world are, in general, fragmented and superficial, showing a serious lack of understanding about the planetary crisis. But, although science teachers perceptions of the state of the world show a serious lack of understanding, our second hypothesis has been that if we favour a global discussion in some depth, based on founded documentation, we may obtain more correct perceptions and more favourable attitudes from teachers for the inclusion of this issue in education. Bearing this in mind, we have designed and implemented a workshop aimed at teachers in service and in training. The results of the implementation of this workshop with N = 148 teachers in training have shown a significant improvement of the perceptions of the participants about the state of the world, as well as more favourable attitudes for the treatment of this issue in science and technological education.