Concepções de criticidade e educação científica básica: uma síntese interpretativa crítica

Abstract

In the face of the tendency towards uncriticality that has permeated spontaneous understandings of social practices in the natural sciences in primary and secondary education, the issue of criticality is gaining relevance in the fight against disinformation and misleading advertising and in its relationship with the processes of transformation, both techno-scientific and social. In this regard, this research has focused on the main conceptions of criticality found in academic literature and their relationship with social practices in the natural sciences and associated technological and educational activities. The research was based on dialectical historical materialism, dialoguing with Karl Marx, Gyorgy Lukács, Karel Kosik, José Barata-Moura, Angela Davis, among others. It was also based on the concepts of Science and Technology from John Bernal, Antonio Gramsci, Maria Andery and Álvaro Vieira Pinto, and HistoricalCritical Pedagogy provided assumptions for thinking about educational aspects. The investigation was configured as a critical review and selected the Critical Interpretive Synthesis of Dixon-Woods et al. as its method, a modality focused on qualitative data, critical analysis of the literature and the process of theoretical-conceptual recreation. Judicious intentional sampling took place in two phases, using the variability of the theoretical-philosophical matrix as the main criterion and the aid of the electronic applications Zotero and Rayyan. The screening resulted in a data portfolio of 23 information units, retrieved by digital systems, consultation with experts and intertextual chains, which supported the preparation of eleven descriptive synopses: Ancient Age, Kantian Criticism, Marx and Marxists, Frankfurt School, Michel Foucault, Bell Hooks and identity, Freirian Popular Education, Historical-Critical Pedagogy, Scientific Literacy, Brazilian Science, Technology, Society and Environment Education (CTSA) and its correlate, focused on Critical thinking (CTS-PC). In the process of interpreting the texts, elements of Bakthinian Philosophy of Language and Critical Discourse Analysis were utilized. The synopses dealt with conceptions of criticality, which supported an interpretative synthesis that allowed for new problematizations, exercises in philosophical negativity and positivity. This movement proposed constitutive categories for criticality, such as overcoming negativity, objectuality, mediaticity, activity, dialectical rationality, knowledge, counter-hegemony, questioning, totality, freedom, consubstantiality, praxis, collectivity, dialogicity and self-criticism. These categories were then brought to life in the particularity of natural science practices and associated technological and educational activities, with a view to scientific education based on a critique of current hegemonic science. The research concluded that criticality, although implosive, disruptive and entropic, is one of the essential qualities for social and techno-scientific innovations that are nonconformist towards the inequality, injustice and violence that afflict human beings and nature on a daily basis, and that the search for ways to better develop it is a fundamental historical task for basic education and humanity as a whole.