Perceptions about the Limits and Possibilities for the Adoption of Interdisciplinarity in the Training of Science Teachers

Abstract

Teacher training in Brazil has experienced difficulties in the last decades of political-pedagogical and social debates. This issue is deepened when discussing the situation of Natural Sciences teachers, precisely because it represents a field with a great lack of enrollments and the absence of specific curricular guidelines orientating to the degree. However, since it is an integrated field of knowledge, the Natural Sciences Degree (NSD) courses need to deal with the necessity to adopt a complex approach such as interdisciplinarity. Aware of the difficulties for its adoption, this qualitative study searches for to analyze the limits and possibilities for the adoption of interdisciplinarity during teacher training in an NSD Course in Brazil. For this, semi-structured interviews were conducted with students, teachers, coordinators and an institutional representative linked to NSD of the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). In short, the limits indicated by the interviewees (Curricular Organization, Course Devaluation, Complexity of Interdisciplinarity, Labor Market and Institutional Conservatism) lead to a conjuncture of questions that go beyond a mere curricular or pedagogical discussion, lying on the already traditional discourses linked to devaluation of the teaching career. Thus, it is expected that the reports and analyzes presented throughout the text will serve for new concerns and encourage new dialogues between knowledge, dilemmas and possibilities of inclusion of interdisciplinarity in the formulation of other course programs of degree in Natural Sciences.