Traditional knowledge as a tool for discussing history and philosophy of science in teacher education

Abstract

Increasingly, issues with to multiculturalism have crossed into science classrooms. In this way, traditional knowledge has been pointed out as a pathway towards placing value on the culture of distinct social groups and thus addressing sociocultural dimensions of science. Taking this into account, this study proposed an approach for inserting historical, philosophical and sociocultural themes from traditional knowledge. This proposal was developed among chemistry students and it was characterized as a small research project. The students needed to identify traditional knowledge relating to chemistry in their community and to gather data on it. The students’ reports showed characteristics of scientific literacy, specially related to sociocultural dimension of the science.