Epistemology in science teacher training: Conceptual tools of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle

Abstract

This article seeks to review the movement known as Vienna Circle, and especially its fundamental theses of logical-positivistic character, with the aim of identifying conceptual contributions to the philosophical and epistemological debate within science teacher education. It constitutes a part of a larger study on the current state of the foundations provided by the philosophy of science in two programmes of teacher preparation in a public University in the north-east of Brazil. The chosen methodology is bibliographic research: primary and secondary sources around logical positivism are analysed with the aim of recognising possible traces of its ideas in the formulation of a curriculum of teacher training in the aforementioned institution. Results show that, in spite of the marked influence that logical positivism had on constructing Anglo-Saxon philosophy of science in the 20th century, in the careers of teacher education in the interior of the state of Bahia, there are only very feeble references to the analytic mode of understanding science that this school proposed.