No neutrality of science-technology: problematizing silencings in educational practices STS

Abstract

The Science Technology Society (STS) movement arose in contexts in which the supposed neutrality of Science-Technology came to be problematized, with neutrality understood as a legitimizer of technocratic decision-making models. This study, inserted in the search for curriculums dedicated to the establishment of a participatory culture, was supported by references from Freire, STS and by Latin American thinking about STS. The research question raised was: have historic constructions such as the supposed neutrality of the technocratic decision model, the salvationist perspective attributed to Science and Technology and technological determinism been worked with in educational practices related to STS? With what processes? A bibliographic study was conducted and the corpus of analysis was articles published in six periodicals from the field of science education. Discursive Textual Analysis was used, resulting in the categories: a) Silencing about the origin of ST, b) Silencing about dimensions other than the scientific-technological and c) Silencing about the values internalized in the scientific-technological product.