FREIREAN EPISTEMOLOGY AND SCIENCE EDUCATION: CHALLENGES AND POTENTIALITIES FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL LITERACY PROCESS IN BASIC EDUCATION
Scientific and technological literacy. Scientometrics. Education in science. Epistemological matrix. Liberating pedagogy.
In contemporary times, one of the challenges for Education is the promotion of a holistic education of students, providing them with citizenship education in the broad sense of the term. Thus, it is understood that the field of Education in science becomes a critical-reflective training promotion space for subjects who arrive at our schools. The approximation of Education in science with Freire's reference has been indicated as a possibility of overcoming the traditionalist, content and encyclopedic teaching that characterize school education. This indication arises from the characteristics of non-banking teaching – centered on dialogicity, problematization, contextualization and interdisciplinarity – and the liberating approach proposed by Paulo Freire. This research is carried out with the following general objective in mind: to identify and analyze the approximation between Freire's assumptions and the field of Science Education in the academic productions published in the area, locating the possibilities and limitations that are presented by the researches for the development of the process of Scientific and Technological Literacy - STL in Basic Education. This study is part of the mixed methods research approach, supported by the assumptions of the Systematic Literature Review - SLR. As for data analysis and its interpretation, it was carried out at two levels: scientometric analysis and document analysis through content analysis. The scientometric data allow us to think that, currently, there is a network of consolidated researchers in the area who work with this approximation of references. This network has great influence from researchers in the field of Physics for the maintenance and dissemination of studies in this perspective. The need to expand social research networks in the field was also recognized, which could ensure greater dissemination of knowledge built and consolidated by the collective of researchers who are already a reference for such discussions. The analysis of the texts that reported educational practices in basic education developed with the approximation of Science Education with Freire's reference point to possibilities of advances for the ACT process since the early years of elementary school, however, the development of these practices collides with the school structure, which is still disciplinary and marked by the culture of silence in the classroom. By approaching Paulo Freire's epistemology with the discussions on ACT, it was possible to identify, through the analyzes carried out, that Level III of ACT, which is the epistemological proposition that is closest to liberating education. Thus, observing and considering the advances expressed by the researches that highlight the analyzed educational practices in Basic Education, it is possible to affirm the thesis that most of these educational practices remain distant from Freire and the ACT process in the broader social senses that may emerge from school education.