The importance of qualified communication of ideas in science teaching
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18226/25253824.v6.n10.01Keywords:
Teacing of science, Critical thinking, Nature of science, Qualification of ideas, Guarding termsAbstract
Science education involves several features that are beyond the so called products of science: ideas, theories, hypotheses, laws, and results. Any education that aims the full comprehension of science as a human endeavor should incorporate epistemic qualities of the nature of science in the teaching of scientific content. One strategy for promoting the transmission of these features is the formal employment of qualification of ideas through guarding terms. Here, we discuss some of the epistemic features of science and their connection to the qualification of ideas in classrooms: epistemic fallibilism, open-mindedness, and the ongoing review process. We argue that the employment of terms and sentences that better reveal the strength of the existing evidence for a given idea is able to better reflect the presence of those science features on the scientific process. The substitution of terms such as “proven” or “it was proven that” by “probable” or “evidence suggests that” are able to better describe the epistemic status of scientific ideas, which are not fixed between true or false, but contained in a complex spectrum of likelihood. Strengthening science education with emphasis on the understanding of the nature of science can help to fix modern problems, such as the increasing distrust in science and on their products, such as vaccines and pharmaceutical drugs, as well as helping to reasonably dose the strength of the belief on those ideas.
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Copyright (c) 2021 Gabriel Dall'Alba, Guilherme Brambatti Guzzo
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