A contribuição da iniciação científica para o letramento científico na educação profissional e tecnológica: concepções e práticas a partir de projetos do IFSP-Campinas

Abstract

Introduction. Reflections on science, technology, and society in the school context collaborate to construct the theoretical assumptions. At the same time, they value students' interdisciplinary education, encouraging them to expand, understand, and think about the positive impacts of science and technology in society, as well as to question themselves and take a stand when facing science's inaccuracies and mistakes. On the other hand, scientific literacy, beyond discoursing on science education for all, especially for the students, expatiates on the characteristics of individuals which are considered scientifically literate, dividing them for knowledge levels. The scientific initiation's (IC, in Portuguese) activities, as a curricular component, an institutional program, or part of public education policy, have been shown an essential complement to the improvement and development of technique, scientific and social abilities of the professional and technological education students from the secondary school (EPTNM). Problem. The Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de São Paulo (IFSP) follows national guidelines but has autonomy for developing IC's related activities. IFSP campus Campinas (IFSP/CMP), specifically, has students and teachers significantly engaged in IC practices. However, these activities have not yet been described and analyzed in the literature. It is understood that a study on the CI process of this institution, from the perspective of scientific literacy theoretical principles, as well as specific public policies, can contribute to the understanding of the construction and experimentation of scientific knowledge in professional technological education. Objective. To investigate and understand the formative contributions of the IC to the students of the EPTNM of the IFSP/CMP and to analyze the research activities regarding the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge through the projects of scientific initiation developed by these students. Methodology. The paper is a case study of the IC program developed at IFSP Campinas. It is characterized as an exploratory and descriptive study, as it goes further in understanding the addressed subject at the same time that it aims to characterize a specific reality, synthesizing the research subjects' outlook. The bibliographical research sources were the Portal de Periódicos da Capes, the SciELO database, and the IBICT's dissertation and thesis database. In the documental analysis were consulted books of the physical libraries of Unicamp and IFSP. For gathering data, a questionnaire was applied to the students who participated in IC in 2019. For the data analysis, it was used the content analysis. Results. The IC program contributes to the critic and scientific training of its participants. Besides that, evidence of science, technology, and society and scientific literacy was found in the analyzed institutional research programs – demonstrating balance in the occurrence of the types of literacy levels addressed. It was also possible to observe the presence of scientific literacy in the speech of the students that answered the questionnaire, in which the most recurrent was the functional scientific literacy.