O desenvolvimento profissional docente e o diálogo entre ciência e religião

Abstract

To achieve a meaningful science teaching, we understand that the teacher must be in constant professional development. In this way, we bring to the study the idea of Teaching Professional Development that involves all planned learning experiences, that means, initial education and continuing education courses, but also professional and personal experiences, considering that the teacher is the result of all this knowledge. The teacher's experience in the most varied dimensions of his daily, academic and professional life - cultural and social - is the propelling factor of epistemological movements that modify his way of connecting to knowledge and the world. During the pedagogical practice, the teacher is questioned by several doubts, including those of religious nature. To help teachers face such challenges, the present study aimed to know what is the contribution of the dialogue between science and religion to the teaching of natural sciences. Our hypothesis is that science can be taught in schools in a different, more engaged and less dogmatic way. The objective is to promote the expansion of knowledge about the nature, scope and limitations of science, talking in a didactic, attractive and playful way on the possible interactions between science and religion in the natural science education. The theoretical foundation was based on three fields of knowledge: teacher training (with emphasis on Professional Teacher Development), science conception and a possible relationship between the fields of the science and the religion. In order to provide knowledge about the possibility of a dialogue between science and religion during the teaching of natural sciences, we built a paradigmatic book entitled: "Religion and Science in Natural Science Teaching: Can It works?". The research was qualitative case study type. Participants were the teachers of natural science and mathematics of a public school in Cuiabá-MT. To favor the application of the methodology, we organized a workshop entitled: “Are Religion and Science Dialoguing? The workshop provided subjects with a complete reading of the paradigmatic book and allowed them to respond to research instruments. The analysis of the answers was based on the technique of discursive textual analysis. The results indicate that teachers who perceive themselves in professional development can, from their worldview, provide an ethical, tolerant and constructive dialogue between science and religion in the exercise of their pedagogical practice.