NCS research group leads a research project from the R&D and Innovation National Programme

Research group Neuroeducation, Science and Society leads the research project: IDENTIFYING SCIENTIFIC CONTEXTS IN SOCIETY. TOOLS FOR TEACHERS AND CITIZENS (RTI2018-094303-A-I00) from Science and Innovation Ministry,corresponding to the R&D and Innovation National Programme Addressing Society Challenges, as part of the National Plan of Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation 2018 (period: 2019-2021).

Science in Society

Science and technology play a fundamental role on our society. In fact, the characteristics of our way of life, which have been changing throughout history, are inseparable from the evolution of scientific and technological developments. Faced with this changing situation, it seems that science training must be updated. This has undoubted repercussions both at a personal and social level and also in the individual and collective economic sphere.

This knowledge of science and about science that citizens need to live in common contexts are known as scientific literacy — alfabetización científica in spanish —, this knowledge conforms one of the objectives of education. Obviously, its analysis has concerned a multitude of institutions, as the studies from Eurobarometer survey on attitudes towards science or the spanish FECYT periodical surveys, among others. In addition, these purposes have been included in the successive educational regulations.

This situation of concern about the scientific education level of the population has been evolving over the last few years. More and more countries, including ours, have joined this debate, but it seems that a deep reflection is still needed on the most effective way to determine the status of scientific knowledge in our society.

Scientific literacy

However, it does not seem easy to determine what are the desirable levels of scientific literacy; in fact, there is not even a consensus on what is desirable and how to set these levels. It is also interesting to observe the evolution of the literature on public understanding of science; where, until very recently, this approach treated citizens in science education as “underage people” with a lack of training (hence the so-called deficit model).

On the other hand, it has been possible to characterize in great detail the teaching models of science teachers, which mostly coincide with a transmission model of teaching, and their consequences on student training have been analysed. Also, in teacher training the development of methodological tools for inquiry is not usually worked on. This, naturally, makes it difficult for our future teachers to be able to identify and incorporate the reality of the students into the classroom; that is, their needs about what science we need to learn and how to do it.

In summary, there is a gap between the way of teaching in science classes and the educational needs of citizens. Citizens that have been convinced and, therefore, assume that it does not have the cognitive tools to analyse and respond to the demands of the context; although in reality he interacts with science in his daily life and regularly deals with social and scientific issues.

Inter-University project

To undertake this project we coordinate from different Schools of Education (from the Universidad Complutense, U. Valladolid, U. Granada and U. CEU-Sevilla), with professors specialized in science education, sociology of education and educational research methods. In addition, the Faculty of Economics of the U. Complutense collaborates with a specialist in financial valuation, and the Natural Sciences National Museum (MNCN-CSIC).

With this diversity in capabilities and convergence in intentions, we propose:

• Develop methodological tools to help teachers, and the citizens they teach, to identify science contexts present in society.
• Guide future teachers and citizens in their inquiry about the scenarios of daily life with scientific content.
• Promote among teachers the development of educational proposals that link the classroom with these social environments.
• Implement these designs both in practices in educational centers and in the context of MNCN-CSIC activities.
• Analyse the entire process and the social and economic effect of incorporating these contents into our training environment.

In short, we seek to train our professionals so that they can incorporate among their skills the ability to connect what they have learned in the subjects with the needs of the society in which they are immersed. In other words, we are going to develop, or fine-tune, methodological tools to work with our students (future teachers) so that teachers in training know how to detect the science that exists in the social environment and can, in due course, work with their future students . In addition, in this process we will also obtain data on the social perception of science that future teachers have and current Primary and Secondary students, that our current students will analyse, and the samples of citizens who participate.