Bringing the Practice of Education in Sciences and Biology Back into Life

ABSTRACT

The article discusses science teaching practices based on notions of life and nature as generative contexts, in contrast with the usual conceptual definitions in biology. The proposal is to approximate these practices to the horizon of ecological epistemologies (Steil; Carvalho, 2014), where multiple and diverse contemporary comprehensive efforts come together, appraising the materiality of life as well as criticizing human-centered science, which tends to reduce the multiple emergences of the living. The present article analyzes two experiences, being the first one in basic education and a second one within university settings. It concludes, for the sake of the quality of productivity in the realm of science teaching, that returning to the condition of ‘being alive’, through an ‘education of attention’ (Ingold, 2015) is necessary: multiplying forms of life, while promoting an expansion of one’s perception regarding the plurality of existing worlds where existence takes place, through the permanent co-production of life, is the path to walk upon.

Keywords
Science and Biology Education; Learning; Ecological Epistemologies