We consider as important teacher's conceptions of teaching biology and their relation to the development of scientific thinking competencies (STC), so we have decided to identify and characterize notions of science education (SE) and how these affect the development of STC, We have departed from the application of a Likert type questionnaire and follow an analysis of the information from the viewpoint of a pragmatic realist epistemology. Teacher's reported representations derived from the questionnaire are supplemented with results of textual in-depth interviews, group discussion and a (theory-oriented) teacher's workshop. Main results indicate that Science Education is guided by a conception of a traditional learning methodology, which limits itself to the transmission of encyclopedic knowledge with a token of technological epistemology that it does not consider in the teaching rationales, teaching for the development of STC.
Biology teaching; Science education; Scientific thinking; Competence
