Aspects of Ethics in Science Education: an analysis of a High School Textbook

Abstract

Faced with the countless socio-environmental challenges, the importance of ethical training is noted, especially in the context of science teaching. Science-Technology-Society-Environmental (STSE) education provides opportunities to explicitly explore ethical issues, improving the quality of student training. In this work, we analyze the approach to ethics in a high school science textbook, aiming to understand how ethics is incorporated into science education in curricular materials. This study is documentary, exploratory and qualitative research, based on content analysis. Moral philosophy literature was used as analysis criteria, considering the context of use of terms related to ethics found in the book. In the context of integrative projects for the new high education, ethics is still superficial, and, therefore, we suggest a more critical and in-depth approach to promote integration between disciplines, emphasizing teacher education to have more autonomy and criticality when using the textbook.