Writing, Acting and Engaging in Socioscientific Controversies as a Way to Learn about the Nature of Sciences

Abstract

This article presents a methodology to teach about the nature of sciences and their histories through the construction of controversial dialogs in order to promote reflective and engaging practices among undergraduate and graduate students.  This proposal seeks to establish the study’s guidelines and organize the distribution of tasks in groups to draft scripts of dialogs that bring relevant information and that produce antagonistic positions on controversial socioscientific issues. This information will later be recorded in short home videos of 5 to 10 minutes each, which will then be shown and discussed in the classroom. Finally, this article highlights some limitations of this methodology, primarily in the way it has been used in this study. By contrast, the advantages of its use are pinpointed as a didactic strategy that serves to stimulate historical research and critical thinking regarding the nature of science and its sociotechnical relations.