A relação entre ciência e religião em livros didáticos de Ciências da Natureza do PNLD 2021

Abstract

In the context of Science Teaching, on several occasions, topics that address the relationship of Science with other areas, such as environmental impacts, influence on society, Politics, Economics, among others, come to the fore. One of these themes is the relationship between Science and Religion. Faced with these situations, it is not uncommon to face strong defenses for one side, to the detriment of the other, and this on the part of students, teachers and even on the part of the authors of teaching books. However, the National Curricular Common Base (BNCC) defends, both in its general competences and in the specific competences and skills in the area of ​​Natural Sciences and its Technologies, that there is an appreciation and respect for the cultural diversity, values ​​and beliefs of all the students. In order to be able to be used in schools throughout Brazil, teaching books approved by the National Program of Teaching Book and Material (PNLD) need to be aligned with the BNCC, which begins to be effectively implemented from the New High School in all schools in Brazil in the year 2022. In view of this, the General Objective of this research was: To analyze how the Teaching Books of Natural Sciences and its Technologies approved in the PNLD 2021 approach the relationship between Science and Religion in Basic Education. For that, the chosen textbooks were analyzed according to Content Analysis of Bardin (1995) and the passages in which the theme of the relationship between Science and Religion is present were categorized according to Barbour's taxonomy (2004). This taxonomy places a person's conception of the relationship between Science and Religion in one of four categories: Conflict, Independence, Dialogue and Integration. From the analyses, some excerpts did not fit into any of these categories, and the Undetermined category was created for these cases. The hypothesis raised, based on the discussion defended by the BNCC, was that these materials would present, at least, the relationship of Independence. We verified that, in general, this hypothesis was confirmed positively, although excerpts from Conflict have still been found, mostly, in contents related to Origin and Evolution. However, the analyzed books sought to establish, in most situations in which the relationship between Science and Religion came to the fore, a respect and appreciation of cultural diversity, as established in the BNCC. We suggest that more research be done in order to expand knowledge on this subject, and even more with a more comprehensive view of the various forms of demonstration of religiosity, in addition to institutionalized Religion.