Harnessing the potential of science journalism in High School: a report based on peer observation of teaching

Abstract

This paper aimed at documenting, through peer observation of teaching, the use of scientific journalism as a school educational practice in High School context, more specifically in a medium-sized private school in the city of Sorocaba, São Paulo, Brazil. This procedure is justified by the need to understand how the use of this type of complementary educational material occurs at this educational level, compared to its use already documented in Higher Education. Two observation sessions were conducted: one during a Biology class, and another during an interdisciplinary class (called Itinerários Formativos, which translates to Formative Itineraries) focusing on Geography, Physics, History, and Climate Change. As a result, we highlight the potential use of journalistic stories centered around the Humanities (about Education, for example), in addition to those based on hard and/or biological sciences. None of the stories were used to demonstrate the scientific method in action, as expected; instead, teachers used the journalistic stories to draw connections between theories and concepts that were relevant to the class they were teaching and contemporary socially acute topics, according to their own personal importance criteria. One of the main findings of this study is the apparent confusion among teachers regarding the differentiation between scientific stories published in journalistic context and papers published as part of actual scientific journals. There was also some difficulty in the process of selecting journalistic stories that were suitable for the planned educational objectives. These issues should be taken into account in possible teacher development programs aimed at diversifying complementary educational materials.