Experimental Practices in the Process of Scientific Enculturation

Over the course of the last 50 years, research in didactics of science has produced knowledge and provided us with the support to have a minimum of certainty when planning courses aimed at encouraging students to produce significant knowledge, not only about the content of scientific disciplines but also, and primarily, about the process of constructing science itself. However, if a large fraction of society working in the teaching of natural sciences accepts the theoretical references for planning teaching, empirical data on the knowledge effectively produced by students in courses, mainly regarding the acquisition of the process of constructing science, that is, scientific enculturation, are still being obtained, and numerous studies have shown that teaching – including university teaching – has transmitted empirical-inductivist views of science that are far removed from how scientific knowledge is constructed and produced (Matthews, 1991).