Abstract

ESPINEL-BARRERO, Nydia Esperanza  and  VALBUENA-USSA, Édgar Orlay. Approaching the Epistemológica! Status of Biotechnology: Didactic Implications. Rev. Fac. Cienc. Tecnol. [online]. 2018, n.43, pp.193-206. ISSN 0121-3814.

For several years now, Colombian schools have started to include biotechnology-related content in science class. In this sense, in order to teach biotechnology, and as part of the teacher's professional knowledge, it is essential to know about its disciplinary structure, including knowledge about its substantive and syntactic structures, and therefore its history and epistemology. In this reflection paper, we start by showing the existing difficulty in defining biotechnology and the ambiguity of its epistemological status; however, based the analysis of the relations between science and technology present in biotechnology, we consider current biotechnology as a techno science. Then, we present an approach to the substantive and syntactic structures of biotechnology and, finally, we note that the didactic implications of recognizing techno science as an epistemological status of biotechnology include the identification of teaching contents, as well as the design and use of teaching strategies, such as debates, role playing, and analysis of press and television news, aimed at understanding the biotechnological phenomena and the development of capacities to participate in a democratic society.

Keywords : Epistemology of biotechnology; disciplinary knowledge; substantive structure of biotechnology; syntactic structure of biotechnology; teaching biotechnology.

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