Possible Contributions of Cinema in Natural Science Education to Understand How Scientists and Science Works

It is presented some considerations related to the role of cinema to introduce and contextualize issues as the image of science and scientists and how science works. Cinema can be used as an important tool in science teacher training or education because it lets to establish connections between two relevant aspects in natural science classrooms: the emotional component that allows the audience to establish a relation with the characters of scientific stories (Arroio, 2010) and the historical-philosophical-sociological component which contributes to show a more real image of science in school. Cinema can help to show the presence of different influences in science as the importance of contexts, and to discuss about the presence of some stereotypes, and an idealized image of individual-male scientific work, a neutral science, the meaning of discovery among others. Some movies were analyzed to establish this possible contribution. In further, according to these results it is possible to compare some important elements of scientific discourse presented in cinema and this one in science school textbooks.

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