History of radioactivity in textbooks with social, political and gender aspects of Irène Joliot-Curie’s life

Abstract

Although the approach to the History of Science (HS) in Textbooks has been an object of concern for a long time, limitations persist that deserves to be understood and complemented. The objective of this study was to identify the historiographic and philosophical approaches in the content of radioactivity in Textbooks and complement them based on the history of artificial radioactivity discovered by Irène Joliot-Curie and based on social, political and gender aspects. To develop our analysis we created a priori categories that guided the analysis of six Textbooks approved in the 2018 National Textbook Program. Our results were organized and discussed regarding the linearity of the concepts taking into account their historical context and their social contextualization; the description of the characters and their image as heroes; and the references, the primary and secondary sources. For each one of them we pointed out possible revisions and complementation of the Textbooks aiming to improve the training in Science Teaching from the HS.

Keywords

• livros didáticos
• história da radioatividade
• irène joliot-curie