ppropriation of scientific discourse by protestant biology students: the contribution of Bakhtin's language theory to educational research and culture

Abstract

Studies about the relations between classroom discourse interactions and processes of teaching and learning show that science learning is related to a process structured by speech genres and ways of establishing semantic links between events, objects, and people. Accordingly, it has been emphasized that science education research needs to incorporate theories and methods developed for the interpretative analysis of discourse. This paper shows the heuristic power that an interpretative analysis of discourse based on Bakhtin’s theory of language can have in the investigation of meaning making in science education in multicultural contexts. With this purpose, we discuss here results obtained in the analysis of the discourse about “nature” or “natural world” of protestant Biology preservice teachers of a Brazilian university, produced in the context of semi-structured interviews.

Keywords

• Discourse analysis
• Bakhtin’s theory of language
• Multiculturalism
• Science education
• Religious education