This dissertation in education deals with the concepts of gender and sexuality in
Biology teaching in Brazil. Based on a systematic literature review aiming to map
and analyze the production of knowledge on these topics in Biology Teaching in the
country from 1996, year of the approval of the National Education Law, to 2022, it
imagines new possibilities of research and dialogue. A search was conducted in the
following databases, using the terms “gender, sexuality, biology teaching”: Digital
Library of Theses and Dissertations (BDTD/IBICT), Google Scholar, Microsoft
Academic, CAPES Journal Collection, Web of Science and Scopus. It reached a
total of 71 texts of various types: doctoral dissertations, master theses, final papers
of undergraduate and specialization programs, journal articles, conference articles,
and book chapters. As an initial descriptive-exploratory approach, based on the full
reading of the texts, five categories were created: 1) chronology, 2) typology, 3)
geographic region, 4) thematic focus and 5) bibliometric indicators. Within the 1996-
2022 time frame the first text appeared in 2004. The most frequent type of text was
journal article, followed by master thesis, conference paper, doctoral dissertation,
specialization final paper, undergraduate final paper, and book chapter, in
descending order. The South and Southeast regions together produced 80% of the
entire textual mass studied. The thematic focus was subdivided into eight major
themes: 1) curriculum, 2) teacher, 3) student, 4) pedagogical practices, 5)
school/community relations, 6) body, gender and sexuality, 7) biological knowledge
and 8) textbooks. The bibliometric indicators support the argument that the textual
mass, although heterogeneous, presents remarkable quality (high ranked journals
and programs), impact (frequent citation and few self-citation) and scientific
productivity (average of 78 publications for each one of the 113 authors). In a second
approach, content analysis was carried out, this time only of texts with an empirical
and interventional approach, excluding those with a bibliographic-documentary
approach. Thirty-two texts were analyzed and grouped according to the purpose of
the research: empirical or interventional. Then, excerpts illustrating the diversity of
approaches in gender and sexuality were selected. Of the eight approaches, only the
traditional was absent. All the other seven (biological-hygienist, religious, human
rights, sexual rights, emancipatory, queer and in-formative-pedagogical) had at least
one exemplar text; there was a higher incidence of the emancipatory and sexual
rights approaches. At the end, eleven clues are presented to think about possibilities
for further research and dialogue: A) not running away from biology, B) broadening
the notion of curriculum, C) teacher training, D) overcoming the dichotomy students
as objects, teachers as subjects, E) sources of information, F) the use of pleasures,
G) what can be defined as pedagogical practices? H) family and community, I)
biological knowledge, J) textbooks and K) bibliometric indicators. In conclusion,
considering the articulation between the concepts of gender and sexuality in the
texts analyzed, it is highlighted that they are complex concepts in the process of
cultural representation, and that the biological knowledge versus social/human
knowledge dichotomy is unsustainable for teaching purposes, or for Education in
Biology. Hence, a call to a Biology of natureculture is in order
|
