Epistemological Contextualization of Science Conceptions of Science Teachers from a Christian Tradition's School and Implications for Science Teaching

The purpose of the research presented in this paper was to identify the science conceptions held by science teachers in a Christian school. The study focused on three teachers who taught natural science, physics, and chemistry at the Adventist School of Feira de Santana, Bahia, Brazil. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews about science conceptions using a method adapted from previous research of William W. Cobern. Using the interview data, a first-person, interpretive narrative was constructed for each of the three teachers. Assertions were then developed from the narratives. The data were categorized as assertions and the analysis of the results indicate that the teachers have a conceptual mix regarding the term science, which is sometimes relativist, sometimes pluralist from an epistemological point of view. This work has great importance once the analysis of the conceptions of the sciences' teachers allowed us to analyze the nature of the sciences they teach and allow us to reflect about the construction of scientific knowledge in the classroom. This may open doors for further studies.