Religious diversity and teacher education: a discussion based in Habermas’s views and a case at physics teaching

Abstract

Abstract

This article brings a discussion of the implications of religious diversity on science education as well as on teacher education. To orientate our discussion, we adopt as framework the ideas of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas on the political relationship that should govern relations between a naturalistic culture and different religious cultures. We also present a research with future teachers of physics, which aimed at investigating the positions taken by the future teachers towards non scientific models presented by students about the origins of the universe. We tried to identify, especially, the expectation of these future teachers would demonstrated about the contributing of the lifting of such models in class by students. We were able to find that most of them believe that the manifestation of these ideas could bring contributions to the discussion in the classroom. We also found that teaching practices based on communication, questioning and dialogue of the undergraduate course done by the prospective teachers has generated an ownership by the undergraduates of these practices and their potential application in other situations and other discussions, including inter-religious.