“The railroad worker’s disease”: a historical narrative and its potentialities to explore nature of science aspects

Abstract

The inclusion of the nature of science (NOS) in science curricula has become a concern since NOS can contribute to the formation of scientifically literate individuals. We present a historical narrative, which contains episodes associated with the description of the Chagas’ disease and that allows exploring NOS aspects, as well as other scientific contents. The historical narrative was validated by critical peer reading and its application in several educational contexts, in an effort to make it clearer and more coherent given the lack of didactic materials with a historical and investigative approach. The set of 13 “think questions” presented in the historical narrative indicate points for hypothesis elaboration, discussion,
and communication, potentiating active learning, through engagement and deepening the understanding of scientific concepts and of the science in a broader way. The historical narrative is fully presented here, for use by high school teachers, with indications of complementary materials accessible in the same issue of this publication. We also show a brief reflection on the skills present in the National Curricular Common Base (Brasil, 2017) with which the historical narrative dialogues.