Scientific pedagogy as a method for science

Mudjadjo"

Scientific pedagogy is, above all, a pedagogy of thought and, as such, will be inserted in a dual perspective: education, understood as a philosophical, historical and social practice, and a critical perspective. Such reflections lead to the articulation of epistemology/scientific pedagogy and to the understanding of research as a creative and critical activity of producing new knowledge. For Freire (2005: 27), “We must have a new articulation between technology and education, what we would call a critical vision, that is, understanding technology beyond a mere artifact, recovering its human and social dimension”. This process should result in the understanding of scientific practice, interdisciplinary practice, the articulation of theory/practice and learning, integrating research/teaching in the process of knowledge production. In this way, the teacher or advisor exercises a dual pedagogical function: that of teaching and researching, and that of learning and teaching. Both are interconnected activities. According to Gaston Bachelard, epistemology and pedagogy intertwine to form an organic thought, which is renewed and does not conform to initial impressions, common sense data and the understanding of reality through non-scientific means. The pedagogical relationship involves human and psychological interactions, trust and intellectual respect. It develops from the teacher's interest in the intellectual, moral, ethical and scientific growth of the student and, as Bachelard points out, a desire for the student to surpass the teacher. Every teacher must train his disciples, but for this the student must have a good ability to question. Education lacks a critical dimension, which is gradually being lost due to rationality, academic bureaucracy, and control for the sake of control over practical instrumental knowledge that is not very intellectually stimulating. Academic and intellectual life require an emotional predisposition and, at the same time, a permanent restlessness, a critical and reflective imagination. Difficulty and discussion are part of the psychological dynamism of scientific research, and not only of research, but also of the pedagogy of science. Both the scientific work of research and its teaching require that researchers and educators create difficulties for themselves. The important thing is that they know how to create real difficulties and eliminate false obstacles or simply imaginary difficulties; students must feel a kind of appetite for difficult problems. Dogmatism deconstructs all creativity and generates mental paralysis. The teacher in scientific-pedagogical practice can be much less someone who teaches and more someone who awakens, stimulates, provokes, questions and allows himself to be questioned. This attitude allows for the establishment of collaborative, open and constructive pedagogical relationships. The affective and pedagogical environment will certainly encourage students to create, criticize, produce, innovate, research, etc. Formative pedagogy presupposes scientific training and a vocation for science. Such assumptions imply a change in culture in scientific practice and in pedagogical processes, in order to make pedagogy more scientific, and this more pedagogical. From this perspective, pedagogical practice must reflect scientific practice and vice versa. It follows that making science more pedagogical means using forms of pedagogy that position students as critical subjects, that problematize knowledge, that raise new questions, generating new challenges and new questions-problems-solutions, rectifying science and scientific methods. For science and the scientific spirit, all knowledge represents an answer to a doubt or question. It is the sense of doubt and problem that gives the mark of the true investigative spirit. If there are no problems, there are no answers. The scientific pedagogy discussed here seeks to stimulate in the student the capacity to be restless, to always ask new questions and to be in a permanent state of nonconformity with what is known, with so-called normal science and with established knowledge, because, for science, opinion represents a deconstruction. Scientific thought is also political thought: it refers to the use, that is, to the social utility of research. Thus, a research policy should also be a social policy. The multidisciplinary nature broadens the student's education and the exercise of complex thinking, allowing for the establishment of theoretical and methodological dialogues that are more appropriate for the production of knowledge. However, in order to think about teaching linked to research, it is necessary to reverse the logic of traditional teaching and integrate it with the logic of research. Integrating teaching and research presupposes a new relationship with the student and a new teaching condition. The student is the center of the pedagogical action. He or she must produce, reflect, observe, inquire and essentially acquire the training and basic actions of someone who investigates. Scientific culture must be placed in a state of permanent mobilization; closed and static knowledge must be replaced by more dynamic and open knowledge, ultimately offering reason and reasons to evolve. This pedagogical process can help the student develop his or her own intellectual autonomy, becoming an independent intellectual, capable of assuming scientific attitudes in his or her professional future. The discussion of scientific pedagogy and its epistemological bases aims to reflect on the practice of research and to present references for discussing a new pedagogy. Thus, it is of fundamental importance to develop practices and methodologies that lead students to think critically; to develop their own intellectual autonomy; to develop an attitude of searching, of learning in a continuous process based on dialectical thinking; to use concepts and new elaborations as an instrument for constructing and reconstructing new knowledge. Bachelard calls for an open reason; for a new pedagogical communication, for a continuous school throughout life; for permanent education; and for a pedagogy of the discontinuous and uncertain.

2025/12/3