Brazilian Scientific productivity presented a remarkable growth during the last two decades, as inferred by the number of articles published by Brazilian authors. The number of Brazilian secondary students also grew sharply. Together, those factors lead to a scenario in which there is an increase science produced locally, a great demand for information but a paucity of resources to make it available for the youth. We have evaluated by using quantitative and qualitative approaches the potential of societal meetings as opportunities for science education. Students acquire scientific knowledge and also autonomously develop consistent strategies for choosing and attending activities to maximize their learning. Those results suggest that scientific meetings may represent an underestimated potential for science education in developing countries

Costa Maria, C.

Longo Marques, M.

Luz Roberto Motta Pinto, M.

Oliveira Aguiar, G.

Enseñanza de las Ciencias Revista de investigación y experiencias didácticas

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

SCIENTIFIC SOCIETAL MEETINGS AS OPPORTUNITIES FOR
SCIENCE EDUATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
LUZ ROBERTO MOTTA PINTO, M. (1); LONGO MARQUES, M. (2); OLIVEIRA AGUIAR, G. (3)
y COSTA MARIA, C. (4)
(1) Laboratório de Avaliação em Ensino e Filosofia das Biociências.  mauluz@ioc.fiocruz.br
(2) Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. michele@ioc.fiocruz.br
(3) Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. gao_br@yahoo.com.br
(4) Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. celcosta_cap@yahoo.com.br
Resumen
Brazilian Scientific productivity presented a remarkable growth during the last two decades, as inferred by
the number of articles published by Brazilian authors. The number of Brazilian secondary students also grew
sharply. Together, those factors lead to a scenario in which there is an increase science produced locally, a
great demand for information but a paucity of resources to make it available for the youth. We have
evaluated by using quantitative and qualitative approaches the potential of societal meetings as opportunities
for science education. Students acquire scientific knowledge and also autonomously develop consistent
strategies for choosing and attending activities to maximize their learning. Those results suggest that
scientific meetings may represent an underestimated potential for science education in developing countries.
    
Objectives 
  
We evaluated the feasibility of using the Meeting of the Brazilian Society on Experimental Biology as an
opportunity to develop science education programs for high school students. The program consisted of
lectures presented exclusively for high school students by researchers. Students could also freely participate
from the meetings regular activities.  We have characterized student’s strategies to overcome difficulties
VIII CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE INVESTIGACIÓN EN LA DIDÁCTICA DE LAS CIENCIAS (ISSN 0212-4521)
http://ensciencias.uab.es
pág 3139
during the meeting as well as their learning of scientific information. The results show that the program was
successful and may represent a low cost alternative for science education to be developed in other
countries.
  
Background
  
Brazilian scientific performance in biomedical research has experienced a remarkable growth in the last
decades, resulting in greater proportion of papers published in international journals (Leta et al, 2005).
Concomitantly, the proportion of Brazilian students who enter high-school also grew. There is thus a situation
where a scientific knowledge is produced locally in association  with a large demand for such knowledge by
students. Low-cost and effective strategies to disseminate scientific knowledge in Brazil are thus strongly
needed. Theses initiatives could promote the access of socio-economic excluded students to the scientific
knowledge and also contribute to the integration of individuals in the society of knowledge. 
  
Societal meetings were considered as specially interesting opportunities for science educational s they
gather on a single place most of the researchers and graduates students working on a scientific field. We
report here the results obtained in the evaluation of a program of science education (Youth and Science in
the Future program - YSF) developed for secondary students during the Annual Meeting of the Brazilian
Federation of Experimental Biology Societies (FeSBE). 
  
 
  
 
  
Methods
  
Students from two schools (S1 and S2) joined the YSF program. S1 is one of Brazil´s best performing high
schools located it’s second largest city (Rio   de Janeiro) while S2 was the only high school located at the
small city where the meeting occurred. 
  
The YSF program occurred during the FeSBE meetings and consisted of two types of activities. The specific
activity was a course on the topic of “Inflammation” presented exclusively for secondary students by a
researcher. Ordinary Activities were those usually presented in the Meeting, as follows: ordinary courses
(CO) and poster sessions (PS). 
  
The methods for evaluating the program used in the present work were essentially the same described in
detail in a previous study (Oliveira et al. 2001). Students were asked to anonymously fill simple Follow-Up
Questionnaires (FQ) to evaluate each activity using multiple-choice questions containing three written
options for their comprehension (understandable, difficult but understandable and not understandable) and
their interest (very interesting, interesting and not interesting). A transformation of answers to number for
allowing statistical analysis was performed by assigning an integer from 1 to 3 to the options available for
understanding and interest. Students were also asked to freely summarize in a few lines the most important
information that they believed to have acquired during each activity. 
  
Eight months after the Meeting students filled the After Meeting Questionnaires (AMQ) aimed at evaluating
VIII CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE INVESTIGACIÓN EN LA DIDÁCTICA DE LAS CIENCIAS (ISSN 0212-4521)
http://ensciencias.uab.es
pág 3140
the acquisition of information during the program (Oliveira e cols.,2001). In brief, students were asked to
summarize the information that they believed to have learned during each activity attended. Students’
answers to AMQ were compared with abstracts available in the Meeting Annals and with their own
summaries written on the FQ. Learning was considered to occur when the contents of answers in AMQ and
the contents of any of the two other sources were compatible. 
  
The difficulty of the vocabulary of posters titles was evaluated by counting the words considered to be
unknown to secondary students by at least two researchers from our group.
  
Results and Discussion
  
Although there were no differences in age or gender distribution between students of S1 and S2, those from
S2 belonged to families with lower educational backgrounds (Table 1) and family incomes (Figure 1). That
allowed the evaluation of the YSF adequacy for low-income students which are the majority in the Brazilian
educational system.
 
  
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Students’ evaluation of their understanding and interest during the activities were mostly positive with
average values above mostly higher than two (Figure 2). For S1 students both the understanding and the
interest for ordinary courses (four different courses were attended) was greater than for the specific one
(Figure 2A). That suggests that freedom to choose subjects of interest seems to counterbalance the
adaptation of vocabulary and contents by the presenter to secondary students in the SCO. Such differences
were not observed for S2 students (Figure 2B) as their evaluations were homogenously higher, regardless of
the activity attended. As they came from very low income families with little access to educational activities
besides formal teaching, it is likely that they were somewhat overwhelmed by the opportunity to join the YSF.
VIII CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE INVESTIGACIÓN EN LA DIDÁCTICA DE LAS CIENCIAS (ISSN 0212-4521)
http://ensciencias.uab.es
pág 3142
   
 It is likely that S1 students seem to choose posters by the potential simplicity of their titles prior to each
session, as judged by the fact that there are significantly less difficult words and specific vocabulary in the
titles of attended posters in relation to unattended ones (table 2). Such differences were not observed among
the titles of posters attended by students from S2 (table 2) that probably attended to posters chosen
randomly or without criteria based on their potential difficulties. 
  
VIII CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE INVESTIGACIÓN EN LA DIDÁCTICA DE LAS CIENCIAS (ISSN 0212-4521)
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 The results obtained eight months after the Meeting show that students were able to learn during all the
activities (Figure 3). The majority of the students recalled updated information on the subjects presented
during the two types of courses and no differences in learning were observed between specific and ordinary
courses or between students from S1 and S2. The results on learning in poster sessions were more modest,
but are also noteworthy if one keep in mind that the presentations are quite short and deal with many
different subjects. The apparent random choice of posters by S2 students may have hampered their
learning. In further editions it would be important to help develop low-income students’  to develop strategies
for choosing the activities to attend, perhaps by bringing students from both schools in closer contact. 
 
  
The YSF was an effective way to bring up-to-date biological subjects to students. Further studies are needed
to investigate factors that contribute or hamper students learning during the YSF. 
VIII CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE INVESTIGACIÓN EN LA DIDÁCTICA DE LAS CIENCIAS (ISSN 0212-4521)
http://ensciencias.uab.es
pág 3144
  
Three goals are commonly emphasized on discussions on how to orientate science education: learning
science, learning about science and doing science (Hodson 1992, Gil-Pérez, 1996). The YSF brought the
students in contact with Science in the making as they learned about research results presented in societal
meetings by scientists. It gave them an opportunity to know a usually inaccessible part of the work of “doing
science”.  They were also free to choose the activities to be attended based on their own criteria. By doing
so they sometimes improved their learning (as in the case of posters sessions for S1 students). The YSF and
similar programs may thus offer the students opportunities to “enable self directed ownership of learning”
allowing “small groups to operate independently” and to provide “access to the process by which scientists
have generated new knowledge” (Griffin, 1998). 
  
 
  
References
  
 
  
1.      Gil-Pérez, D. (1996) New trends in science education. Int. J. Sci. Educ. 18(8): 889-901
  
2.      Griffin, J. (1998) Learning science through practical experiences in museums International Journal of
Science Education 20(6): 655-663.
  
3.      Hodson, D. (1992) In search for a meaningful relationship: an exploration of some issues relating to the
integration in science and science education International Journal of Science Education 14(5): 541-566
  
4.      Leta, J., Pereira, J. C. R. and Chaimovich, H. (2005) The Life Sciences: the relative contribution of the
University of São Paulo to the highest impact factor journals and to those with the largest number of articles,
1980 to 1999. Scientometrics 63: 599-616
  
5.      Oliveira, G.A., Torres, R. A., Sousa, C.R., Da Poian, A.T. and Luz. M.R.M.P. (2001) A short term
program of science education based on the participation of high school students in a Brazilian international
conference on experimental biology. Journal of Biological Education 36 (1):16-20
  
 
  
CITACIÓN
LUZ, M.; LONGO, M.; OLIVEIRA, G. y COSTA, C. (2009). Scientific societal meetings as opportunities for science
eduation in developing countries. Enseñanza de las Ciencias, Número Extra VIII Congreso Internacional sobre
Investigación en Didáctica de las Ciencias, Barcelona, pp. 3139-3145
http://ensciencias.uab.es/congreso09/numeroextra/art-3139-3145.pdf
VIII CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE INVESTIGACIÓN EN LA DIDÁCTICA DE LAS CIENCIAS (ISSN 0212-4521)
http://ensciencias.uab.es
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Scientific societal meetings as opportunities for science eduation in developing countries

Diposit Digital de Documents de la UAB

SCIENTIFIC SOCIETAL MEETINGS AS OPPORTUNITIES FORSCIENCE EDUATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIESLUZ ROBERTO MOTTA PINTO, M. (1); LONGO MARQUES, M. (2); OLIVEIRA AGUIAR, G. (3)y COSTA MARIA, C. (4)(1) Laboratório de Avaliação em Ensino e Filosofia das Biociências.  mauluz@ioc.fiocruz.br(2) Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. michele@ioc.fiocruz.br(3) Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. gao_br@yahoo.com.br(4) Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. celcosta_cap@yahoo.com.brResumenBrazilian Scientific productivity presented a remarkable growth during the last two decades, as inferred bythe number of articles published by Brazilian authors. The number of Brazilian secondary students also grewsharply. Together, those factors lead to a scenario in which there is an increase science produced locally, agreat demand for information but a paucity of resources to make it available for the youth. We haveevaluated by using quantitative and qualitative approaches the potential of societal meetings as opportunitiesfor science education. Students acquire scientific knowledge and also autonomously develop consistentstrategies for choosing and attending activities to maximize their learning. Those results suggest thatscientific meetings may represent an underestimated potential for science education in developing countries.    Objectives   We evaluated the feasibility of using the Meeting of the Brazilian Society on Experimental Biology as anopportunity to develop science education programs for high school students. The program consisted oflectures presented exclusively for high school students by researchers. Students could also freely participatefrom the meetings regular activities.  We have characterized student’s strategies to overcome difficultiesVIII CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE INVESTIGACIÓN EN LA DIDÁCTICA DE LAS CIENCIAS (ISSN 0212-4521)http://ensciencias.uab.espág 3139during the meeting as well as their learning of scientific information. The results show that the program wassuccessful and may represent a low cost alternative for science education to be developed in othercountries.  Background  Brazilian scientific performance in biomedical research has experienced a remarkable growth in the lastdecades, resulting in greater proportion of papers published in international journals (Leta et al, 2005).Concomitantly, the proportion of Brazilian students who enter high-school also grew. There is thus a situationwhere a scientific knowledge is produced locally in association  with a large demand for such knowledge bystudents. Low-cost and effective strategies to disseminate scientific knowledge in Brazil are thus stronglyneeded. Theses initiatives could promote the access of socio-economic excluded students to the scientificknowledge and also contribute to the integration of individuals in the society of knowledge.   Societal meetings were considered as specially interesting opportunities for science educational s theygather on a single place most of the researchers and graduates students working on a scientific field. Wereport here the results obtained in the evaluation of a program of science education (Youth and Science inthe Future program - YSF) developed for secondary students during the Annual Meeting of the BrazilianFederation of Experimental Biology Societies (FeSBE).         Methods  Students from two schools (S1 and S2) joined the YSF program. S1 is one of Brazil´s best performing highschools located it’s second largest city (Rio   de Janeiro) while S2 was the only high school located at thesmall city where the meeting occurred.   The YSF program occurred during the FeSBE meetings and consisted of two types of activities. The specificactivity was a course on the topic of “Inflammation” presented exclusively for secondary students by aresearcher. Ordinary Activities were those usually presented in the Meeting, as follows: ordinary courses(CO) and poster sessions (PS).   The methods for evaluating the program used in the present work were essentially the same described indetail in a previous study (Oliveira et al. 2001). Students were asked to anonymously fill simple Follow-UpQuestionnaires (FQ) to evaluate each activity using multiple-choice questions containing three writtenoptions for their comprehension (understandable, difficult but understandable and not understandable) andtheir interest (very interesting, interesting and not interesting). A transformation of answers to number forallowing statistical analysis was performed by assigning an integer from 1 to 3 to the options available forunderstanding and interest. Students were also asked to freely summarize in a few lines the most importantinformation that they believed to have acquired during each activity.   Eight months after the Meeting students filled the After Meeting Questionnaires (AMQ) aimed at evaluatingVIII CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE INVESTIGACIÓN EN LA DIDÁCTICA DE LAS CIENCIAS (ISSN 0212-4521)http://ensciencias.uab.espág 3140the acquisition of information during the program (Oliveira e cols.,2001). In brief, students were asked tosummarize the information that they believed to have learned during each activity attended. Students’answers to AMQ were compared with abstracts available in the Meeting Annals and with their ownsummaries written on the FQ. Learning was considered to occur when the contents of answers in AMQ andthe contents of any of the two other sources were compatible.   The difficulty of the vocabulary of posters titles was evaluated by counting the words considered to beunknown to secondary students by at least two researchers from our group.  Results and Discussion  Although there were no differences in age or gender distribution between students of S1 and S2, those fromS2 belonged to families with lower educational backgrounds (Table 1) and family incomes (Figure 1). Thatallowed the evaluation of the YSF adequacy for low-income students which are the majority in the Brazilianeducational system.   VIII CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE INVESTIGACIÓN EN LA DIDÁCTICA DE LAS CIENCIAS (ISSN 0212-4521)http://ensciencias.uab.espág 3141  Students’ evaluation of their understanding and interest during the activities were mostly positive withaverage values above mostly higher than two (Figure 2). For S1 students both the understanding and theinterest for ordinary courses (four different courses were attended) was greater than for the specific one(Figure 2A). That suggests that freedom to choose subjects of interest seems to counterbalance theadaptation of vocabulary and contents by the presenter to secondary students in the SCO. Such differenceswere not observed for S2 students (Figure 2B) as their evaluations were homogenously higher, regardless ofthe activity attended. As they came from very low income families with little access to educational activitiesbesides formal teaching, it is likely that they were somewhat overwhelmed by the opportunity to join the YSF.VIII CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE INVESTIGACIÓN EN LA DIDÁCTICA DE LAS CIENCIAS (ISSN 0212-4521)http://ensciencias.uab.espág 3142    It is likely that S1 students seem to choose posters by the potential simplicity of their titles prior to eachsession, as judged by the fact that there are significantly less difficult words and specific vocabulary in thetitles of attended posters in relation to unattended ones (table 2). Such differences were not observed amongthe titles of posters attended by students from S2 (table 2) that probably attended to posters chosenrandomly or without criteria based on their potential difficulties.   VIII CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE INVESTIGACIÓN EN LA DIDÁCTICA DE LAS CIENCIAS (ISSN 0212-4521)http://ensciencias.uab.espág 3143 The results obtained eight months after the Meeting show that students were able to learn during all theactivities (Figure 3). The majority of the students recalled updated information on the subjects presentedduring the two types of courses and no differences in learning were observed between specific and ordinarycourses or between students from S1 and S2. The results on learning in poster sessions were more modest,but are also noteworthy if one keep in mind that the presentations are quite short and deal with manydifferent subjects. The apparent random choice of posters by S2 students may have hampered theirlearning. In further editions it would be important to help develop low-income students’  to develop strategiesfor choosing the activities to attend, perhaps by bringing students from both schools in closer contact.    The YSF was an effective way to bring up-to-date biological subjects to students. Further studies are neededto investigate factors that contribute or hamper students learning during the YSF. VIII CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE INVESTIGACIÓN EN LA DIDÁCTICA DE LAS CIENCIAS (ISSN 0212-4521)http://ensciencias.uab.espág 3144  Three goals are commonly emphasized on discussions on how to orientate science education: learningscience, learning about science and doing science (Hodson 1992, Gil-Pérez, 1996). The YSF brought thestudents in contact with Science in the making as they learned about research results presented in societalmeetings by scientists. It gave them an opportunity to know a usually inaccessible part of the work of “doingscience”.  They were also free to choose the activities to be attended based on their own criteria. By doingso they sometimes improved their learning (as in the case of posters sessions for S1 students). The YSF andsimilar programs may thus offer the students opportunities to “enable self directed ownership of learning”allowing “small groups to operate independently” and to provide “access to the process by which scientistshave generated new knowledge” (Griffin, 1998).      References     1.      Gil-Pérez, D. (1996) New trends in science education. Int. J. Sci. Educ. 18(8): 889-901  2.      Griffin, J. (1998) Learning science through practical experiences in museums International Journal ofScience Education 20(6): 655-663.  3.      Hodson, D. (1992) In search for a meaningful relationship: an exploration of some issues relating to theintegration in science and science education International Journal of Science Education 14(5): 541-566  4.      Leta, J., Pereira, J. C. R. and Chaimovich, H. (2005) The Life Sciences: the relative contribution of theUniversity of São Paulo to the highest impact factor journals and to those with the largest number of articles,1980 to 1999. Scientometrics 63: 599-616  5.      Oliveira, G.A., Torres, R. A., Sousa, C.R., Da Poian, A.T. and Luz. M.R.M.P. (2001) A short termprogram of science education based on the participation of high school students in a Brazilian internationalconference on experimental biology. Journal of Biological Education 36 (1):16-20     CITACIÓNLUZ, M.; LONGO, M.; OLIVEIRA, G. y COSTA, C. (2009). Scientific societal meetings as opportunities for scienceeduation in developing countries. Enseñanza de las Ciencias, Número Extra VIII Congreso Internacional sobreInvestigación en Didáctica de las Ciencias, Barcelona, pp. 3139-3145http://ensciencias.uab.es/congreso09/numeroextra/art-3139-3145.pdfVIII CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE INVESTIGACIÓN EN LA DIDÁCTICA DE LAS CIENCIAS (ISSN 0212-4521)http://ensciencias.uab.espág 3145

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Scientific societal meetings as opportunities for science eduation in developing countries

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