Ciência, gênero, sexualidade e religião: alianças, tensões e conflitos no ensino de Biologia

Abstract

This research is part of the Education in Science and Mathematics line of the Doctoral degree of the Graduate Program in Education at the Federal University of Uberlândia. From then on, we consider both the concern, raised in our master's degree research, about the intertwining between scientific and religious discourses, produced by undergraduate students in Biological Sciences, using the approach of sexuality and gender, as well as the readings that we have accomplished in our group research, GPECS, of the Brazilian social context of the 21st century. The questions chosed for the research were: which are the interlacing produced from religious and biological discourses in the debate about sexuality in the school space? What alliances, conflicts and tensions are constitutive of these interlacing? How do Biology teachers and high school students position themselves in the face of these intertwines? The main intention was to investigate the intertwining between the religious and scientific discourses that cross the debate over sexuality and gender mobilized by Biology teachers and high school students, as well as the alliances, conflicts and tensions witch constitute these discourses. We also look for analyze the discourses about sexuality and gender mobilized by Biology teachers and high school students from a public school in the state of Uberlândia-MG, in addition to discuss and problematize the possible alliances, conflicts and tensions established in the sexuality, gender relationship, science and religion, by these Biology teachers and high school students. We start from the assumptions that the multiplicity conditions of beings is a challenge for the norms and models dictated as valid and to be followed by school and society; witch science, sexuality device, gender and religion, combine in the organization of relationships and ways of life, permeated by cognitive, cultural, political and educational conflicts. 5 biology teachers and 55 students collaborated with this investigation. For the production of information with the teachers, a semi-structured interview was conducted and a discussion group was developed. Workshops were held with the students. The concept of sexuality was treated based on Michel Foucault and authors who investigate and work in the sexuality field, gender and education studies, whose contributions are based on this philosopher, in the gender studies of matrix post-structuralist and in studies by feminist biologists that allowed us to think and move Biology to epistemological constructions that consider historicity and participation politics of this the production of human subjects field, their bodies and their existences. Our analytical corpus reveals that discourses of science and religion come together to say about the cult of the healthy body, of the risk represented by the practice of sex, which can make the body sick and divert the soul from salvation. These speeches also reveal the reaffirmation of heterosexuality as a standard and the denial of a sexuality typical of children. The refusal of the school as a space for the discussion about sexuality and gender to/or attempts to control when and to whom these are addressed discussions are the biggest point of conflict between science and religion in Biology Education. The tension between these alliances and conflicts points to possibilities to think in Biology as a space of resistance and assumption as a field of study of sexuality and gender outside the dictates of heterosexuality as a standard, the medicalization of bodies and the binary gender model.