Patterson and Kehoe’s historical case for understanding science-technology-society and social Justice

This paper presents a didactic proposal focused on a possibility for critically understanding the relationships between Science, Technology, and Society (STS) from a Social Justice perspective. The study was implemented in secondary school chemistry with 10th-grade students (13–14 years old) in the Colombian context. The topic addressed the historical controversy between Calir Patterson and Robert Kehoe regarding the distinction between Natural and Typical regarding lead concentrations in the environment. This controversy highlighted fundamental questions about how science defines environmental safety standards and whose interests those definitions serve. Methodologically, we resorted to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and the qualitative tool called ‘Epistemic Networks (ENA)’, using content analysis techniques and semi-structured interviews. From the evaluation of the didactic proposal, the pedagogical value of the historical case analyzed was highlighted, emphasizing the importance of recognizing the political dimension of science education. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate how the explicit and reflexive use of the history of science shows that it puts students in a participatory attitude, since it involves knowledge of history, sociology and philosophy of science and technology in the analysis of phenomena and their implications and applications both social and personal in students.