Extreme Weather Events: An Integrated Didactical Proposal to Discuss the Nature of Postnormal Science

Abstract

School science is an ideal environment to encourage students to theoretically reflect on various aspects of the scientific activity and of the responsibility that we should all be able to exercise as citizens to contribute to possible solutions to socioscientific problems, or to those related to “postnormal science”. In such problems, uncertainty cannot be eliminated because it is inherent to them; their treatment allows for in-depth analysis of the achievements and limitations of science. This chapter presents the theoretical foundations, with a strong emphasis on the epistemological aspects, upon which a teaching-learning sequence was developed to address “extreme weather events” in secondary school. It describes the implementation of the sequence and analyzes the results in terms of the evolution of students’ conceptions. Despite limitations during the implementation, the results are encouraging, showing that students acquired theoretical tools to make informed decisions and critically analyze the type of science that scientists have been conducting for decades.