História das mulheres no ensino de física: Harriet Brooks, narrativas históricas e educação humanística

Abstract

This paper investigates how the History of Science, from a critical perspective, can contribute to anti-oppressive science teaching in light of feminist epistemologies and feminist critiques of science. We develop a historical episode in which we present the academic trajectory of Canadian physicist Harriet Brooks and her contributions to the development of radioactivity in the first decade of the 20th century, using gender as a category of historical analysis. From a feminist perspective, we highlight aspects of the nature of science associated with gender issues, which are rarely present in science teaching despite being relevant to understanding how science develops. In the dimension of physics teaching, we build interfaces between the history of women in science and critical pedagogy, in which we seek to present aspects of the nature of science based on feminist epistemologies and present them in the form of two historical narratives grounded in the historical episode. Thus, the thesis can be identified as a work in the history of science, considering the construction of a historical episode and science teaching by proposing strategies on how to develop critical physics teaching, highlighting aspects of the nature of science.