The Philosophy of Education and technological representations research macroproject investigates how images, languages, devices and representational systems participate in the organization of knowledge in science and health education. Drawing on epistemological, semiotic and philosophical questions, the project examines how particular ways of representing a phenomenon make certain aspects cognitively available, leave others less visible and become part of the very processes through which students and teachers construct objects of knowledge.
Research question
How do representational systems, technologies and images model scientific and educational objects, participating in what can be perceived, interpreted and learned?
Status
Ongoing
Coordinator: Glaucio Aranha
Research group: CLASS
Representation and knowledge production
Diagrams, three-dimensional models, medical images, animations, infographics, videos and digital interfaces organize access to phenomena that often cannot be observed directly. By establishing relations among elements, scales, temporalities and categories, these representations participate in modelling the scientific object, providing culturally organized ways of perceiving and interpreting it. The project follows these processes while examining the epistemological and educational implications of the choices involved when a phenomenon is transformed into an image, narrative or device.
Cultural Semiotics and MASC
Cultural Semiotics, particularly the work of Yuri Lotman, provides one of the project’s theoretical foundations, supporting analyses of sign circulation, boundaries, translation, cultural memory and modelling. Within this framework, the Semiotic Analysis of Culture Model, MASC, has been developed as a methodological instrument for reconstructing relationships among records, expectations, interpretations and effects of meaning while preserving attention to the cultural contexts in which the analysed materials become intelligible.
Research axes
- epistemology and philosophy of science and health education;
- scientific images and visualization processes;
- semiosis, modelling and learning;
- mental imagery and the construction of scientific concepts;
- representational technologies and educational mediation;
- development and application of the Semiotic Analysis of Culture Model, MASC.
Related research
Related studies include investigations of mental imagery and semiosis in biology education, particularly the ways in which the sign Evolution circulates among school, cultural and media repertoires. The project also encompasses research on audiovisual materials, scientific images and visualization technologies, relating the construction of represented objects to processes of learning and meaning-making.
Institutional connections
The project is part of CLASS activities and is developed at the NUTES Institute of Science and Health Education at UFRJ, connecting media studies, semiotics, philosophy, cognition and science and health education.