I. A. Costa, C. Morais, M. J. P. F. G. Monteiro

Abstract
It is common to consider an attitude as a hypothetical construct related to a tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favour or disfavour. In the case of attitudes toward science, these cannot be isolated from the understanding of science processes: the path to produce, refute and change knowledge. Thus, it is critical to promote public engagement with science-astronomy and technology (PESaT) with the goal of understanding contents, but also of understanding what science is and how it is built. In this context CoAstro: @n Astronomy Condo emerged – a citizen science project that starts with the involvement of elementary school teachers with the Research Group on the “Origin and Evolution of Stars and Planets” at the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA). CoAstro has directly reached about a thousand participants (including students, parents, astronomers and science disseminators). To study teachers’ attitudes and epistemological beliefs towards science, as well as to analyse any changes promoted by CoAstro, a semi-structured interview (EAC) based on the Scientific Attitude Instrument and on the Nature of Scientific Knowledge Scale was prepared. After the translation of these instruments into Portuguese, scientific and linguistic validation by experts was made. The EAC was performed before (EI) and after (EII) the development of the CoAstro. It involved 9 elementary teachers (8 females and 1 male, with an average age of 44.8 years) with no degree in science and who volunteered to participate in CoAstro. The results show that there has been an increase of interest in astronomy that can be substantiated, namely by: i) a greater demand for news, motivated by intrinsic pleasure in astronomy (and not merely by professional necessity, as happened in EI) that became a more intelligible science; ii) a greater interest in seminars, classes or lectures; iii) an increase of interest in citizen science projects. On the other hand, teachers considered to be more knowledgeable about science, allowing them to make greater use of this knowledge in their daily lives and to assess claims about science. Epistemological beliefs data reveal that the time between EI and EII reinforced the conviction: i) that it is possible to judge the applications of scientific knowledge, but not knowledge itself; ii) that creativity is associated with science, essentially at the beginning of the scientific process; iii) that repeatability and consistency of results are conditions for the validation of scientific knowledge; vi) the strong relationship between the various scientific fields. For teachers, since EI, scientific knowledge is provisional and a consequence of its predecessor. The concept of parsimony that was completely strange to teachers has come to be understood, but the tendency to consider scientific knowledge parsimonious is not univocal. Analysing the evolution of teachers´ attitudes and epistemological beliefs will help to better assess CoAstro, by measuring the relevance of a citizen science project (which combines remote interactions with systematic bilateral interactions) for a more holistic awareness and understanding of knowledge and scientific processes in Astronomy.

Keywords
Citizen science, science communication, epistemological belief, attitudes towards science

Education and New Developments 2020
Mafalda Carmo

inScience Press, Page 113
2020 June

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