Química e literatura na formação de professores

Abstract

This paper is focused on teacher training in chemistry and its multiple dimensions as well as the role played by the representations of chemistry and chemists in influencing their training. The intention here is to develop some ideas related to the diffusion of scientific knowledge and the representations in the chemistry field, considering the literary creation as reference, especially texts where chemistry and chemists appear as elements of confabulation. Finally, there are two examples inspired by some important works published in the nineteenth century, that show us how some stereotypes related to chemists have been developed, how they influence the representations of chemists and why chemistry has been seen as a “mad science”.