<b>The Concept of Biological/Ecological interaction: contributions to studies in Epistemology of Biology and Biology Education

Abstract

Epistemology of biology has been the subject of many discussions in the field of Science and Biology education. This study aimed to bring new elaborations to enrich these discussions, highlighting its importance and how this epistemology canbe inserted in Science and Biology education. The presented investigation is anchored on three main pillars:(i) some reflections on epistemologyof biology; (ii)the importance and vagueness of the concept of biological/ecological interaction in literature; (iii) the empirical investigation on epistemologyof biology by this research group. The semiotic analysis allowed us to infer that the research subjects: expressed to understand the importance, amplitude and centrality of this concept to the Biology Knowledge; evolved from a starting vision in which it was only understood the biological interactions with the external environment to one in which we start to understand the biological interactions in several levels of organization thus, advancing from a syncretic/abductive thinking to a deductive reasoning, going through the inductive one; and are concerned on how to teach the studied concept to their future students. This analysisallowed some reflections that can contribute to a creation of a solid epistemology of biology in its many contexts, with the main focus on initial teacher training.