Some relationships between Biology’s autonomy and the emergence of its didactics: considerations about the complexity of teaching a complex science

Abstract: In this paper, we discuss some relations between the institutionalization of Biology as an autonomous science and the initial proposals that consider Biology’s didactics as a specific field of knowledge. We believe that Biology teaching shares many characteristics with the teaching of other sciences of nature, but those two didactics also differ in several respects. In this way, we claim that those specific features of Biology as science (like epistemological status of science of living things) have important implications in the field of Biology´s Didactics. In this regard, we appeal to some authors who have put in mind the necessity to recognize which those would be, and then, consider the qualities that make Biology as a different science to, for example, physics and chemistry. We have also taken up some ideas of certain authors who distinguish between Biology´s teaching from teaching of another natural sciences.