The characteristics of national and international research on controversial themes in Science Education

Abstract In this paper, we analyze the qualitative databases of national and international research on controversial themes in Science Education. In methodological terms, we carefully examined 120 scientific publications by accessing the Proceedings of the editions of Encontro Nacional de Pesquisa em Educação em Ciências (ENPEC) (National Meeting of Research in Science Education) and the files of the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC). The research results indicated a disquieting gap in the production of knowledge related to Elementary Education, especially concerning the early years in both databases, as well as the concentration of controversies on topics in the area of Biology when compared to the areas of Physics and Chemistry. We also highlight the emergence of a new perspective of analysis, focusing on emotions, in a number of international papers, which may also constitute an issue of interest to national academic research in the future.