Territorialized scientific literacy

School-based inquiry and the production of knowledge about the city

Abstract

This article investigates how ninth-grade students mobilize practices of scientific literacy while examining urban issues and territorial identities in the city of Guarulhos (SP), Brazil. The study analyzes productions developed within the context of the school-based scientific initiation project Fome de quê?, carried out over the course of an academic year in a private school. The research adopts a qualitative approach of an analytical-interpretive nature, using as its dataset research reports written by student groups and a collective photobook produced during fieldwork conducted in the city. These productions are understood as artifacts of school investigative practice, in which forms of territorial problematization, mobilization of evidence, and the construction of interpretations about urban reality are inscribed. The analysis was conducted through iterative and comparative readings of the materials, considering the articulation between different registers of representation mobilized in the students’ productions. The results indicate that the scientific literacy developed in the project assumes a territorialized character and is organized into five interdependent dimensions: territorial problematization of inquiry, an ecology of evidence in school-based investigation, critical reading of the territory, mobilization of languages as investigative practice, and the public circulation of knowledge. These dimensions reveal that students transform urban experiences into investigable problems, articulate diverse forms of evidence, and produce critical interpretations of the city. Based on this analysis, the study proposes an analytical model of territorialized scientific literacy, contributing to the understanding of how territory-oriented investigative practices can articulate school knowledge, critical reading of reality, and knowledge production in Basic Education.