THE HISTORIC EPISODE OF “RADIUM GIRLS” IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION
Radioactivity; Radium girls; historical-pedagogical narratives; Didactic sequence.
This master's degree focuses on the application of a didactic sequence on the historical episode of “Radium Girls”. An educational product aimed at students in the 9th year of Elementary School II in the Science discipline is proposed. It is a didactic transposition of the History of Science, based on the so-called three Pedagogical Moments, using historical-pedagogical narratives that report incidents involving young people hired to paint clock dials with radioactive paint at the beginning of the 20th century. Due to a lack of knowledge at the time about the dangers of radium, many of these workers developed serious health problems, leading to legal battles against the company they worked for. This didactic proposal can be used to address the complex interactions between science and society, as well as ethical and gender issues, helping students understand science in a more contextualized and critical way.