ENEM: abordagens sobre vacinas em uma década de provas de ciências da natureza e suas tecnologias.

Abstract

With the arrival of a new pandemic outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), the entire population has been affected in terms of how the topic of vaccines has been approached. In the context of education, scientific literacy enables the critical development of students, allowing them to be inclusive in social practice and possess the ability to judge data, understanding the interactions between science, technology, society, and the environment. Scientific literacy is central to the ENEM (Brazilian National High School Exam), which annually selects students for higher education through tests that analyze their ability to understand and transform the world using scientific knowledge. This work aimed to analyze how the topic of vaccines has been addressed in the Natural Sciences sections of the ENEM over the last decade, investigating its relationship with the principles of scientific literacy and the Science, Technology, Society, and Environment (STSE) perspective. The analysis was conducted using a mixed-methods approach (qualitative and quantitative), considering the nature of the data, in an exploratory and descriptive research. The analysis approach derived from the content applied during the years of the exam, questioning the validity of the content and its relationship with the scientific literacy of the students. The topic of vaccines has been present in all 5 editions of the National High School Exam (ENEM) in the last 10 years, but its occurrence is sporadic and not systematic. A predominance of conceptual approaches, centered on biological mechanisms of immune response, is observed, with less incidence of socio-scientific problematizations that articulate science, ethics, public policies, and collective responsibility. Therefore, this work highlights the need for greater articulation between external evaluation, school curriculum, and contemporary social demands, especially regarding the topic of vaccines. The ENEM presents significant potential to contribute to the critical formation of students in relation to the topic of vaccines, however, this potential is still only partially explored.