Abstracts Book - IMRC 2018

• SF7-O008
IMPORTANT PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS FOR MATERIALS
SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING`S STUDENTS
Ana Elisa Martinez del Rio 1 , Luis José Yudico Anaya 1 , Luis Alberto Bretado Aragon 1 , Ana Lilian
Rodriguez Villafuerte 2
1 Universidad de La Cienega del Estado de Michoacán de Ocampo, Nanotechnology, Mexico.
2 Instituto de Educación Media Superior del Distrito Federal, Plantel Gustavo A. Madero 2 -
Salvador Allende, Mexico.
The General Courses play a pivotal role in transmitting the fundamental values
(Respect, Responsibility, Honesty, Solidarity,…) and abilities (Critical Thinking,
Metacognition, Teamwork, Mathematical Thinking, Communication skills,…) to
our students. These values and abilities are part of the Vision and Mission of our
university (UCEMICH). Although we have maintained our values and our mission,
over the course of 10 years we have had to adapt the way in which these values
and skills are included in the curriculum. Thanks to the interaction between
pedagogues, philosophers, engineers and scientists we have been able to
introduce some important changes in the classic model of education (lecturecentric
knowledge dissemination). In this work we will review three sets of
strategies to promote three fundamental skills: Critical Thinking, Metacognition
and Written Communication Skills. These three strategies combine various
pedagogical and didactic resources with the philosophical approach of 1)
Aesthetics; 2) Ethics and 3) Politics.One way to summarize the objective of each
of these strategies is through some important philosophical questions that
every science student should be able to face. For example, many people are
concerned about a variety of environmental issues and say that “we” (scientists)
should do “something” about those issues. But what ethical/practical
assumptions underlie this “should”? Can that something be anything? The
answers to this question matter not only because we need to justify our actions,
but because different answers may imply different courses of action. Students
are expected to be autonomous in generating ideas for discussion and arguing
different sides in hypothetical cases in order to elucidate their complexity.
Acknowledgment:
We would like to express our gratitude and appreciation to Professor Juan
Manuel Gutierrez Vazquez. He led an important number of science and
educational projects; among them the creation of our university. He also led a
project in the 1970s to produce free natural science textbooks for all primary