THE POPULARIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE AS A FORM OF INTERACTION BETWEEN THE ACADEMY AND SOCIETY

Abstract

The popularization of knowledge according to the portal of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico – CNPq) is an action that discloses scientific and technological results of research beyond the academy, reaching society through the dissemination of information to a wide audience, with appropriate language and directed to this end. When looking at this practice in the context of Community Institutions of Higher Education (ICES) it is observed that this can be a path for dialogue between academia and society, considering that the search for this approach has been a fact which is present in planning institutional framework of the ICES. Thus, the methodological path to observe the popularization of knowledge of the results of scientific research at a community university considered the responses presented by researchers for a structured questionnaire on the topic. The data were explored based on the discursive textual analysis, following the precepts of Bacellar (2005) and Moraes and Galiazzi (2011). In addition, the categories for interpreting the questionnaire were established by the authors of the article, identified as: domain of the concept about popularization of knowledge; interest in the topic; the practices of popularization of knowledge; the existing challenges and the understanding of the results that this activity can provide. These categories are placed in relation to three dimensions of analysis for higher education institutions, proposed by McCowan (2018): value, function and interaction. With these interfaces, a System for Popularization of Scientific Knowledge from Universities to Society is proposed.