NATURAL SCIENCE EDUCATION AND CHILDREN'S LITERATURE: WHAT DO RECENT STUDIES SAY?

Abstract

Fostering scientific literacy among students at the beginning of basic education requires attention to specific factors; after all, the process of grasping scientific concepts during childhood necessitates taking the child's unique characteristics into account. To align the goal of scientific literacy with the world of childhood, integrating natural sciences with children's literature within pedagogical practice is a valuable approach. This theoretical study aimed to investigate how the relationship between children's literature and natural science education has been addressed in academia and how this integration can contribute to the scientific literacy process of children in the early years of elementary school. To this end, a literature review was conducted to examine how this relationship is treated in recent scientific output, mapping articles from the CAPES Journal Portal published between 2015 and 2025. The results indicate, albeit to a limited extent, that there is a discussion regarding the use of children's literature in natural science classes to promote scientific literacy, with a focus on studies addressing pedagogical practice and the development of methodological tools for this approach.