The purpose of this study was to investigate the meanings of quality attributed by secondary teachers to science education. The study was based in a focal group with nine science teachers from public and private schools of Rio de Janeiro. The discourse analysis was oriented by Wertsch's sociocultural perspective, which integrates the fundamental concepts of Bakhtin's philosophy of language. An inventory of the perspectives on quality in the teachers' discourse was done and their dialogue with different social languages. Despite the differences between educational contexts and between the social languages used by the teachers, we can point to the recurrent meaning of lack of quality, attributed by all the teachers to scientific education. Thus, teachers enunciate what the supposed quality would be through a discourse on its lack. We identified tensions that problematize the perspectives of quality related to curriculum, teachers' work, learning, technologies and educational policies.
Science education; Teachers; Discourse analysis; Quality of teaching