Guadalupe Martínez

Design and Validation of a Teaching Sequence Based on Concept Maps to Achieve Meaningful Learning of Science Content in Primary Education

A comparative study was conducted between a traditional methodology for teaching scientific contents and an experimental methodology based on the construction of a didactic sequence using concept maps as a resource for teaching-learning. Four groups of students aged 9–10 were selected, two acting as Control Groups and two as Experimental Groups. The objective was to find out the differences between the selected educational methods, in terms of the learning that 4th grade students acquire. The results showed a higher degree of effectiveness on the teaching methods used in the EG against the methods used in the CG. Students in the CG did not remember on the long term the contents taught in a traditional way, which seems related to rote learning. By contrast, students using concept maps had a more meaningful learning. In conclusion, concept maps are an important resource for improving the acquisition of scientific knowledge in primary education.

Design, development, testing and validation of a Photonics Virtual Laboratory for the study of LEDs

This work presents the design, development, testing and validation of a Photonic Virtual Laboratory, highlighting the study of LEDs. The study was conducted from a conceptual, experimental and didactic standpoint, using e-learning and m-learning platforms. Specifically, teaching tools that help ensure that our students perform significant learning have been developed. It has been brought together the scientific aspect, such as the study of LEDs, with techniques of generation and transfer of knowledge through the selection, hierarchization and structuring of information using concept maps. For the validation of the didactic materials developed, it has been used procedures with various assessment tools for the collection and processing of data, applied in the context of an experimental design. Additionally, it was performed a statistical analysis to determine the validity of the materials developed. The assessment has been designed to validate the contributions of the new materials developed over the traditional method of teaching, and to quantify the learning achieved by students, in order to draw conclusions that serve as a reference for its application in the teaching and learning processes, and comprehensively validate the work carried out.

Dificultades del Aprendizaje sobre el principio de Arquímedes en el contexto de la Flotación

El proposito de este articulo es describir la construccion y validacion de un test de seleccion multiple con una unica respuesta para identificar las ideas alternativas de los estudiantes de secundaria y bachillerato sobre el empuje en el contexto de la flotacion. Como referente se ha tomado la teoria clasica del test, ademas describimos las ideas alternativas encontradas durante el proceso de construccion de las preguntas y sus distractores. El test fue implementado a una muestra de 168 sujetos de Espana y Colombia con diferentes niveles educativos. Los resultados mas significativos indican que los participantes de forma nemotecnica intentan recordar la postulacion del principio de Arquimedes sin reparar en un analisis de fuerzas, y en identificar los dos cuerpos que interactuan y que nos permiten hablar de la fuerza de empuje. La mayoria de los sujetos participantes consideran que el empuje depende la posicion del objeto sumergido.

Using Concept Maps to Develop a Didactic Explanation of a Dress with Ambigous Colours

We report on an experience carried out to show the didactic use of concept maps as tools for the development of a progressive explanation of the colour perception of a dress with ambiguous colours. Concept maps are used to promote a conceptual change in our students trying to answer the question: Why some people perceive the dress as blue & black and others as white & gold? We must first answer another preliminary question: On what depends the colour we perceive in a given object? We have used observations of the original dress in our colour laboratory by more than 300 people. The concept maps developed are based on a test for the detection of preconceptions about colour that can be taken online. In addition, we use different concept maps in successive levels of elaboration about the different factors that determine the colour a certain object is perceived.

Formulation of didactic interest of the laws of refraction of light

In this work, an alternative formulation of the laws of refraction of light is presented. The proposed formulation unifies the two classic laws of refraction, and it is shown the correspondence between the new and the classic formulations. This new formulation presents a remarkable didactic interest for the conceptual interpretation and resolution of classic problems related to the phenomenon of refraction of light, such as those proposed to students of geometric optics on their first year of college. As an example, this formulation is applied for the resolution of two refraction problems typically assigned to student of such educational level. Results and comments from the students are presented. Although rigorously formulated in this work, the new formulation can be stated from a didactic viewpoint, using everyday language, as follows: “When a ray is refracted, the only variation that undergoes its direction vector is that the parallel component to the surface separating two media (defined in the plane formed by the incident ray and the normal to the surface at the point of incidence) is multiplied by the relative refractive index between both media”.

New formulation of the laws of reflection of light

A new formulation of the laws of reflection of light based on the particle model is presented, and it is shown the equivalence between the new and the classic formulations. The proposed formulation has a significant educational value, as it allows drawing analogies between the phenomena of light reflection and elastic collisions, which are very well known by students. The proposed formulation is: “If at one point on a surface whose orientation in space is defined by a unit vector k, strikes an incident ray corresponding to a plane wave (propagating through a homogeneous and isotropic medium) whose direction of propagation coincides with that from a unit vector ui [expressed in terms of its components with respect to an orthonormal coordinate system, with one of its axis coinciding with the direction of k (ui = uix i + uiy j + uiz k)], it will be reflected so that the unit vector whose direction coincides with that from the reflected ray, ur, will only differ from the unit vector whose direction coincides with that from the incident ray, in the change of the sign of the component in the direction of k (ur = uix i + uiy j - uiz k)”. Stated in everyday language, is equivalent of saying that the reflection of light occurs as if the photons underwent perfectly elastic collisions with the surface in question. As an example, this formulation is applied for the resolution of the classic reflection problem of the three plane mirrors forming a trirectangular trihedron.