María del Mar Aragón

Contributions of Learning Through Analogies to the Construction of Secondary Education Pupils’ Verbal Discourse about Chemical Change

This article analyzes the relationship between pupils’ level of understanding of the analogies proposed in class while working with a model of chemical change and their competence at constructing a coherent verbal discourse of that model in both its macroscopic and submicroscopic representations. The study participants were 35 pupils in their 3rd year of compulsory secondary education (14–15 years of age) who had been studying chemical change for several weeks in their subject of Physics and Chemistry. The results suggested that the pupils generally understood the proposed analogies quite well, and that a good proportion of them assimilated adequately the verbal discourse inherent in the proposed model of chemical change. There was also a statistically significant association between modeling and analogical thinking. In particular, the pupils with greater understanding of the analogies being considered were also those who tended to show a greater ability to verbalize the model of chemical change and reason with it when solving the tasks they had been set. These results concur with the literature by suggesting that a link exists between analogical thinking and modeling, and that learning with analogies has a positive influence on the construction of the chemical change model.

La controversia Pasteur vs. Pouchet sobre la generación espontánea: un recurso para la formación inicial del profesorado en la naturaleza de la ciencia desde un enfoque reflexivo

The Pasteur-Pouchet controversy about spontaneous generation is presented as an interesting story from the History of Science to learn about the Nature of Science (NOS). The aim is to use this controversy for addressing some NOS issues in science education from an explicit and reflective approach. The didactic proposal is focused on the pre-service Secondary Education science teachers training in NOS and its teaching. Attention is given to both epistemic and non-epistemic aspects in the text of the controversy and the NOS questions asked. In addition, finally some methodological recommendations for implementing and assessing the didactic proposal in science classroom are offered. This involves the following: (1) in small groups, the students read the controversy and respond to some questions on NOS; (2) they present their responses to the whole class; and (3) they revise their initial responses in light of the whole-class discussion.