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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2018

Studying ordinary teaching practices about the introduction of chemical formulas to determine teachers’ needs

Résumé

The symbolic language is considered as a meta level of knowledge [1]. It enables both to represent the model register and the reality-as-idealised [2, 3] and to act as a bridge between the macroscopic and submicroscopic levels [4]. We study the teaching of the introduction of chemical formulas in grade 8 in France to characterize what could be considered as ordinary teaching practices of the language of chemistry. Two volunteer teachers were filmed in their classroom and then were interviewed. First, we examined their teaching plan and their action logic to look for commonalities and differences, then we looked for the relationships the teachers made between the empirical register, the model register and the symbolic register in the taught content and in their discourses. Following the double didactic and ergonomic approach [5], we explored the cognitive and the mediative components of their practices. Therefore, in each session we noted the chemical contents taught, the work organisation (who does what? When? How?). Then we analysed their discourses regarding the registers of chemistry, the macroscopic and submicroscopic levels and examined whether the level of the symbolic language they used was specified. Finally, the interviews gave information enabling us to document the institutional, social and personal determinants of the practices [5]. During both sessions, the teachers made similar choices regarding the chemical contents taught and the work organisation. To justify the chemical formulas proposed to the students they relied on ball and stick models and seemed to be unable to provide any other justification. The submicroscopic model was the only register to be explicitly linked to the symbolic register. The discourse content did not enable the students to explicitly associate chemical names and formulas to both macroscopic and submicroscopic levels. These teaching sessions can be considered as ordinary ones because the observed regularities are consistent with the institutional constraints and with the students' difficulties about using and interpreting the symbolic language previously noticed [1]. The institutional constraints and the lack of knowledge of some students' difficulties seem to be the source of the teachers' similar choices. We think that the observed teaching cannot enable the students to establish proper links between the different registers and levels of chemistry. From the interviews we assume that the teachers lack didactical tools. We designed a didactical tool dedicated to the teaching of this topic, which seems necessary.

Domaines

Education Chimie
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Dates et versions

hal-02883120 , version 1 (28-06-2020)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-02883120 , version 1

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Sophie Canac, Isabelle Kermen. Studying ordinary teaching practices about the introduction of chemical formulas to determine teachers’ needs. 14th ECRICE, Sep 2018, Warsaw, Poland. ⟨hal-02883120⟩
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