Teaching science with experimental work and computer simulations in a primary teacher education course: what challenges to promote epistemic practices?

Pinto, Alexandre; Barbot, António; Viegas, Clara; Silva, António A.; Santos, Carla A.; Lopes, J. Bernardino

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.22/10265

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The objective of this work is to study how teachers’ mediation can promote the development of students’ epistemic practices (EPs), in a classroom environment, using computer simulations (CS) articulated with experimental work (EW). In particular, we want to explore characteristics of teacher mediation using CS articulated with EW as a didactical approach and what EPs occur when students work in the pathway from theory (T) to the observable-world (OW), and vice-versa. We report a multi-case study with two teachers of a primary teacher education course. We use multimodal narratives (a description of what happens in the classroom, using several types of data collected) to analyse the students’ EPs and the teachers’ mediation. This analysis is made using the qualitative analysis software (NVivo 8®). The results point that the differences in the occurrences and pathways found in students’ EPs can be related to the different characteristics of teachers’ mediation. The results also point to the existence of students’ epistemic practices that were differently promoted depending on the use of CS or EW, which means an interesting complementarity between the two teaching approaches. When teachers’ mediation incorporates the use CSs articulated with EW.