Abstract:

Chevallard and Charlot [1,2] made the hypothesis that learning requires a factor commonly underestimated: the “relation with learning”. The necessity to change the conceptions in scientific learning is claimed by Giordan’s allosteric model and KVP model of Clement [3,4].

This study’s aim is to see the impact of the “relation with learning” on high school pupils with the experimental skills evaluated in the French Educational system - only used to evaluate experimental sciences - and to confirm the link between “relation with learning” and evolution of scientific conceptions in physics (fluid pressure). Indeed, a previous article [5] which was about biology, showed a correlation between “relation with learning” and the evolution of scientific conceptions. To the best of our knowledge, no study analysed the relationship between experimental skills in physics and “relation with learning” yet.

A distributed survey (to the n=31 pupils of the classroom) allowed us to determine a set of relation with learning profiles. Another survey, useful to identify the conceptions, was distributed one month before the learning sequence (phase 1), one month after the learning sequence (phase 2) and three months after the learning sequence (phase 3). In addition, we quantitatively measured the evolution of the acquired experimental skills throughout evaluated tests all over the year, and we compared these acquired skills with the learning profiles of the pupils.

Our first results show that utilitarian profile (U) seems to be the best profile to improve the evolution of the scientific conceptions after training, like shown by our previous study in biology [5]. However, it seems that the elaboration of the acquired experimental skills is higher for pupils with intermediate profile (I), tourist profile (T) and reject profile (R).

We think, from these data, that the use of these experimental skills could be interesting for pupils with scholar difficulties or with a bad vision of school.

References:
[1] Chevallard, Y. (1992). Concepts fondamentaux de la didactique: perspectives apportées par une approche anthropologique. Recherches en Didactique des Mathématiques 12(1), pp. 73-112.
[2] Charlot, B. (1997). Du rapport au savoir. Elements pour une théorie. Paris Anthropos.
[3] Giordan, A. (E)(1999). Une didactique pour les sciences expérimentales. Paris: Belin.
[4] Clement, P. (2006). Didactic transposition and the KVP model: conceptions as interactions between scientific knowledge, values and social practices. Proceedings Summer School ESERA, IEC, Univ. Minho, Portugal pp. 9-18.
[5] Di Scala-Fouchereau, E., Ricaud P., Pinsard, N., Andres, R., Rouzet, S. (2015) Influence of « relation with learning » on a situation of communication teaching-learning for different Scholar pupils. Proceedings International Conference New Perspective in Science Education in publication.