Abstract:

The objective of this paper is presenting a proposal for the reconstruction of the contents sequence of Natural, Social and Cultural knowledge textbooks. This work has been elaborated by a workgroup composed of teachers from the University of Seville seeking to improve their educational practices in the University.

The work has been carried out during the training phase prior to the practical exercises for the subject titled “Educational Practices I”, belonging to the Primary Education Teacher's degree. The session has been analyzed and reformulated to be more coherent with an Educational Research Methodological approach.

The methodology employed is based on school research techniques, where problems or key questions must be solved during the sequence of learning. The methodology works on the pupils' initial ideas and tries to integrate behavioral and attitudinal contents with the information and concepts to be taught.
In this specific case, the pupils of the training phase analyze the textbooks in search of the following aspects: Do educational competences appear in the textbook? How are the didactic contents organized and presented? What functions do the textbook activities carry out? What type of evaluation is perceived or transmitted in each one of the lessons.

In conclusion, we find that textbooks continue to be eminently traditional. Therefore we propose a series of changes to reconstruct textbooks from an alternative perspective. This perspective focuses on specifically defining the competences which need to be developed, where the contents are plotted according to a clear selection criteria, organization and where a sequence of contents can be seen. Activities are proposed to the pupils, avoiding the “cutting and pasting” of information from the book in order to solve them.

Keywords:

University Teachers, Teacher Training Practices, Contents Sequence Reconstruction, Natural, Social and Cultural Environment Knowledge Textbooks.