Abstract:

The specialized literature mentions the role of laboratory work in science teaching, recognizing lab activities, carried out in a logic of questioning and active student participation, as an important educational tool in the understanding of science. However, the reality of science teaching over the last decades has revealed the practice of recipe-type lab activities, based on experimental protocols faithfully reproduced and executed by students. Thus, science laboratory at school has not been used in an appropriate context for students to learn how to do science. More than proposing lab activities, it is necessary to know how to apply them, previously determining the learning that is intended to developed in students with the proposal of practical work, in order to obtain the best use of lab activities. To promote students' meaningful learning, teacher must know how to lead the students to apply what they know autonomously, through an adequate educational practice. Namely, an active and collaborative teaching methodology, like inquiry-based teaching, that places the student at the centre of the educational process. In the process, Gowin’s V diagram has shown itself as a useful instrument that facilitates meaningful learning. Gowin´s V was proposed by Bob Gowin, in 1981, in order to carry out an analysis of the production process of knowledge, being a way to the systematization of knowledge and to showing the coordination of what the students know, think, decides and do. The V form translates a possible visual representation of the structure of knowledge, which transmits to the student the notion of how the construction of knowledge is processed. The conceptual and methodological domains represented on this diagram leads the student to a constant interaction between thinking and doing, reflecting on objects and natural events learned from the formulated questions. This resource can help students to understand the nature of science as they reflect on the process of building scientific knowledge and realize the essence of laboratory work. This study refers to a survey applied to 206 Portuguese middle school science teachers, and its purpose was to find out the teachers´ perceptions regarding the use of Gowin´s V on laboratory work in their teaching practice. The majority of the respondents were women (n=178; 86.4%). The participants had an average age of 49 years old and an average of teaching period of 24 years. Participants’ were mainly graduated in Biology and Geology (pre-Bologna process) (n=100; 48.5%) and a total of 100 respondents (48.5%) had no additional training. The results showed that teachers who knew Gowin´s V (n=199; 96,6%) considered this resource an important tool to understanding the process of scientific knowledge construction (n=131;63.6%) and to facilitating the learning of this knowledge (n=125; 60.7%). However, only a few respondents (n=39; 18.9%) considered that students had no difficulty understanding the structure of the diagram. The percentage of respondents who disagree with the students' difficulty in filling in the diagram was even lower (n=31; 15%). Curiously, the majority of participants (n=144; 69,6%) assumed that they give students the lab activity protocol. The analysis of the results confirms that the teachers that answer the questionnaire do not use the Gowin´s V in their teaching practice, despite recognizing its importance in student´s learning at laboratory work.

Keywords:

Inquiry-based teaching, middle school, Portuguese science teachers, survey, Gowin´s V, lab work.