Abstract:

Science and technology education for primary and secondary students is central to school curricula. Such teaching does not give the expected results, namely the acquisition of basic scientific concepts to understand the natural and constructed phenomena with which young people interact daily (OECD, 2006). For example, in the case of events related to electricity, many studies show that despite teaching over a few years, students fail to use the concepts of current and voltage to correctly explain the different energy transformations (chemical, electrical, light and thermal) in a simple electrical circuit. For several students, the light energy of a bulb connected to the terminals of a battery and two electrical wires comes from the collision of the two currents leaving the terminals (positive and negative) of the cell. Also, they encounter conceptual difficulties in explaining the brightness of bulbs connected in different electrical circuits (series, parallel). For example, in the case of series-connected bulbs, for many students, the current divide between the bulbs so that the identical bulbs receive the same amount of current. Thus, each bulb consumes a portion according to its operating characteristics. In this research, we present the design of a constructivist laboratory on the qualitative analysis of simple electrical circuits for teachers training primary school teachers. The selected activities, lasting three hours, were experimented with 75 students in the class on Science Didactics. The laboratory constructed covered six problems related to the connection of batteries, light bulbs, and electrical wires, and in each, the students first anticipated their answers. Then, they experimentally verified their predictions and answered questions in the form of a challenge. Finally, they completed a paper-and-pencil questionnaire to clarify what they learned, what they did not learn, and what they would like to learn from the lab. In general, they appreciated the proposed approach, which they believe differs from the laboratories they did during their previous studies (secondary and college). In these laboratories, they felt less involved, and therefore less interested since the activities carried out were limited to verifying what they had learned before in the theoretical courses.

Keywords:

Laboratory hands-on, Electrical circuits, pre-service teachers, elementary school.