Abstract:

The teaching of Geology in the school is a complicated subject to tackle, since it implies diverse concepts and temporal or spatial scales that are difficult to dimension for elementary students. Some studies on active knowledge suggest that many of them cannot internalize what they are studying, and therefore are not able to apply this knowledge. This occurs frequently if the teaching of a specific topic is only addressed with theoretical concepts and does not resort to other tools or strategies that could be useful for a greater fixation and internalization of the concepts. To overcome this, different studies have proposed several approaches to successfully deal with the learning of these topics, upholding that the knowledge acquired through practical activities is frequently more useful than the knowledge acquired through memorization. The motivation and interest that future elementary teachers have to teach the subject greatly determine the degree of involvement in the transmission of the concepts and the effort put by them in order to develop this work as best as possible. In this work the motivational changes in future Elementary School teachers are addressed to teach Geology from a practical approach, in order to study if some strategies put into practice cause in them some change in their interest and motivation to teach the subject. The sample used in this research is composed by 55 students from Elementary Education Grade of the Education Faculty at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Cuenca that were studying the same subject: “Didactics of Experimental Sciences-Geology”. It has been applied a pre-test to evaluate their initial ideas about the topic and to establish the starting point, and then a post-test to measure the effectiveness of the evaluation. Therefore, following the obtained results, this paper proposes three parallel strategies to basic theoretical learning: practical activities in the laboratory, application of the concepts acquired for society and natural practical examples that can be shown in the local territory. These activities have been useful since an increase in the score of all the measured parameters has been achieved, modifying the motivational pattern of the students.

Keywords:

Didactics, Experimental Sciences, Geology, Motivation, Elementary School.