Abstract:

The comic is a means of expression with its own narrative language which is an ideal support to develop teaching-learning processes from a divergent and creative perspective. From this theoretical approach, an experiment in teaching innovation was designed based on the identification of conceptual errors in cartoons made by students aged 11 to 16 years old. Data was obtained from comics made for a contest called "Humour and Science". These comics were made during the development of teaching units implemented on knowledge of the natural, social and cultural environment in Primary Education, and on Ecology in the Compulsory Secondary Education curriculum. The study was performed by analysing a total of 300 comics made in different school centres chosen intentionally for reasons of accessibility. To explore the ideas of the students in the most relevant areas, the cartoons were grouped into 6 homogeneous themed groups (ecosystems, environmental factors, limiting factors in the air and land environments, limiting factors on the land, limiting factors in the aquatic environment and intraspecific and interspecific relationships) over which a simple random sampling was carried out. The fundamental errors emerged when dealing with ecological units and basic interdisciplinary content. The students’ ideas about the concept of "clouds" were analysed more closely and examples in comics were presented in which 25% of the representations indicate that they contain water in the form of vapour and they commit associated chemical errors. We understand that the comic can be used as a good resource for the diagnosis and understanding of the ideas of students in the field of Ecology, especially those that come from their interaction with the social, natural and academic environment. In addition, it can also be used to challenge some implicit theories that, due to their relative internal coherence and generalisation in the group of students, exert a great influence on the teaching-learning process.

Keywords:

Science education, conceptual errors, preconceptions, alternative ideas, implicit theories.