Open AccessEXPLORATION OF ERRONEOUS REPRESENTATIONS OF THE CONCEPT “ENERGY” BY MOROCCAN PRIMARY SCHOOL LEARNERS
Author(s) -
Nabila Jad,
Khadija Raouf,
Khadija Elkababi,
Mohamed Radid
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
xi'nan jiaotong daxue xuebao
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 21
ISSN - 0258-2724
DOI - 10.35741/issn.0258-2724.56.6.57
Subject(s) - mathematics education , energy (signal processing) , test (biology) , process (computing) , sample (material) , psychology , sociology of scientific knowledge , pedagogy , computer science , mathematics , sociology , social science , biology , operating system , paleontology , statistics , chemistry , chromatography
The concept of energy is one of the most abstract in physics. Indeed, many pieces of research have shown that learning the scientific concept of energy is very difficult and have pointed out the necessity of a progression throughout schooling, starting from preschool. In this work, we were interested in identifying representations by Moroccan learners of the 6th year of primary school related to the concept of energy. To do this, a written test was submitted to a sample of 228 learners. The written test results showed that the learners have erroneous representations related to the concept of energy, although they have already studied it in the lessons of scientific awakening. This prompted us to question the teaching practices of primary school teachers concerning the consideration and analysis of learners' representations when teaching the said concept. The questionnaire results sent to the teachers reveal that most of the teachers declare that they do not identify the learners' representations because of lack of time and consider that the analysis of the representations remains a difficult and sometimes complicated process. From the results of this research, teachers seem to be aware of the importance of taking learners' representations into account when constructing scientific concepts. However, they need supervision and training in order to accompany their learners in the process of evolving their representations towards representations that are closer to scientific explanations.