Science-related subjects require a great deal of cognitive effort on the part of many students, mainly because of the need for an in-depth knowledge of the contents, a goal that many current pedagogical methods are far from achieving. The change was created from the psychology of education, which gives us a series of knowledge on how to teach science.
An essential aspect of understanding science teaching is understanding that the person has intuitive theories about the world. The child doesn’t get to school like an empty bag. Before you received information about how your environment works, you’ve already theorized about it. These intuitive theories are probably false and condition new learnings; teachers therefore need to take this into account.
- In this article we will illustrate how to develop a deep understanding of science among students.
- For this we will explain the three phases of conceptual change theory:.
This is the first step for a student to develop a deep understanding of a fact. The teacher’s task is to break with the student’s intuitive theory. You have to abandon your old ideas and find out why they’re wrong.
If intuitive theory is maintained, it will affect subsequent learning by modifying or rejecting it, which will often result in superficial learning of science, in this way the student will not be forced to abandon his intuitive theory, so it is essential to pay attention to the preconceived ideas of the class and direct the teaching so that students are aware of their mistakes.
Based on the theory of conceptual change, two methods are proposed to achieve this goal. The first would be direct experimentation: if the student sees with his own eyes that his intuitive theory is wrong, it will help him recognize his mistake.
The other method is debate, in which the teacher challenges students’ misconceptions in a healthy and constructive dialogue, a method that is very useful for awakening a critical view of the facts in them.
Once the student’s intuitive theory is dismantled, the next step is to give you a new explanation, a fundamental aspect for the student to accept the right model is that it is built by itself, if a teacher simply exposes to the class how a scientific fact develops, it is difficult to understand. Surface and mechanical learning is most likely.
Based on constructivist paradigms, the teacher offers students the help to develop their own knowledge, the role of the teacher would be to guide the student in exploring the different possibilities, it is a complicated teaching technique, but gives incredible results, so it must be used. .
Now, bringing this to class is even more complicated, because it is no longer a question of doing it with a single student, a proven and effective way to achieve this is to generate debate among the students, they themselves would challenge and expand theories and in this case, the role of the teacher would be to prepare the materials and resources necessary for the debate and serve as a guide to prevent students from making mistakes.
This is the most difficult step in the theory of conceptual change, because that is where deep understanding is given, so it is necessary for teachers to be well trained in the use of this type of teaching model.
It wouldn’t make sense to accept mistakes and build a new model if we don’t apply this new knowledge to future problems, so the final step in the process is for students to learn how to use their new theory. It is important that you face exercises or situations in which you have to use the new knowledge acquired.
On the other hand, it is essential that this new model is integrated and linked to previous knowledge, so for the application of all knowledge to be correct it is necessary to understand it from a broad and well-founded perspective in other areas of knowledge. .
As we see, the theory of conceptual change provides us with a widely validated pedagogical technique with incredible results. If we really want students to have a deep understanding of the content of the lessons and how to use them critically and constructively, we can no longer wait to apply these teaching techniques in the classroom.