Didactic experimental workshops on natural sciences: improving capabilities and scientific skills of primary school teachers

Abstract

[eng] This article outlines the didactic project Aula Didàctica d'Experimentació en Ciències per a l'educacióprimària, ADEC, structured as didactic experimental workshops in natural sciences for primary schoolteachers (PT). ADEC has been put forward by a team of professors (tutors/primary teacher educators)from the Department of Chemistry of the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) with the main purposeof improving the capabilities and scientific skills of primary teachers (PTs).Around fifty in-service primary teachers from all over Mallorca took part in the workshops, held in theUIB campus, in January and February of 2018. The experiments deal with physical and chemicalproperties of matter (Workshop I) and with chemical energy (Workshop II) and were chosen attendingto their suitability to cover the compulsory Natural Sciences curriculum, their safety and simplicity, theeverydayness of the materials used and their close relationship with daily life. At the time ofexperimentation, a fruitful dialogue was established among participants, were PTs and tutorsdiscussed in detail the fundamentals, the competences and the didactic objectives of eachexperiment. The practical work was complemented with didactic units of the topics covered in eachsession.On a scale of four – low, moderate, good and excellent- the PTs give 3.9 points to ADEC’s didacticmethodology, which include the resources and materials, the introductory theoretical section, the tutortalks, the answering to questions, etc. With no exception, they expressed their intention to transfer theexperiments from the workshop to the primary school classroom. The excellent reception and resultsobtained in this first pilot edition, encourages us to continue with the project. In the coming months wewill launch new editions with new content and the same didactic methodology.