The Construction of Scientific Knowledge

This course provides an introductory overview of the key concepts in the pedagogy of the sciences, research in science education in general, and their respective disciplines in particular. The aim is to examine how scientific knowledge is reconstructed in the classroom for instructional purposes.

The goal is to provide an academic foundation (theoretical and methodological elements) by integrating pedagogical issues related to mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology.

It consists of a practical overview of the various approaches specific to the pedagogy of these disciplines and case studies focused on issues related to teaching specific concepts within the disciplines under study.

The EU encourages students to work with materials consisting of classroom corpora, recordings of classroom sessions, excerpts from textbooks or curricula, scientific texts, and instructional materials.

• Be able to reflect on one's field of expertise by examining one's teaching and learning methods.

• Be able to identify the driving role of problems in the gradual development of scientific concepts, in relation to the concept of epistemological obstacles.

• Be able to identify the relevant variables in a problem situation in relation to one's learning objectives.

• Be able to identify conceptual errors in students’ work and understand their role in the development of knowledge by recognizing the limits of their scope of validity. This should also be linked to epistemological obstacles.