Construction of scientific knowledge

This course provides an introduction to key concepts in science education, research in science education in general, and their specific discipline in particular. It examines how scientific knowledge is reconstructed in the classroom for teaching purposes.

The aim is to provide academic foundations (theoretical and methodological elements) by combining teaching issues relating to mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology.

It consists of a pragmatic presentation of the various approaches specific to the teaching of these subjects and case studies focused on issues related to the teaching of specific concepts in the subjects studied.

The EU encourages students to work on documents consisting of class corpora, recordings of class sequences, excerpts from textbooks or programs, scientific texts, and educational writings.

• Be able to reflect on one's discipline of reference by questioning its teaching and learning methods.

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

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

• Being able to identify errors related to conceptions in students' work and their role in knowledge development by recognizing the limits of their scope of validity. This is also linked to epistemological obstacles.