The conceptions of PIBID students of chemistry from Unesp Presidente Prudente on the didactic role of experimentation

Abstract

Experimentation on the teaching of Science, especially Chemistry can be used with different didactic aims and different approaches. Current and future Chemistry teachers have naive conceptions about the role of experimentation in high school Chemistry classes, and this have a deep consequence in their teaching practice. In this work we investigated the perception about the role of experimental activities from Chemistry course students (UNESP, Presidente Prudente) who are part of a federal government program which stimulate students to start teaching experience (PIBID, from Portuguese Programa Institucional de Bolsa de Iniciação à Docência). During the year of 2014, the PIBID group had periodic following up meetings, where academic texts on Chemistry education were discussed. In one of those meetings, it was discussed the didactic role of experimentation followed by a dissertative questionnaire on the subject. Main conceptions detected on experimental role were the helping in learning and student´s motivation. We also detected few misconceptions on didactic objective of experimentation, i.e. proof of theories, and intrinsic motivation of students. Therefore, although this group had eventually used experiments for teaching chemistry along the year, some misconceptions about experimentation happened. Based on these results, we suggest that it is important to promote a deep discussion about the experimental didactic role with undergrad students presenting History and Philosophy of Science concepts.