Laboratory practices from the perspective of social representations

Abstract

Practical laboratory works as resources for teaching natural sciences have generated conflicting positions about their contribution to students learning. We consider that the contributions of practical laboratory works should be considered under an integral vision of teaching and learning in the natural science laboratory. For this, we analyzed the social representations of a group of 3rd year students attending the careers of teacher training in physics and chemistry at the National University of San Juan, through a technique of evocation and hierarchical organization whose inductive term was "laboratory practices". This technique allowed us to identify the content and structure of the predominant social representation of this group about the experimental practices and from the results obtained, we identified facilitating elements and other in relation to the experimental activity that could influence future teaching practice.