Sistemas de referencia y enseñanza de las ciencias: el caso de los fenómenos astronómicos cotidianos

Abstract

This thesis discusses the relevance of reference systems in dealing with physical phenomena, and in particular the problem of teaching everyday astronomical phenomena (day and night, the seasons of the year and the lunar phases) at primary school level. At the present time this teaching is mainly based on the heliocentric reference system. The problem with this approach is that it assumes pupils can “imagine” their position in outer space in order to observe the movement of celestial bodies in space. This implies a certain level of conceptual complexity and requires visuospatial ability. In this work an alternative Conceptual Structure of Reference (Otero, 2006) is described and a “kinematic celestial model” is devised, based on didactic use of the topocentric reference system, which allows descriptions, explanations and satisfactory predictions of these phenomena to be made from a terrestrial frame of reference. In addition, a proposal for a Conceptual Structure for Teaching is presented, to be employed in teaching everyday astronomical phenomena in primary schools using different epistemological, cognitive and didactic guidelines. This Structure was implemented with a 6th form primary class. The analysis of this implementation has enabled us to study the process of conceptualization, with a view to determining the Conceptual Structure Effectively Reconstructed by the pupils. The final analysis carried out led to the conclusion that the didactic sequence developed here is effective in teaching day and night, the seasons of the year and the lunar phases to pupils in the last years of primary school. This indicates that the topocentric reference system is appropriate for this age group and suggests a possible path for improvement of the teaching and learning of astronomy in schools.