Conceptual and critical development in student teachers: first steps towards an integrated comprehension of osmosis
Résumé
In a context of strong valuation of competences in physics teaching, students' critical thinking is widely advocated but there is also a risk that conceptual structuring be disregarded. For that reason, this investigation is focused on possible links between the development of critical attitude and conceptual understanding. We analyzed in detail how conceptual comprehension and critical attitude develop when a person confronts various explanations of a nonobvious topic. To this end, we conducted a fine grained analysis of five prospective teachers' critical and conceptual development during a one hour and a half interaction with an expert. This investigation completes a series of three previous studies addressing the same general research question in respect of three different physics topics. In this instance, the focus is on the topic of osmosis. A content analysis led us to identify some lines of reasoning that we expected to observe as well as conceptual targets for the interviews. In line with an integrative perspective, these conceptual goals provide some opportunities to link osmosis phenomena with a molecular approach. The transcripts were processed following two lines of analysis, one conceptual and the other focusing on critical attitude as well as metacognitive and affective affects. The findings confirm the significant occurrence of the expected lines of reasoning. They also suggest that students need to reach a threshold of comprehension, beyond logical necessity, before expressing critiques toward inaccurate texts or their previous views (" delayed critique "). Students' questions about the meanings of current phrases relating to pressure in liquids are shown to play a decisive role to activate their potential of critique as well as significant conceptual steps forward. In discussing our results, we explain how this study contributes to a holistic picture of student teachers' conceptual and critical co-development when interacting with an expert. The prevalence of " delayed critiques " aligns with our previous results. Additionally, a more specific finding of this study is the precise localization of events that are likely to trigger rapid conceptual and critical evolution. A discussion about further research and perspectives concerning the teaching of osmosis and students' formation to critique ends the paper.
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