WHAT AND WHY DO STUDENTS WRITE IN A BIOLOGY LABORATORY PRACTICE AT SECONDARY SCHOOL?

Writing plays a central role in the comprehension of scientific concepts; however, at school it is frequently used as an evaluation resource or just for recording data. Taking this into account, we were interested in investigating the role of writing in class and the students’ perceptions about it....

Full description

Autores:
Maubecin, Constanza Clara
García Romano, Leticia
Tipo de recurso:
Article of journal
Fecha de publicación:
2015
Institución:
Universidad Pedagógica Nacional
Repositorio:
Repositorio Institucional UPN
Idioma:
spa
OAI Identifier:
oai:repository.pedagogica.edu.co:20.500.12209/4297
Acceso en línea:
http://revistas.pedagogica.edu.co/index.php/bio-grafia/article/view/4184
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12209/4297
Palabra clave:
Rights
openAccess
License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Description
Summary:Writing plays a central role in the comprehension of scientific concepts; however, at school it is frequently used as an evaluation resource or just for recording data. Taking this into account, we were interested in investigating the role of writing in class and the students’ perceptions about it. In this article, we characterize the manuscripts that fifth year students wrote and the points of view about writing they exposed, in a private secondary school in Córdoba, Argentina. We analyzed the students’ drafts and final reports from different perspectives and we investigated through a questionnaire how students value the writing task and practical classes. The gathered results showed that students understand practical classes as any other learning opportunity contributing to Biology comprehension through conceptual and procedural tools. Besides, up to a certain extent, students recognized the epistemic potential of writing. In spite of these positive results, there were not relevant changes between the drafts and the final written productions, and the reports included predominantly narrative and explicative instead of argumentative sequences.