This paper covers the activities undertaken to investigate the school science knowledge models of a group of kindergarten teachers about food. This is a qualitative research, a case study, framed in the field of natural science education. Its main purpose was to characterize and interpret the knowledge structures of individuals as to their significance, informativity, propositional content, rationale, context, consistency and reasonableness and to identify common features and peculiarities in the whole sample. Another purpose has referred to the comparison of two approaches used in this work.
The initial approach to treatment and data analysis included a combination of qualitative and quantitative strategies and was based on a selection and adaptation of techniques used in the literature relieved, (Novak & Gowin 1984, Ruiz-Primo and Shavelson, 1996, Stoddart et al., 2000, Ruiz-Primo et al., 2001; Martín del Pozo, 2001, Van Zele et al., 2004, Yin et al., 2005) on the use of concept maps and activities lesson planning (Clark & Peterson, 1986, Sanchez and Valcarcel, 1993, 1999, Martin del Pozo, 2001, Van Der Valk and Broekman, 1999) as research tools. The decision made it possible to identify individual and group level trends, on the informativeness and propositional content of the knowledge models of teachers. The use of these techniques helped to focus and better define certain aspects of the research questions and provided elements, which combined with other data interpretation, provided additional strength to the interpretations made.
From this initial approach was carried out a qualitative analysis, by adapting an instrument provided by Thagard (1992). We used concept mapping software to characterize the rationality of scientific knowledge models school teachers, as to the relationships established through language, between facts and theoretical models used to interpret them.
| Date of Award | 5 Jul 2007 |
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| Original language | Spanish |
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| Supervisor | Rosa Maria Pujol Vilallonga (Director) |
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