Modeling earthquakes to search for scientific explanations: “destructive vibrations” a Teaching-Learning Sequence in Science for Citizenship

Abstract

The study proposes to characterize the teaching-learning of earthquakes in a didactic sequence to analyze the scientific explanations of third-year students of Science for Citizenship in a multipurpose school in the central-south zone, Chile. The research was carried out following a qualitative approach according to Design Based Research (DBR), therefore, the learning designs are contextualized. The design used modeling as a strategy and was developed in four phases: sharing knowledge, testing knowledge, structuring core learning, and applying core learning. The explanations were categorized according to performance in three levels: descriptive; relational; causal; and the school models of representing and interpreting and application model. The results indicate that through the proposed learning activities the students progressed from a static representation model of the earth to a final dynamic model. The explanations of an initial descriptive level changed to a causal level because they incorporated cause-effect on earthquakes based on scientific evidence, and the students expressed preventive actions for personal and citizen mitigation in case of earthquakes.

Keywords:
Learning sequence; Scientific explanation; Modeling; Science for Citizenship; Earthquakes