The use of field activities in geology teaching conceptions and representations of practices of portuguese teachers

Abstract

Field activities are valuable geology teaching resources. However, their effective educational value depends on the way teachers use them which in turn depends on teachers’ conceptions. This research focused on comparing how 102 low secondary school teachers and 131 secondary school teachers deal with field activities in geology teaching. The results show that, opposite to what happens in the secondary school, the majority of low secondary school teachers do not use field activities. The majority of field activities users promote less than four activities per year and most of them do not seem to have an appropriate understanding of how field activities should be used to become a valuable educational resource. Besides, teachers do not trust too much students’ ability to play an active role as learners, as they argue for teacher centred activities, based on the idea that students are not able to carry out the activity or that it is teachers’ responsibility to undertake it. However, the majority of field activities users feel satisfied or even completely satisfied with the way they have been dealing with field activities. This means that teachers’ conceptions and practices need to be improved.