Field activities, science education and problem-solving

Abstract

Portuguese science curricula acknowledge field activities as important tools for students to learn science and to relate science knowledge with the outside school world. The educational outcomes of this type of activities depend on the way they are organized and integrated into the teaching sequence. This paper presents a typology of field activities named after their main educational goal and categorized with regards to a set of educational criteria. Afterwards, it discusses the extent to which each type of field activity is consistent with problem-solving, namely with a problem-based learning approach.