ANALYZING LEARNERS’ REPRESENTATIONS OF THE CONCEPT OF “ELECTRICITY” IN 6TH YEAR OF PRIMARY SCHOOL

Abstract

The objective of this work is to identify and analyze the representations of a sample of Moroccan learners of the sixth year of primary school regarding the Electricity concept, which, to our knowledge, has never been done before and to raise teachers’ awareness and encourage them to improve their pedagogical practices concerning the management of the representations of their learners. The choice of the school level and the concept are justified respectively by the certifying status of this level and by the existence of prejudices from the social and family environment (Moroccan dialectal) about the concepts “Electricity and Light”. To this end, a survey was elaborated and administered to a sample of 80 learners in the sixth year of primary school. Considering the important role of teachers in processing representations, we also investigated the teaching practices of a sample of 50 teachers and their representations of the concepts “Electricity and Light”. The main results have shown that almost half of the learners (46,25℅) still confused the concept “Electricity” with the concept “Light”, and the majority (94℅) thought that batteries contained electricity. These same representations, with practically the same rate, have been found among teachers as well. Concerning the management of the learners’ representations, most of the teachers have declared that they didn’t exploit them in class and explained their persistence by the fact that these erroneous representations originated from the learners’ family and social environment.