Problemas sociales relevantes en el aula de primaria: la “cartografía de la controversia” como método

Abstract

espanolEn la actualidad, una de las principales finalidades de las Ciencias Sociales es desarrollar el pensamiento social y critico en el alumnado, por lo que se hace imprescindible trabajar con controversias sociales. En consecuencia, la presente investigacion tiene como objetivo analizar como aparece el agua en la prensa local de Almeria, provincia donde es un bien escaso y genera polemica, y determinar si estamos ante un tema controvertido susceptible de ser trasladado al contexto educativo. La eleccion del agua como tematica se justifica por ser un contenido ampliamente presente en el curriculo de Educacion Primaria, tanto en el area de Ciencias Sociales como de Ciencias de la Naturaleza, y por la posibilidad que ofrece de ser abordada desde una perspectiva interdisciplinar. Para el desarrollo de la investigacion, hemos empleado una metodologia mixta. Asi, desde un enfoque cuantitativo, hemos utilizado las metodologias “constructed week” y “noticia testigo”, que nos permitieron detectar los primeros rasgos de problematizacion del agua en la prensa local. Por otra parte, desde un enfoque cualitativo, hemos trabajado con la “cartografia de la controversia” que consiste en una adaptacion de la Teoria del Actor Red. Como resultados de investigacion, hemos obtenido dos mapas donde se manifiesta el agua como contenido problematico, y se representan los vinculos establecidos entre los distintos indicadores de la controversia. Ambos mapas pueden considerarse recursos con amplio potencial didactico, ya que permiten trabajar contenidos curriculares a traves de nuevos metodos, a la par que desarrollan el pensamiento social, critico y divergente del alumnado. EnglishNowadays one of the main goals in Social Education is to develop social and critical thinking in students and with this aim in mind it becomes indispensable to use social issues. Hence, the aim of our research is firstly to analyse how appears the topic “water” in the Almeria’s local press, a province where water shortage exists and second, to determine if the topic of water constitutes a controversial issue useful in the educational context. We selected water as our research topic for several reasons: on the one hand, due to its high presence in the Primary Education curriculum which includes this item in the Social Science area and in the Natural Science area as well. On the other hand, this topic offers the possibility to be treated from an interdisciplinary perspective. To conduct this research we have used a mixed methodology combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. The “constructed week” and “witness news” methodologies were used as a quantitative approach and have allowed us to detect the first features of the topic water as an issue. Furthermore, using a qualitative approach, we have used the “mapping controversy” methodology that consists of an adjustment of the Theory of the Actor Network. We have obtained two maps as results of our research, where the topic of water is showed as an issue or a controversial theme and links established among the different indicators of the controversy are also shown in the maps. Both maps can be considered as powerful educational tools due to the fact that they are useful to study different curricular content through news methods and, at the same time, they allow to develop social, critical and divergent thinking in students.