Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to assess students’ social representations of forced migration as a relevant social problem in the last year of primary education and the opportunity for its curricular inclusion. The study was carried out by means of a questionnaire, filled in by 6th-year primary education groups (11–12 years old) (n = 70), in a state-supported private school in the city of A Coruña (Galicia, Spain). The questionnaire was supported by three pictures of forced migrations from the media. In this case, the children had to interpret the pictures through a series of questions that sought to investigate their representations, the causes they identify in this social problem, their opinions, and possible solutions. Finally, the opportunity for the inclusion of social problems as curriculum content was addressed. The study shows that the students are in favor of migrants, that they use concepts from the social sciences in their arguments—albeit simple ones, and that they are in favor of the curricular inclusion of social problems, in which they develop representations through different sources of information.
Highlights
This paper incorporates in its title the term “social representations”, a fairly common concept in the Didactic of Social Science research
Araya (2002) notes that “when people refer to social objects, classify them, explain them and, evaluate them, it is due to the fact that they have a social representation of that object” (p. 11)
What are the social representations of forced migration that 6th-year primary school students have?
Summary
This paper incorporates in its title the term “social representations”, a fairly common concept in the Didactic of Social Science research. This notion comes from the field of Social. Araya (2002) notes that “when people refer to social objects, classify them, explain them and, evaluate them, it is due to the fact that they have a social representation of that object” According to the same author, these representations are formed, first, by the cultural background accumulated by people and society over time, and by the anchoring mechanisms, i.e., the incorporation of knowledge into representations and the influence of social structures, to which the role of the media and interpersonal relationships must be added (Araya 2002). The main reason lies in their importance in shaping the teaching-learning process, as it is necessary to detect them to
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