Scientific understanding and argumentation on learning about matter and its properties in fourth grade Primary School students

Abstract

The purpose of this study is the hermeneutic analysis of the scientific understanding and argumentation presented by fourth grade Elementary School students regarding matter and its properties in an educational institution in Colombia. To this end, under the interpretive paradigm and using a qualitative approach, the phenomenological hermeneutic method was specified, applying techniques and instruments related to semi-structured interviews to a non-probabilistic sample of 25 fourth-grade students. The information collected was processed using the ATLAS.ti tool, allowing for open, axial, and selective coding, which led to macro and micro-thematic reflective analysis contrasting the researchers' discourse, the position of theoretical references, and the participants' statements. The findings led to the configuration of semantic networks resulting from two central categories (Scientific understanding and argumentation) and one emerging category (Scientific language and verbal expression), whose interpretation confirmed a relatively low level of mastery and appropriation for each of these. The relevance of the environment in the structural modifiability of prior knowledge and new information that is incorporated into students' mental structures is discussed as a theoretical postulate of constructivism that educators must assume to ensure better pedagogical practices in light of teaching and learning not only of the subject matter and its properties, but also of other conceptual or declarative knowledge of the Natural Sciences.