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Episodes 2024; 47(4): 723-731

Published online December 1, 2024

https://doi.org/10.18814/epiiugs/2024/02404s03

Copyright © International Union of Geological Sciences.

Achieving conceptual change among elementary students through a one-day experiential science workshop about gravity, a proposal from Mexico

Susana A. Alaniz-Álvarez1*, Ángel Francisco Nieto-Samaniego1, Alexis Del Pilar-Martínez2, Yadira Hernández-Pérez3

1 Instituto de Geociencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Blvd. Juriquilla No. 3001. Querétaro, 76230, México
2 Estación Regional del Noroeste, Instituto de Geología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 83000 Hermosillo, Sonora, México
3 Escuela Nacional Preparatoria José Vasconcelos, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Tlalpan, 14300 Ciudad de México

Correspondence to:*E-mail: alaniz@geociencias.unam.mx, afns@geociencias.unam.mx

Received: January 14, 2024; Revised: May 5, 2024; Accepted: May 5, 2024

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Science is not an easy task to teach; it implies a comprehensive process that involves both a body of knowledge and a method of discovery. Here, we propose a one-day workshop to show how science works that we named “Chain of Science”. We present experiments that were the precursors of threshold concepts, and we encourage the children to do and explain the experiments to their families in their houses. In this paper, we choose one of the four workshops we implemented from 2016 to 2019 in Guanajuato schools and present the details and results. The basis of this “one-day science workshop” is the “falling bodies” Galileo's experiment that was the precursor of the threshold concepts: weight, mass, gravity, and Newton's first law of mechanics. There are many misconceptions associated with these concepts. Thus, based on our experience, we proposed a one-day science workshop, using very cheap materials, that captures the nature of science and could be carried on by anybody who wants to introduce children or young people to science. To achieve conceptual change in the misconceptions, we propose acquiring an expert intuition with these experiments that leads to important threshold concepts.