INFLUENCE OF THE ``LEARNING RELATION'' ON EXPERIMENTAL SKILLS IN PHYSICS: FLUID PRESSURE

Chevallard and Charlot [1,2] made the hypothesis that learning requires a factor commonly underestimated: the ``learning relation''. The necessity to change the conceptions in scientific learning is claimed by Giordan's allosteric model and KVP model of Clement [3,4]. This study's aim is to see the impact of the ``learning relation'' on high school pupils with the experimental skills evaluated in the French Educational system - only used to evaluate experimental sciences - and to confirm the link between the ``learning relation'' and the evolution of scientific conceptions in Physics (fluid pressure). Indeed, a previous article [5] which was about Biology this time, showed a correlation between the ``learning relation'' and the evolution of scientific conceptions. To the best of our knowledge, no study has analysed the relationship between experimental skills in physics and the ``learning relation'' yet. A distributed survey (to the n=31 pupils of the classroom) allowed us to determine a set of learning relation's profiles. Another survey, useful to identify the conceptions, was distributed one month before the learning sequence (phase 1), one month after the learning sequence (phase 2) and three months after the learning sequence (phase 3). In addition, we quantitatively measured the evolution of the acquired experimental skills throughout evaluated tests all over the year, and we compared these acquired skills with the learning profiles of the pupils. Our first results show that the utilitarian profile (U) seems to be the best profile to improve the evolution of the scientific conceptions after training, like shown by our previous study in Biology [5]. However, it seems that the elaboration of the acquired experimental skills is higher for pupils with intermediate profile (I), touristic profile (T) and reject profile (R). We think, from these data, that the use of these experimental skills could be interesting for pupils with scholar difficulties or with a bad vision of school.