Potentials of social interactions to make knowledge explicit in Chemistry experiments with the participation of a blind student

ABSTRACT:

In the literature, the potentials of group work for learning conceptual, procedural and attitudinal content have been highlighted. In this study, we investigated how collaborative and tutorial social interactions can favor the clarification of students’ knowledge in a Chemistry experiment carried out by a group of three sighted students and one blind student. During a sequence of Chemistry experiments, the interactions between the four students attending an elementary school class of a Brazilian public school were audio and video recorded, then transcribed and submitted to the procedures of discursive textual analysis. Among the results, different kinds of knowledge were made explicit throughout the social interactions. The tutorial interactions were mainly directed to make explicit some attitudes and values often disregarded in the development of Chemistry experiments in contexts with blind students.

Keywords:
Experimentation; Blind; Group work