STUDY ON STUDENTS’ REPRESENTATIONS STARTING FROM TEXTS ABOUT GEOMORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSES
STUDY ON STUDENTS’ REPRESENTATIONS STARTING FROM TEXTS ABOUT GEOMORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSES

Summary/Abstract: In this paper we analysed several learning sequences in a seminar where students processed information from a text. Our study started from a problem related to texts from school textbooks where the authors did not explain correctly or completely geomorphological processes and only rarely did they represent the respective processes through drawings that facilitated students’ understanding. The didactic experiment that we organised tested the following two hypotheses: students were able to explain how geomorphological processes produced on the basis of information from a text; students were able to represent through drawings the production of geomorphological processes on the basis of information from a text. 44 students studying Geography and the Geography of Tourism took part in this experiment. Students worked in groups of four on the basis of the text in the support for the seminar, taking into account the tasks given by the professor. We reached the following conclusions: both tested hypotheses were confirmed; students solved tasks at a good level, through learning by cooperation and learning guided by the professor through given tasks; students achieved the competency to explain a geomorphological process if they had a text that included the necessary pieces of information and if they processed those with the help of graphical organisers with clearly formulated tasks.

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