TYPES OF DIDACTICS IN SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS IN NATURAL SCIENCE’S SYLLUBUS IN HIGH SCHOOL

Abstract

The scientific experiment has a crucial role in teaching natural sciences since it is basically are a demonstration of phenomena, it concretizes theoretical learning for students by putting them inside a discovery, experimental and explanatory context which leads to deduce concepts and to build planned learnings. What is more, scientific experiment plays an important role in developing the thinking and experimental methodology for learners in order to create a generation that is good as acquiring scientific skills and able to think and solve problems, besides, experimenting enables them to discover laboratory media and tools and master their usage to invest them later in the learning process.
The aim of this research paper is to determine whether scientific experiment, in Moroccan secondary schools, is used in a purposeful and it is planned in a rational and balanced way according to the didactical functions of a scientific experiment. In order to analyze the teaching practices in this field, we have chosen the french researcher Coquidé’s Typology (), this latter has gained a huge credibility among specialists because it comes from the field itself and covers all the possible scientific situations as well as having an operational feature that facilitates its use. It is worth mentioning that this typology falls into three didactical categories; practical familiarization, empirical investigation, theoretical construction.
We have decided to choose the syllabus as an object of analysis since it is the only document that includes official experiments also it is supervised by an educational authority, concerning the first year baccalaureat we have chosen the unit that deals with photosynthesis because it is the rich in terms of the number and the diversity of scientific experiments.
Relying on a precise description of the three didactical types of Coquidé, we have determined the attributes and the operational components for each type, thus we have created a grill to analyze samples for those experimental situations mentioned above. After extracting all experiments in this unit, we have determined, for each one of them, the percentage of its compatibility with the characteristics of the three types, the analysis results showed a lack of total compatibility between each experience and one of each didactical types. That’s why we have presented the studied experiments on Flandrain 3 dimensional graph where experiments are presented in three coordinates so that each coordinate belongs to one didactical type.
Keywords: Scientific experiment, didactical types, typology of experiments