The role of the school and the teacher in a non-learning situation: what do the children say?

Abstract

This paper presents partial data of a research on the construction of social knowledge under the Piagetian perspective, more specifically on children’s ideas about the school and the teacher. The participants of the study were 52 children aged between 7 and 8 years, who were immersed into different educational environments: one of them considered a traditional teaching environment and the other one considered a socio-moral constructivist environment. The instrument that we present here, used for data collection, is a story involving a non-learning situation. The participants were asked to think about issues related to the story, as well as the role of the school and the teacher in the proposed situation. Data indicated no difference between the two environments concerning the construction of social knowledge. However, there was significant difference in the way the students solved the problems of the story: in the traditional environment, coercion and atonement were more mentioned while in the socio-moral constructivist environment, dialogue and cooperation were mentioned instead. Data also indicate the need to work with this type of knowledge in the classroom since the answers of the subjects were characterized by a partial comprehension of reality, focusing on more visible and apparent aspects of the facts and on the non-consideration of hidden processes.