Evaluating Drawings to Explore Chemistry Teachers’ Pedagogical Attitudes - Affective Dimensions in Chemistry Education - page 265

Fig. 8 Example
representing a strongly
student-centered, modern,
open approach to teaching
and learning chemistry
moving around the classroom providing advice or checking out problems or
difficulties. In classroom lessons, students are usually depicted sitting in small,
cooperative groups. In most student-centered pictures, the lesson does not even take
place inside a classroom, just as we see in this example. Students are often depicted
outside of the school building (e.g., near a forest or lake). When the lesson does take
place in a classroom, the learning environment often shows “normal” tables for
students but also includes extra tables for experiments and for scientific equipment
meant to be used by students. In this drawing, we recognize that the lesson is taking
place in the forest. The students and teacher are seated between the trees. We only
can assume that the person sitting in the middle of the picture and looking at us is
the teacher. There are no differences in size, appearance, or activity among the
figures in this picture. In the connected narrative, the learning is described as
strongly constructivist. Students begin learning activities autonomously and in a
self-directed fashion. They decide what they want to explore in the environment
and what is interesting for them personally. The “classroom” situation is also
strongly student-centered. Student activities form the core, with the pupils able to
choose and control their own activities.