Una visione formativa della Chimica per la scuola primaria

Abstract

Implementation of scientific subjects (mathematics, physics, chemistry, and natural science) for a primary science education degree programme has represented a cultural challenge to the Italian scientific community in the last years. In the international context, there are still few articles in the literature available concerning teachers working at this primary level, in spite of the fact that children’s first encounter with science could play a decisive role in creating a vocation for science in at an early age. This work proposes to consider humanistic education as both a scientific and literary formation: according to this interpretation, introducing children to symbolic thought in school education stimulates involvement on the part of the pupils and leads them through a completion process that includes several perspectives on the world (expressive, linguistic, geometric and quantitative). The authors describe herein the application of this approach to chemistry teaching through significant examples showing integration of institutional content with historical and epistemological aspects; the results obtained during the years 2014-17 are discussed from a qualitative point of view at the Primary Education Department at Roma Tre University.