Construction of Students’ Knowledge in Relation to a Teaching Sequence: What Hypotheses on Learning and Knowledge

This contribution presents analyses of teachers’ and students’ verbal and gesture productions in classrooms in order to construct knowledge involved in particular contexts. These analyses are based on theoretical positions on knowledge and learning hypotheses. In particular we assume that students’ conceptual understanding of physics is constructed through acquisition of small elements of knowledge but not in the rational order given by the discipline; complex imbrications of association of elements can happen. Our methodology implies two scales of analysis. In the meso scale the decomposition of the productions are thematic and at micro scale we use “facets” sentences meaning small elements of knowledge.