Search

This research seeks to analyze the degree of promotion and development of scientific competences based on the document Basic Standards of Competences in Natural Sciences proposed by the Ministerio de Educación Nacional, Colombia, specifically the competences associated with Physics. To this end, a twenty-item questionnaire is designed with a dichotomous response scale. The reliability analysis showed that the proposed scale had a good internal consistency regarding the measurement of scientific competences. The research adopts a quantitative descriptive approach based on the processing of data provided by 87 students from a private educational institution with emphasis on natural sciences in the city of San José de Cúcuta and enrolled between the ninth and eleventh grades. The results identify as a weakness in the teaching process, that teachers do not promote the use and articulation of diverse registers of semiotic representation of a set of data, a situation that limits the process of reasoning and resolution of problematic situations in everyday scenarios where the concepts of physics are present. Likewise, it was observed as a strength that teachers promote attitudinal skills in their students based on mutual respect, cooperative work and good communication. This type of research expands the knowledge that is available on the process of developing scientific competencies in the courses prior to entering higher education, so it is suggested to replicate this research process in students from different social contexts in order to improve the robustness of the questionnaire and provide valuable information to educational institutions on the design of improvement plans.

This research reports the findings derived from the identification of the difficulties exhibited by a group of 76 students from different grades of basic secondary education in a private educational institution with an emphasis on science education. The students were given a questionnaire presenting five situations based on the Position-Time graph associated with uniform rectilinear motion of particles. The research approach is of a quantitative nature at a descriptive level with a field design, since it was the students who filled in the instrument. It is highlighted as a finding in the opinion of the students that the subject has been seen in class, but due to the teacher’s methodology it is not fully understood by them. The results show that the students have a long list of difficulties mainly due to the lack of articulation of mathematical concepts in physical contexts, a situation that prevents them from analyzing the proposed statements, reasoning about the approaches, and improving in the process of searching for alternative solutions with clear arguments.

The interdisciplinary nature of knowledge is one of the objectives promoted in Colombia, fostering in students the ability to recognize that the curriculum does not work in isolation; if knowledge is complementary, its joint development leads to better academic performance. This research is oriented towards showing an application of the mathematical concept of the slope of the straight line in physics applications, favoring the understanding of the relationships between variables, as occurs with the graphs of kinematics. A group of eleventh grade students from a private educational institution filled in a questionnaire for data collection, based on three situations proposed to answer three open questions in which a reasonably justified answer was required. A part of the group correctly interpreted the graphs by describing the characteristics of the movement in each time interval, but only a few were able to associate the slope of the line as the velocity or acceleration as a function of the variables mentioned in the graph, although their argumentation was based on the angle of elevation of the line.

Several mathematical concepts have application in physics; this paper reports the results of a pedagogical investigation based on the methodology known as didactic engineering, which has been proposed with the aim of improving the skills exhibited by a group of eleventh grade students from a private institution in the interpretation of kinematic graphs. The concept of the slope of the straight line and how this mathematical concept can represent velocity or acceleration according to the variables considered in the kinematics graph provided was enhanced in the pedagogical intervention. This methodology offers a process of internal validation, after comparing the results obtained in a knowledge test at two different points in time (pre-test and post-test). The results allowed us to identify improvements in all students in terms of basic kinematics graph interpretation skills, and a group of students stood out by advancing in more complex reasoning and interpretation processes. These results contribute to the improvement of the pedagogical practices of Physics teachers at secondary and middle school levels, making them more competent when they enter higher education.

This article arises as a proposal in view of the need to evaluate the scientific competences promoted by teachers of the subject of physics at the level of basic secondary and secondary technical education. A valid questionnaire was designed from the application of scalar analysis, factorial analysis and content analysis, which is composed of 49 items evaluated by means of a Likert scale with five levels of response. It was applied in a sample of 249 students enrolled in a public educational institution during 2019, characterized by their good results in the area of physics in state tests. The results allowed the identification of strengths in the four dimensions proposed by the Ministerio de Educación Nacional, Colombia (pedagogical, didactic, disciplinary and behavioural), in contrast with some weaknesses within which the evaluation process stands out as the one with the greatest impact, since the students state that this process is assumed by the teacher as a mechanism of pressure and control. When investigating the teachers in a complementary way, positions were determined that were totally opposite to those held by the students, then it is suggested for future research to consider both the students and the teachers as informants and a supervision of the students’ notes as the end of triangulating the results to refine the conclusions, on which future improvement plans will depend.