INFLUENCE OF TASKS’ FEATURES AND OF ARTICULATION OF TASKS IN THE QUALITY OF CHEMISTRY LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

摘要

The lack of empirical findings, particularly about how to make and how to handle, intentionally, certain features of tasks, to improve the quality of learning, justifies the research questions: How to combine the features of a task to potentially improve the quality of the student learning? How to articulate different tasks over time, so as to promote good learning results? Was used an action-research study (completed in two stages) with a teacher of introductory chemistry in higher education and her students. Were analyzed data related to teaching (teacher logbook, practical worksheets, laboratory work guides) and data related to learning (students' worksheets, competences test, laboratory work observation grids). The results obtained were: (1) The open or closed typology of the task becomes less important when the contextualization in real situations is integrated, which acquired a decisive importance. That is, some features are more important than others. (2) The relevance of the tasks' features in learning is not independent of the moment when the features are integrated into the tasks. The most important factor is the articulation of tasks with specific features which results in a certain sequence of tasks over time.