Abstract

The aim of this case study is to detect the evolution of students’ initial ideas on the notion of simple circuit and parallel connection of the house electric installation into a collaborative learning environment. For this purpose we analyzed the drawings of three 11-year-old students. In total, the innovative approach was tested with 83 pupils of the 5th grade in Volos – Greece studying “Current and main electricity”. During the intervention, children worked in small groups of 4-5 persons with the appropriate workshop material and with the help of worksheets that the researchers of this study developed. Research data came from the elaboration of three students’ drawings to one question of an initial and final questionnaire. The other four questions are presented to the worksheets that pupils discussed during the instruction. From the analysis of three students’ drawings it is obvious that one of them improved her understanding on the phenomena under study substantially, since she represents gradually – from unit to unit – the whole circuit of an electric device and the parallel connection among three electrical appliances. Finally one other pupil created quite satisfactory mental representations of the concept of circuit, while the last one child did not show satisfactory improvement. Conclusions were drawn on studens’ learning difficulties and proposals were formulated for the improvement of teaching and learning main electricity in primary school.