Pupils’ discussion to understand magnetic interactions

The construction process of the interpretative model provide by a particular group of 10 year old pupils to interpret the magnetic interaction was investigated in the framework of the CLOE lab. As a particular case study, the evolution of the group discussion was analyzed to identify: 1) the anchoring milestones taken from the phenomenological exploration; 2) the bridging reasoning that move pupils naïve models from a local to a global interpretation of the phenomena; 3) the argumentations and the feedback argumentations proposed to check, validate and (eventually) falsify the proposed models. Experimentation was performed using the typical approach of the CLOE labs by providing an informal environment in which pupils explore the phenomenology of the magnetic interaction by means of simple hands & minds-on experiments. The activity with pupils was divided in three phases. The first one was devoted to the creation of resonances between the pupils’ everyday experiences with (toy) magnets and the situations proposed. In the second phase, a series of small experiments realized with everyday materials was proposed to students: each experiment was related to a specific learning knot and it is introduced using an inquired based approach. In the third phase the, the discussion phase, pupils had to provide an explanatory exploration of the magnetic interactions seen. Data were collected during the discussion phase using audio recording and snapshots of the drawings done by the pupils to support their explanations.