Promoting Prospective Secondary Teachers’ Attitude Towards the Design-experiment of Classroom Activities in Their Initial Education. Learning How to Teach Rational Argumentation According to the Socio-cultural Theory of Learning

Abstract

In this contribution, the design of classroom activities is considered of pivotal relevance in the initial secondary teacher education programme, since it is the practical mechanism that connects the core concepts of the curriculum to the students’ developing competencies.
In this perspective, the teachers are expected to mediate between the informal knowledge the students develop in their out-of-school experience and the more formalised reasoning strategies, the methods of inquiry and the standards of acceptability of knowledge that constitute the “conceptual niches” of the curricular content for each specific subject matter. Through a systematic engagement in design-research during their placement, pre-service teachers can devise classroom activities that promote the students’ experience in the intellectual practices that characterise specific conceptual niches.
In this contribution, the role of educational theories in structuring the classroom activities and the methodology of “design-experiment” are discussed. Finally, the “Socio-cultural Theory” of learning is proposed as the relevant theory to design and implement effective classroom activities to promote students’ argument competencies in both the scientific and in the literary domains.