STUDENTS' PERCEPTION OF AN INQUIRY-BASED METAVISUAL ACTIVITY ABOUT CONCEPTS OF CHEMICAL KINETICS

Abstract

Students' perceptions of an activity involving visualization are important in assessing their learning of the task. In view of this, this study was developed with undergraduate students from different courses at a public Brazilian university. The research objective was to determine how three students, who are majoring in different courses (chemistry graduation and engineering), perceive their participation in an inquiry-based metavisual activity (IBMA). For this, the students were interviewed and data were categorized according to similarities and differences in the reports. The findings indicate that the IBMA was able to facilitate the reconstruction of concepts with an emphasis at the submicro level, for the students that were majoring in chemistry. The engineering student reported a partial construction of concepts. The student's learning may have been compromised due to the smaller repertoire that he had in chemistry and on models at the submicro level. Keywords: chemistry teaching, inquiry-based activity, metavisualization, students' perceptions