Smartphone-assisted experimentation in teaching and learning biology of the human body: effectiveness, didactic potential, and teacher training

• Grant number: 22/06869-8
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: March 01, 2023
• End date: December 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Education - Educational Teaching and Learning
• Agreement: Secretaria de Educação do Estado de São Paulo
• Principal Investigator: Camilo de Lellis Santos
• Grantee: Camilo de Lellis Santos
• Host Institution: Instituto de Ciências Ambientais, Químicas e Farmacêuticas (ICAQF). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Diadema. Diadema , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: José Guilherme de Oliveira Brockington ; Patrick Charland
• Associated scholarship(s): 23/07229-5 - The school-university interface in research on smartphone-assisted teaching of human body biology, BP.TT

Abstract

Experimentation is at the epistemological core of the scientific method in the school context. However, some primary and secondary education schools lack adequate equipment, laboratories, and science teachers with training for creating and developing scientific experiments. The São Paulo State curriculum presumes the learning of biology of the human body through the competence of analyzing corporeal signals. Moreover, the citizen formation for health care demands a contemporary education aligned with technological advances, such as the understanding of human-machine interaction through smartphone sensors operationalized by mHealth (mobile Health) applications. In this project, we will evaluate the impact of the methodology of smartphone-assisted experimentation (SAE) on the learning of biology concepts of the human body by high school students, as well as on the application of SAE as teaching practice performed by pre-service and in-service science teachers. Employing quantitative and qualitative research, experiments will be conducted under controlled conditions in a research laboratory and teaching practice trials in a classroom context. The development of the participants will be monitored by means of learning questionnaires, psychometric scales, eye-tracking, and user experience research. In addition, an evaluation rubric will be developed and validated to assist science teachers in assessing the learning of students exposed to SAE, and the consequences of this methodology on scientific reasoning, cognitive effort, and motivation to learn. (AU)