Study of teachers social representations of fisrt to fourth elementary school grades about the students motivation and the role played by error in learning

Abstract

This study looked for to identify the teachers' representations about the students' motivation and the role of the mistake in the learning. The work was based on the theory of the Social Representations and the Construtivistic perspective on the teaching. The analyses were based in data obtained through interviews with six teachers of first to four grade of the Elementary School. About motivation, the representations turn around the idea that the center of teachers' attention should be the student's interests, using what he likes as a way to attract and to engage him in learning. Such conception goes away from constructivistic perspective, in which the motivation for the learning should be intrinsic to the student's task. With respect to error, the construtivistic concepts are present, but without one deep appropriation of them.