Use of different external mediating mechanisms of the Bohr atom model: Evidence of Meaningful Learning through verbal-gestural analysis in elementary school students

The present article sought to investigate if the use of different external mediation mechanisms to teach the Bohr Atom model in elementary education with the didactic methodology of the Potentially Significant Teaching Units (PSTU) can result in Meaningful learning. Therefore, we naturally use the theoretical contribution of the Ausubelian Meaningful Learning Theory, in particular by discussing elements that indicate evidence of meaningful learning. This theory was adopted with the purpose of understanding and analyzing whether or not there is evidence of meaningful learning with elementary level students after about a year of using the didactic methodology. The didactic methodology used was the application of didactic sequences inspired by the PSTU model, modified to be applied in Elementary School. We also use different external mediation mechanisms that independently reproduce the Bohr atom model, such as model building (psychophysical mediation), teacher explanation on a blackboard (social mediation), use of textbooks (cultural mediation) and computer simulations (hypercultural mediation). Data analysis was carried out through two semi-structured interviews according to the Report Aloud protocol followed by the depictive gestural analysis, performed with an interval of almost one year, both interviews were carried out after the application of the didactic methodology, in order to assess the retention of the learning residue. We argue that the students' verbal-gestural production indicates that there was meaningful learning of the Bohr Atom model, especially related to social and hypercultural mediations.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Merleau-Ponty (b. 1908–d. 1961) was a major 20th-century French philosopher and contributor to phenomenology. He studied at the École Normale Supérieure from 1926 to 1930, received the aggrégation in philosophy in 1930 and the Docteur ès lettres in 1945. After early teaching largely in psychology, culminating with a Sorbonne appointment as professor of child psychology and pedagogy, he was elected in 1952 to the Chair in Philosophy at the Collège de France, as the youngest philosopher ever in this position, which he held until his death. His inaugural lecture was published as Éloge de la philosophie (In Praise of Philosophy). In 1945, Merleau-Ponty became, along with Raymond Aron, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean-Paul Sartre, a founding editorial board member as well as political editor of Les temps modernes, a journal devoted to “la philosophie engagée.” In 1953 he resigned from the journal. After the Korean conflict, Merleau-Ponty’s political difference with Sartre was acute, and in Les aventures de la dialectique (Adventures of the Dialectic) Merleau-Ponty characterizes Sartre’s position as “ultra-bolshevism.” Eventually, Merleau-Ponty would relinquish Marxist tenets. Merleau-Ponty’s first book, La structure du comportement (The Structure of Behavior), from 1942, is largely a critique of behavioral psychology as lacking a-propos, his stated goal, understanding the relation between nature and consciousness. His second and major completed book is La phénoménologie de la perception (Phenomenology of Perception). In this work Merleau-Ponty undermines classical theories of perception, which rely on “sense data”; introduces his understanding of the “lived body”; accentuates Husserl’s remark that consciousness is initially a matter of an “I can,” not an “I think”; and introduces a gestural analysis of language. While affirming Eugen Fink’s observation that there is no total “reduction” phenomenologically, Merleau-Ponty proceeds under the “epochē,” nonetheless. When he died, Merleau-Ponty was writing what would have been a book of major proportions. The material that he completed was posthumously published as Le visible et l’invisible (The Visible and the Invisible), a title from working notes that were published with it. Critical discussions of reflective philosophy, dialectic, and intuition precede a decidedly ontological project involving: “la chair” (the “flesh”), successor to Phenomenology of Perception’s “lived body,” through which “I live the world”; “reversibility,” the perceptual dynamic operative in our habitation of the world; and “the chiasm” or “intertwining” of different contexts, such as vision and motility. L’oeil et l’esprit (Eye and Mind), intended for inclusion in The Visible and the Invisible but published separately, addresses exploration of these factors in painting.

Collaboration and Content in the Symphonie fantastique Transcription

Franz Liszt's transcription of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique has long been recognized for its innovative approach to musical reproduction——that is, its remarkable ability to recreate the sonic nuances of its model. However, the 1830s were a period of intense artistic and professional collaboration with Berlioz, and the genesis of the Symphonie fantastique transcription can thus also be interpreted as emblematic of this developing relationship. In particular, a gestural analysis of the work's content, as it can be recreated in part through Liszt's meticulous performance notation, indicates that the transcription served to reinforce a public perception of Berlioz as composer and Liszt as performer, whereby Liszt guides his audiences through Berlioz's enigmatic compositions by means of kinesic visual cues. Investigation of heretofore unknown manuscript materials suggests that this dynamic was further emphasized in Liszt's other renderings of Berlioz's orchestral works from the period. For various reasons, the transcription's inherently collaborative nature failed to impress audiences outside of Paris. As Liszt embarked in earnest upon a solo career toward the end of the decade and his concert appearances with Berlioz became less frequent, interest in the work waned on the part of both arranger and audience. Moreover, it was in the late 1830s that Liszt began adding several new works to his public repertory, especially opera fantasies, Schubert song arrangements, and weighty compositions by German composers. This decision effectively removed his earlier material——including the all-too-French Symphonie fantastique——from on-stage circulation. Indeed, when Liszt revised the transcription in the 1870s, he eliminated many of extraordinary collaborative elements found in the 1834 version, thereby disassociating it from the arena for which it was created.