Participatory Action Research on the relation between conceptualization and writing with fourth and fifth grade students of primary basic education

Abstract

The approach, the development, the results and the conclusions of a Participatory Action Research, PAR, carried out to approach a better understanding of the phenomenon of conceptualization through writing, from the elaboration of conceptual maps to the writing of definitions of concepts are presented. Such IAP was made following a model in cycles of observation, reflection, planning and action, repeated in ascending spiral in relation to the progress in favorable developments for the achievement of the common objective of the group of participants, teachers and students of the fourth and fifth grades of primary basic education of a school in Bogotá. It was demonstrated that this classroom practice contributed to a transformation of the students’ thinking to such a point that it led them to distance themselves from the simple repetition of knowledge for the accumulation of information and to transcend to the construction, organization and expression of knowledge through writing, which is something unusual in ordinary didactic practices in these grades of primary basic education.