L’educazione alla conoscenza scientifica: un percorso che parte da lontano

This paper aims at clarifying what education in science may mean in the real context of classroom activities. In particular the meaning of education in physics will be illustrated by looking at the development of concepts and methods within a perspective of continuity in the teaching of science at the level of compulsory education, starting from the infant school level. The frame of the proposal will be described, referring to the document of the SIF-AIF Study Group which was prepared as a contribution to the Ministry proposal of reform of the pre-University school structure. In the paper examples of activities will be mentioned taken from various research works carried out in classrooms at the different school levels on the topic of motion, particularly of kinematics. The examples have been chosen with the aim of illustrating proposals that were designed from the perspective of gradually developing the students’ spontaneous and intuitive ideas into more conscious and discipline oriented ones.