The Final Degree Project in Didactics of Social Sciences: lines, subjects and themes

Abstract

This research puts forward a first descriptive evaluation of the conception, proposal and workings of the Final Degree Projects (FDP) within the Primary and Childhood Education Teachers’ Studies relative to the Didactic of Social Sciences in Burgos University. With the implementation of the new Degrees, the syllabus includes this new area as a curricular subject in order to check the abilities acquired by the students.

The work focuses its studies on three academic courses (2013/14, 2014/15 and 2015/16) to account for the continuing definition of its conception, as well as its setting in motion and lines of work within the Social Sciences Didactic area. Laying emphasis on the necessary relationship between investigation and innovation, the proposals have been classified in lines of work, subjects and topics, determining the main interests of the pupils and revealing the concerns regarding the problems of teaching and learning in Social Sciences. The results have been categorized into technical curricular conceptions, both practical and critical, with the intention of tying the proposal advanced in the FDP as reproductive and instrumental approaches of the curriculum, to proposals of a fundamentally practical and methodological character or to critically and socially transforming approaches.

The results obtained tell us of the existence of tendencies assigned mainly to the first two models, to the detriment of critical approaches aimed at the desirable development of analytical thought together with the study of social problems and social change.