Teaching of human physiology. A study with speech therapy students about the theme ‘homeostasis’

Abstract

This study was made with the purpose of understanding the learning process of first-year Speech Therapy students under the discipline General Physiology. The research of the theme homeostasis involved a sample of these students and teaching actions about this subject with the use of teaching resources. The nature of the study is a qualitative one based on the Ausubelian theoretical matrix in which teaching actions involve progressive differentiation and integrative reconciliation, articulation between concepts and ideas traditionally produced and taught in a fragmentary manner. The results obtained show that students develop more scientific ideas about biological phenomena, in particular homeostasis, that they start to take a more active part in the (re)construction of personal knowledge and in the development of a new school curriculum; that they overcome the knowledge fragmentation which makes understanding, representing and teaching knowledge itself harder nowadays.