La desnaturalizacion de las Ciencias de la Tierra en el curriculo LOMCE de Educacion Primaria: un analisis curricular desde la perspectiva de la practica cientifica

The current Spanish curriculum includes the Earth Sciences in the Social Sciences only for Primary Education. This separation of the Natural Sciences not only hinders the sequencing of geological contents throughout the pre-university curricula, butcould also lead to shortcomings with respect to school scientific practice. This study, predominantly of qualitative nature, presents the results and conclusions about the presence and diversity of the practices of inquiry, argumentation and modeling, as well as communication, in the blocks related to the Earth Sciences in the national curriculum and in the curriculum of the Basque Country. In addition, we analyze those blocks referring to a related discipline, the biology, in order to make the analysis comparative; as well as those referring to common contents. The results reveal: i) that the Earth Sciences rely almost exclusively on low complexity modeling supported by technical-manipulative practices; and ii) that argumentation is weak, with inquiry being practically absent. In addition, it is found that, if the Earth Sciences had been placed in the Natural Sciences, the contents common to the latter, which are fundamentally rich in inquiry, would have nourished the Earth Sciences in the necessary scientific practice. As a consequence, the students of Primary Education could not develop in relation to the Earth Sciences what was planned for the rest of the natural science disciplines, as well as acquire a partial vision of how science is done.