Using the advertising of a foodstuff to learn a model of the defenses in the human intestine. A study with Year 9 students

Abstract

This essay focuses on the learning of patterns using food advertisement as didactic resource. The research has been carried out for the purpose of studying the students’ performance in a video advertisement analysis, in a real classroom context through a case study of a group of Year 9 students. A television advertisement, which includes a model to explain how a known probiotic product acts in the organism, has been used. Teacher’s notebooks, video recorder lessons and student notebooks have been used to get facts and evidence. Results highlight elements easy to interpret and pupils’ difficulties to understand the advertisement model. Finally, like educational implications, some ideas are formulated. These ideas could take part in a school pattern to explain the way our defenses act in the human intestine. Furthermore, they could add those positive aspects identified in the advertisement with some elements from the pupils’ model and the scientific ideas related with them.