Representações dos alunos sobre o espaço físico e as lógicas de ação na sala de aula ideal: estudo exploratório em Educação Visual

The classroom as a rigid place does not comply with the needs and demands of new generations, it is an obsolete model considering the pedagogical resources available and the evidence provided by scientific research of mechanisms that ensure a successful learning. The current research has aimed at understanding the way students see and interpret space and actions in the classroom, attempting to unveil their naturalisation to the grammar of schooling or their will to change some of its rules, based on the social representations theory as presented by Serge Moscovici in 1978. The study follows a qualitative and mostly naturalist approach, closely related to the social representations theory and has been developed with 25 5th grade students and a teacher of Arts in a school located in Oporto. The contents of both visual narratives produced by students and the narrative written by the teacher have been thoroughly analysed. By crossing such data it has become clear that there is a social representation which combines two main sets of symbolic elements: the physical material and the classroom as a place (or non-space) of relation.