Las consignas de trabajos prácticos: ¿Una hoja de ruta para las acciones mentales?

Do conceptions of learning influence the formulation of instructions for school assignments? This is the question that originated this paper and guided the epistemological assumptions that support the inquiry in which we take part. The instructions for practical school assignments provide us with a second level of analysis in order to argue about the conceptions of learning in university teachers with specific training in the art of teaching. These instructions constitute oral or written texts that anticipate mental actions in order that students carry them out. In turn, there is a purpose entertained by the teachers, who are not necessarily understood by the recipients of the instructions. Regarding the analysis of the instructions, the elements to be taken into account in their formulation were described: the steps to be followed, the purpose of the production task, the context or framework of circulation and / or use of the writing, the reader to whom the text should be addressed, the textual prototype and the genre to which the text should correspond, the subject that should be dealt with and in what detail. This study is complemented by the description of the learning concepts analyzed and construed from interviews with teachers as part of the fieldwork. The methodological approach is the phenomenological one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]