The difficulties to build an explanatory framework for the formation of mountains by students confronted with a historical text
In earth sciences and in the framework of tectonic plate theory, the processes of mountain formation are difficult to conceive by students and teachers. Firstly, through a questionnaire, we probe their difficulties to build an explanatory framework of mountain formation. Then we confront in a workshop-debate the current explanations of mountain formation advanced by teachers to Avicenne’s explanations. The explanatory frameworks of students are multiple and the use of the history of science allows them to work in a mobilist explanatory register.