Foundation phase learners' concepts of the natural world

Abstract : This study aimed to find out how early grades learners express their thinking about some of the themes in the school science curriculum. In a cross-sectional, qualitative study, with data from Grade R and Grade 3 children at a primary school in Soweto, it was evident that the learners had not advanced in their thinking beyond naïve conceptions of vitalist biology ('living and non-living objects) and observational astronomy. The research was undertaken to fill a gap in the knowledge of local children's emergent concepts of the natural world and how these are elicited in the classroom. It is a problem space because natural science is not explicitly included in the foundation phase curriculum. It only occupies a marginal, and often 'concealed' space, within the life skills subject strand known as ‘beginning knowledge’. I argue that this exclusion, along with the absence of suitable science content teaching (and pedagogy) in initial teacher education programmes, need to be addressed in research. I argue that it is important for student teachers and teachers in practice to know as much as possible about how children see the natural world. With such knowledge, curriculum and instruction can be designed to suit the children. The study comprised two phases: interviews were conducted in informal discussion format after all the learners (n=53) had watched a series of classroom demonstrations. The second phase consisted of a smaller sample (n=20), when individual, clinical, task-based interviews were conducted about two topics, namely 'living and non-living things’, and 'earth, sun and moon'. The findings show that there is limited progression over the three-year period (from Grade R to Grade 3) of the participating children’s concept development. This study shows, also, that, although many of the participants may lack normative science concepts, they were able to reason sufficiently to understand some of the causal relationships in natural phenomena. But overall, the detailed analysis of the children's discourse and activities show that they need systematic instruction and language advancement to express their understanding. The study was conducted as an exploration of conceptual change and the work of theorists in the field, such as Susan Carey, Alison Gopnik, Elisabeth Spelke and others formed the framework of the study. Science learning and conceptual change theorising of specialists such as Stella Vosniadou and Andrea diSessa complemented the literature framework. The analysis of the video and audio data were analysed qualitatively, coding and categorising the content, and selected data for discourse analysis. The research was conducted with an interpreter who could serve as back and forth translator for isiZulu, which was utilised by children and the interviewer in code-switching...Ph.D. (Education

The social-cognitive development of children with severe learning difficulties

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis focuses upon the abilities of children with severe learning difficulties to contemplate the psychological states of other people, what is often referred to in the literature as 'mindreading' (Whiten and Perner, 1991). The first section contains a review of the literature on children's developing understanding of the mind and their conceptual representational abilities. This is followed by two studies investigating non-learning disabled children's abilities to attribute first-and second-order false belief. The first of these uses an adaptation of the Sally-Anne test (Baron-Cohen, et al., 1985). The second study uses an original false belief story scenario, which involves children in drama. The researcher uses a technique called 'split-briefing' to provide children with first-hand experience of first-and second-order false belief. Simplified versions of the two false belief story scenarios are then used with children with severe learning difficulties to investigate their abilities to represent first-and second-order false belief. The relationship between children's scores on belief attribution tasks and their scores on tests of non-verbal intellectual reasoning (Ravens Coloured Matrices) and receptive language ability (TROG) is also examined in this study. The third section outlines the findings of a questionnaire-based study examining parental reports of spontaneous internal state use by two groups of children: non-learning disabled children aged 1-5 years and pupils with Down's Syndrome aged 4-19 years with severe learning difficulties. 'Internal state language' is language which refers to intentions, cognitions and feeling states (Bretherton and Beeghly, 1981). This is followed by a further investigation of internal state language among a group of students with severe learning difficulties. This study uses a series of playlets written by the author to provide students with an interactive, participatory medium in which to draw their attention to people's internal states. The thesis concludes with a final statement on research into the social-cognitive development of children with severe learning difficulties, with recommendations for future research and intervention

Evidence-based design utilized in hospital architecture and changing the design process: a hospital case study

As a new paradigm in healthcare design in the 21st century, evidence-based design (EBD) has played a critical role in the changing hospital architectural design process and shaping new images of hospital architecture. Evidence-based design is research informed, and its results affect not only patients' clinical outcomes but also medical facility operational efficiency and its staff retention and satisfaction. This research investigated how EBD was implemented in hospital architectural design and how traditional design process was modified to incorporate credible research evidence through a case study at Grand River Hospital in the United States. This study took a qualitative approach with grounded theory methodology. The methods used for this research were multiple sources of data collection through document reviews, observations, and interviews. Findings revealed that the investigation for EBD needs to focus on environment-behavior studies especially in the development of explanatory theory. This study also recommended a modified cyclical design process model for integrating EBD. This redefined design process model requires collaborations with all stakeholders by adding visioning sessions, multiple design charrettes, mock-ups, and the functional performance evaluation to help to implement research evidence and make design decisions to achieve the best possible outcomes

Dispositional perspective on causal reasoning in 7/8-year-old children and adults

Causal reasoning is a cognitive competency essential to understand and adapt to the world. This thesis intends to contribute to the literature on the development of causal reasoning and is motivated by the possibility that children rely upon a dispositional causal schema that provides one intuitive meaning of causation. This possibility is derived from a literature review that shows that key dispositional concepts are implicitly already present in the development of causal reasoning literature and that data on children fitting with these key dispositional elements are found in the theory-theory literature on conceptual development. As such, this thesis builds upon a theoretical framework – dispositional theory – that has, to my best knowledge, not been explicitly applied to the study of the development of causal reasoning. Dispositional theories share the common point that they model causal relations as interactions between causal participants endowed with dispositions. Dispositions can be thought of as being intrinsic properties belonging to specific causal participants. Given the possibility that children rely upon a dispositional causal schema, the dissertation encompasses three studies that explore whether 7/8-year-old children use dispositional schemas to make sense of causal events and if so assess (i) which of the dispositional features appear in children’s causal reasoning and (ii) if and how such a use differs between children and adults. To that end, the studies rely on two different methodological approaches and mainly investigate causal understanding of events that fall into the domain of physics. The first study adapts a method introduced by Shtulman and Valcarel (2012) and assesses if 7/8-year-old children’s and adults’ causal interpretation of a collision event could have been generated by a dispositional schema. The second study continues to investigate if 7-to-8-years-old children’s and adults’ causal understanding of events that fall into the domain of physics could have been generated by a dispositional schema. But, compared to the first study, the second study employs a different methodological approach introduced by White (2013) and considers a wider range of events in the domain of physics. The third study investigates children’s and adults’ causal understanding of events that involve human agents using a method closely related to the one of the second study. Results support the idea, that not only adults, but also children use a dispositional schema to generate one intuitive meaning of causation. Findings further suggest that a large majority of events were interpreted asymmetrically by both adults and children. Not all dispositional features are equally supported by data, force patterns seemed to play a more important role than agentive/teleological/antagonistic aspects. Overall there were mixed results in regards to developmental differences and if anything results suggest that adults rely more on a dispositional schema than children

Construction and abstraction: contrasting methods of supporting model building in learning science

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The development of reasoning heuristics in autism and in typical development

Reasoning and judgment under uncertainty are often based on a limited number of simplifying heuristics rather than formal logic or rule-based argumentation. Heuristics are low-effort mental shortcuts, which save time and effort, and usually result in accurate judgment, but they can also lead to systematic errors and biases when applied inappropriately. In the past 40 years hundreds of papers have been published on the topic of heuristics and biases in judgment and decision making. However, we still know surprisingly little about the development and the cognitive underpinnings of heuristics and biases. The main aim of my thesis is to examine these questions. Another aim is to evaluate the applicability of dual-process theories of reasoning to the development of reasoning. Dual-process theories claim that there are two types of process underlying higher order reasoning: fast, automatic, and effortless (Type 1) processes (which are usually associated with the use of reasoning heuristics), and slow, conscious and effortful (Type 2) processes (which are usually associated with rule-based reasoning). This thesis presents eight experiments which investigated the development of reasoning heuristics in three different populations: typically developing children and adolescents between the age of 5 and 16, adolescents with autism, and university students. Although heuristic reasoning is supposed to be basic, simple, and effortless, we have found evidence that responses that are usually attributed to heuristic processes are positively correlated with cognitive capacity in the case of young children (even after controlling for the effects of age). Moreover, we have found that adolescents with autism are less susceptible to a number of reasoning heuristics than typically developing children. Finally, our experiments with university students provided evidence that education in statistics increases the likelihood of the inappropriate use of a certain heuristic (the equiprobability bias). These results offer a novel insight into the development of reasoning heuristics. Additionally, they have interesting implications for dual-process theories of reasoning, and they can also inform the debates about the rationality of reasoning heuristics and biases