Do Children have Epistemic Constructs about Explanatory Frameworks: Examples from Naive Ideas about the Origin of Species

This paper presents the results of a study which examined children's ideas about the origin and differentiation of species. The focus of this paper is on the epistemic constructs associated with children's explanatory frameworks. Two groups of elementary school students, 9- year-olds and 12-year-olds, were interviewed using a semistructured questionnaire. The results indicate that most children explain the phenomena of speciation in terms of a conceptual framework that strongly resembles either early Greek or later renaissance variants of Essentialist theories in biology. Children also demonstrate a spontaneous understanding of important epistemic constructs associated with theoretical frameworks. For example, most children show an explicit awareness of the boundaries of their theoretical frameworks and have some idea of the phenomena that such a framework can and should explain. Many children treat questions about the origins of the first animal and plant species as "first questions," or questions which are in principle unanswerable. The children appear to distinguish between facts that they as individuals lack but that are probably known by experts, domain problems that are unsolved but could in principle be answered by biological theories, and problems that are beyond the explanatory scope of biological theories

A Cross-Cultural Study: Middle School Students\u27 Beliefs about Matter

Turkish middle school students’ understanding of the nature of matter was examined and compared to those of US counterparts. Sixteen Turkish middle school students were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. The interview explored students’ understanding of the particulate nature of matter in three areas: (1) the composition of the substances; (2) the relationship between particulate structure and macroscopic properties; (3) the relationship between particulate structure and processes. The results indicated that many of the middle school students interviewed could state that matter was composed of atoms. However, the majority of them were not able to use this understanding to explain macroproperties or processes of matter. Compared to the US students, the Turkish students could use terms more appropriately in describing the microparticulate nature of matter. However, when students tried to explain the macroproperties or processes of matter, the US students offered more complex and detailed explanations

Unpacking dimensions of evidentiary knowledge and reasoning in the teaching and learning of science

https://repository.isls.org/bitstream/1/601/1/273.pdfPublished versio

Children's metajudgments in theory choice tasks: An investigation of scientific rationality in childhood

The aim of this research was to explore the knowledge acquisition process in natural science domains. Recently, there has been much debate on the utility of the "child-as-scientist" metaphor as a way of characterizing children's knowledge acquisition. Proponents of the child-as-scientist approach ascribe apparent differences in child and adult thinking in science domains to differences in knowledge rather than to differences in underlying reasoning processes. However, critics of this view claim that children differ from scientists in that they lack certain metacognitive competencies that characterize mature scientific reasoning.This research examined whether children could use such metaconceptual criteria as the range of explanation, non ad-hocness of explanation, empirical consistency, and logical consistency to choose from among competing accounts of physical phenomena. Children's ability to apply the metaconceptual criteria was examined in a series of theory choice tasks. The tasks were constructed so that the conceptual content of the theories to be evaluated was either compatible, incompatible, or neutral with regard to children's prior knowledge frameworks. The subjects were elementary school students from grades 1, 3, and 5.It was found that even children in the first grade proved sensitive to the range, empirical consistency, and logical consistency of theories when the conceptual content of the theories did not violate their beliefs about the physical world. The youngest children were not sensitive to the ad-hocness of explanations but older children did prefer non ad hoc explanations to ad hoc ones. These findings are consistent with recent work in the philosophy of science showing that in evaluating theoretical alternatives, scientists are influenced by their prior beliefs about the domain being considered. The findings support the view that many apparent differences in the thinking of children and adults stem from difference in knowledge rather than reasoning. They also demonstrate that young children share some of the cognitive underpinnings of scientific rationality that scientists do.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio

A Study on Development of an Instrument to Determine Turkish Kindergarten Students' Understandings of Scientific Concepts and Scientific Inquiry Processes

The aim of this study was to develop a valid and reliable instrument to measure Turkish kindergarten students' understandings of some science concepts and scientific inquiry processes which are grounded in the Turkish Preschool Curriculum. The sample of the study was 371 kindergarten students, 12 Subject Area Experts (SAE), and 7 Turkish Language Experts (TLE). Six stages were followed in the development process of the instrument: (i) item formulation, (ii) content validity, (iii) language validity, (iv) item difficulty and discrimination index, (v) factor analysis, and (vi) reliability. First, an item pool was constituted with 42 items. Second, SAEs and TLEs rated these items in respect to the degree to which they reflected the content and their understandability and grammar accuracy in Turkish. Third, all items were implemented kindergarten students, and 26 items were eliminated according to their item difficulty and discrimination index values. Last, factor analysis and reliability were studied by means of the data belonging to the rest of items. Results revealed that the instrument with 16 items had two factor structure and acceptable reliability