Assessment of Preschooler’s Scientific Reasoning in Adult–Child Interactions: What Is the Optimal Context?

In educational settings, continuous assessment of the child’s level of understanding is necessary to effectively utilize the principles of scaffolding and to create contexts that can advance the scientific reasoning of the child. In this article, we argue that a child’s performance is a dynamic notion that is created by all elements in an interaction, including the task. Therefore, we studied preschoolers’ levels of scientific reasoning varying different properties of the assessment context. Young children were interviewed about four scientific tasks using one out of four different protocols (varying in the degree of flexibility and adaptiveness) by an adult. In the first study, different task contents resulted in different performance levels. The second study indicated that the most structured protocol elicited the highest maximum level of reasoning in children and the highest percentage of correct predictions. The third study showed differences between the protocols in the adult’s verbal behavior. Adaptation in verbal behavior to different children by the adult did not result in higher scientific understanding by the children, whereas a higher degree of task structure did. Combined, the studies emphasize the importance of context, which has implications for assessment and teaching situations.     

Thought-Experiments About Gravity in the History of Science and in Research into Children’s Thinking

This article examines the main strands of thinking about gravity through the ages and the continuity of thought-experiments, from the early Greeks, through medieval times, to Galileo, Newton and Einstein. The key ideas are used to contextualise an empirical study of 247 children’s ideas about falling objects carried out in China and New Zealand, including the use of scenarios involving thrown and dropped items, and objects falling down deep well holes (as in Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland). The sample included 68 pre-school pupils, 68 primary school pupils, 56 middle school students, and 55 high school students; with approximately equal numbers in each group and of boys and girls in each group in each culture. The methodology utilised Piagetian interviews with three media (verbal language, drawing, and play-dough), a shadow stick; and everyday items including model people and soft model animals. The data from each group was categorised and analysed with Kolmogorov–Smirnov Two-Sample Tests and Spearman r _s coefficients. It was hypothesised and confirmed (at K–S alpha levels .05; r _s : p < .001) that cross-age and cross-cultural research and analysis would reveal that (a) an intuitive sense of gravity is present from an early age and develops in association with concepts like Earth shape and motion; (b) the development of concepts of gravity is similar in cultures such as China and New Zealand where teachers hold a scientific world view; and (c) children’s concepts of Earth motion, Earth shape, and gravity are coherent rather than fragmented. It was also demonstrated that multi-media interviews together with concrete experiences and thought-experiments afforded children the opportunity to share their emerging concepts of gravity. The findings provide information that teachers might use for lessons at an appropriate level.     

A Longitudinal Study of Children’s Developing Knowledge and Reasoning in Science

The growth in science understanding and reasoning of 12 children is being traced through their primary school years. The paper reports findings concerning children’s growing understandings of evaporation, and their changing responses to exploration activities, that show the complexity and coherence of learning pathways. Children’s responses to identical explorations of flight, separated by two years, are used to explore the interactions between conceptual knowledge and scientific reasoning, and the manner in which they change over this time. The paper discusses the particular insights afforded by a longitudinal study design, and some attendant methodological issues.     

Mapping Variation in Children’s Mathematical Reasoning: The Case of ‘What Else Belongs?’

Explaining appears to dominate primary teachers’ understanding of mathematical reasoning when it is not confused with problem solving. Drawing on previous literature of mathematical reasoning, we generate a view of the critical aspects of reasoning that may assist primary teachers when designing and enacting tasks to elicit and develop mathematical reasoning. The task used in this study of children’s reasoning is a number commonality problem. We analysed written and verbal samples of reasoning gathered from children in grades 3 and 4 from three primary schools in Australia and one elementary school in Canada to map the variation in their reasoning. We found that comparing and contrasting was a critical aspect of forming conjectures when generalising in this context, an action not specified in frameworks for generalising in early algebra. The variance in children’s reasoning elicited through this task also illuminated the difference between explaining and justifying.     

“Inhabitants of the Earth”: Reasoning About Folkbiological Concepts in Wichi Children and Adults

Across the world, people form folkbiological categories to capture their commonsense organization of the natural world. Structured in accordance with universal principles, folkbiological categories are also shaped by experience. Here we provide new evidence from the Wichi—an understudied indigenous community who live in the Chaco rainforest and speak their heritage language. A total of 44 Wichi (6- to 8-year-olds, 9- to 12-year-olds, adults) participated in an induction task designed to identify how broadly they attribute an invisible biological property (e.g., an internal organ) from 1 individual (either a human, nonhuman animal, or plant) to other humans, nonhuman animals, plants, natural kinds, and artifacts. Research Findings: These results (a) clarify the content of the Wichi’s categories and the words they use to describe them, (b) showcase the power of covert (unnamed) categories, and (c) fortify the view that human-centered reasoning is not a universal starting point for reasoning about nature. Practice or Policy: Implications of these findings for early science education are discussed. In particular, we discuss (a) how the Wichi’s construal of the natural world may be best integrated when they reach the (Western science–inspired) classroom and (b) how the current results bear on central issues in early science education more broadly.     

Heidegger’s Reinscription of Paideia in the Context of Online Learning

Abstract

One of the questions that Heidegger presents in his paper, ‘Plato’s Doctrine on Truth’, is the distortion as he sees it of paideia—that is the loss of the essential elements in education. This loss is characterised according to Heidegger, by a misconception of Plato’s concept of teaching and learning. By undertaking an historical examination, Heidegger provides a means to rectify this loss. With reference to past, present and future philosophical perspectives of teaching and learning as particular spaces, an attempt is made in this paper to examine Heidegger’s reading of paideia within the context of online learning. This, for many contemporary writers on education, is an encounter with new literacies, new knowledge and the adoption of an online environment that challenges the hegemonic order of the institution as the purveyors of knowledge. Teachers within this new environment are, however still constituted as experts and their knowledge is seen as ultimately inviolate. Heidegger in his re-interpretation of Plato sees the teacher as leading the students to where they might make themselves intelligible within the space of their being. This alignment forms an acceptance and a challenge to the metaphysical concepts of uniformity of being and place that limits the potential of knowledge as something that is fixed and complete. The experience of the social web or Web 2.0 has seen a shift in learning premised upon dialogue, exchange and constantly shifting horizons. Within this context, the teacher is recast as a craftsman, creating learning opportunity within dialogic exchange. The heightened sense of involvement that is revealed in this context lays the ground for a future visioning of education where emergence is seen as essential, unlike a re-working of authorisation to learn that inhibits student and teacher alike in new attempts at revitalising education.     

Knowledge Restructuring in the Development of Children’s Cosmologies

The development of children’s cosmologies was investigated over a 13‐year period, using multi‐modal, in‐depth interviews with 686 children (217 boys, 227 girls from New Zealand and 129 boys, 113 girls from China), aged 2–18. Children were interviewed while they observed the apparent motion of the Sun and Moon, and other features of the Earth; drew their ideas of the shape and motion of the Earth, Moon and Sun, and the causes of daytime and night‐time; then modelled them using play‐dough; which led into discussion of related ideas. These interviews revealed that children’s cosmologies were far richer than previously thought and surprisingly similar in developmental trends across the two cultures. There was persuasive evidence of three types of conceptual change: a long‐term process (over years) similar to weak restructuring; a medium‐term process (over months) akin to radical restructuring; and a dynamic form of conceptual crystallisation (often in seconds) whereby previously unconnected/conflicting concepts gel to bring new meaning to previously isolated ideas. The interview technique enabled the researchers to ascertain children’s concepts from intuitive, cultural, and scientific levels. The evidence supports the argument that children have coherent cosmologies that they actively create to make sense of the world rather than fragmented, incoherent “knowledge‐in‐pieces”.     

What the Pendulum Can Tell Educators about Children’s Scientific Reasoning

Inhelder and Piaget (1958) studied schoolchildrens understanding of a simplependulum as a means of investigating the development of the control of variablesscheme and the ceteris paribus principle central to scientific experimentation.The time-consuming nature of the individual interview technique used by Inhelderhas led to the development of a whole range of group test techniques aimed attesting the empirical validity and increasing the practical utility of Piagets work.The Rasch measurement techniques utilized in this study reveal that the Piagetian Reasoning Task III — Pendulum and the méthode clinique interview revealthe same underlying ability. Of particular interest to classroom teachers is theevidence that some individuals produced rather disparate performances across thetwo testing situations. The implications of the commonalities and individualdifferences in performance for interpreting childrens scientific understanding arediscussed.     

What Counts? Sources of Knowledge in Children’s Acquisition of the Successor Function

Although many U.S. children can count sets by 4 years, it is not until 5½–6 years that they understand how counting relates to number—that is, that adding 1 to a set necessitates counting up one number. This study examined two knowledge sources that 3½- to 6-year-olds (N = 136) may leverage to acquire this “successor function”: (a) mastery of productive rules governing count list generation; and (b) training with “+1” math facts. Both productive counting and “+1” math facts were related to understanding that adding 1 to sets entails counting up one number in the count list; however, even children with robust successor knowledge struggled with its arithmetic expression, suggesting they do not generalize the successor function from “+1” math facts.     

Boys Write About Boys: Androcentrism in Children’s Reading Experience and Its Emergence in Children’s Own Writing

Gender bias exists in our language environment. We investigated personal name usage in two large corpora of language written for and by U.K. children aged 5–13. Study 1 found an overrepresentation of male names in children’s books, largely attributable to male authors. In stories written by over 100,000 children, Study 2 found an overall male bias that interacted with age. Younger children wrote more about their own gender. With age, girls became more balanced yet boys continued to show a strong male bias. Our findings demonstrate a male-centered bias in both children’s books and their own writing. We consider the power of written language to both shape and be shaped by cultural stereotypes via systematic biases in gender associations.     

Children’s Typically‐Perceived‐Situations of Force and No Force in the Context of Australia and Korea

Typically‐Perceived‐Situation (TPS) refers to the situation rising spontaneously in an individual’s mind when she/he first thinks of a phenomenon or concept. The purpose of this study is to go well beyond the many studies that describe conceptions of force and explore children’s TPS of “force is acting on a thing” and “force is not acting on a thing”, and to do this in the differing contexts of Australia and Korea. Data were collected by drawings and written explanations from 145 Grade 6 Australian children and 150 Grade 6 Korean children. These data showed some significant differences between the Australian children’s and Korean children’s TPSs. For example, considering the whole context of children’s TPS, the contexts of “someone pushes or pulls something” and “someone/something is floating in the air or not moving because there is no gravity” were the most frequent ones, as a “force” and as a “no force” situation respectively, in the case of Australian children, while “a sort of energy is provided into someone/something and they can be active/working” and “a sort of energy is not provided into someone/something and they cannot be active/working”, were most frequent in the case of Korean children. These differences are very likely the consequence of different everyday meanings for the word “force” in the two cultures. In addition, it appears that these children’s TPS affect their judgement of “force” and “no force”.     

Children’s Illustrated Magazines in the Era of Post-Soviet Transformation

Abstract

The study of Russian children’s illustrated magazines at the various stages of their formation and development remains a relevant topic due to the evolution of their printed forms in the context of the transformation of the media environment. The first Russian children’s magazine was Children’s Reading for the Heart and Mind [Detskoye chteniye dlya serdtsa i razuma] (1785–1789). This publication contributed to the creation of Russian periodical literature for children, and it provided the point of departure for the creative efforts of numerous publications that followed in its footsteps, including even present-day Russian children’s magazines.

The aim of the present article is to study the evolution of the forms of Russian children’s illustrated magazines under modern processes of the transformation of the media environment. This goal has determined the objectives of the paper: to study empirical materials related to this topic, consisting of numerous children’s publications from different historical periods; identifying the relevant stages of the development of children’s periodicals; examining the content and formal characteristics of children’s periodicals; applying an integrated approach to working with the most important aspects of Russian children’s magazines in the process of transforming the media reality.

Our research methodology is based on a structural approach, which has been updated to incorporate structural-functional, structural-formal, and system-synergetic approaches as well as linear regression methodology. The problems that arise from the epistemological context are determined by the significance of the integrated approach to the study of the formal structure of Russian children’s illustrated magazines. When we review the state of research in this area, we see that there have been very few studies of Russian periodicals for children despite the relevance of the topic.

During the process of their formation and development, children’s magazines came into being as a special type of publication with varying subject-thematic, ideological, political, pedagogical, and commercial orientations. They differed in their target audience, content, and presentation, and they were made available to a wide circle of readers. The content of these publications mainly included fiction, journalism, nonfiction articles, sociopolitical commentary, entertainment, and advertising. We have provided a theoretical justification of our research methodology, which uses the general scientific structural method and facilitates the study of the evolution of Russian children’s illustrated magazines. The methodology has allowed us to draw conclusions about how their formal structure as well as the larger media environment were transformed over time.     

Children’s Interest in Reading the Comics

The three traditional methods of backward, forward, and stepwise selection of variables to be included in a “best” regression equation were compared to a method designed to maximize weight validity. With student achievement as the criterion, and aptitudinal variables manifesting considerable multicolinearity as predictors, the subset of variables selected by the traditional methods performed poorer than the one selected by the weight validity maximization method. Implications for constructing regression equations for prediction are discussed, with consideration of the weight validity maximization method recommended in crucial situations.     

Children’s Evaluations of the Hypothetical Administration of Implicit Rewards in the Classroom

The reactions that children had to the hypothetical administration of implicit rewards in the classroom were investigated by interviewing 84 elementary school children under two experimental conditions, direct contingent rewards (DCR) and implicit rewards (IR), plus four treatments within the latter condition. Results indicated that there were some differences between children’s responses to the hypothetical IR situation and previous responses to the actual IR situation. In particular, children considered that others would not be as distressed when they (the subjects) were treated unfairly as when the situation was reversed. Additionally, performance decrements present under the actual IR conditions were not predicted by the subjects in this study. Implications for classroom applications of operant procedures are discussed.     

Children’s informal learning in the context of schools of the knowledge society

This paper builds on a key finding of a 5-year Danish research project con-cerning children in the 7 to 15 age group: children’s principal use of computers and the internet takes place in their spare time, and it is during their spare time that the majority of children really learn how to use interactive media. The project shows that in children’s spare-time use of ICT they employ informal forms of learning based to a large extent on their social interaction both in physical and virtual spaces. These informal learning forms can be identified as learning hierarchies, learning communities and learning networks; they are important contributions to the school of the knowledge society. The ICT in New Learning Environments project based on anthropologically inspired methods and social learning theories shows that students bring their informal forms of learning into the school context. This happens particularly when the school has undergone physical alterations and when its organisation of learning and teaching are also restructured, with project-based learning becoming an important part of the school work and with the media available in the learning environment. Using organisation theory, the school working with ICT and project-based learning is shown to simultaneously constitute a mixed mode between the school of the industrial and the knowledge society. The research shows that it is possible to tip the balance in the direction of the school of the knowledge society, and thus of the future, by comprehensively using ICT and project work in the day-to-day activities of the school, alongside and integrated with the traditional forms of learning, and not least by employing the informal learning processes children develop outside school. For teachers this will mean an extension of their function: no longer merely communicators of knowledge, they will have to become knowledge managers and overall leaders of projects, and this entails much more dialogue with the pupils.

Children’s Narrating as a Way of Learning About Other People’s Beliefs in Interaction with Teachers

As a genre of talk, narratives represent important building blocks in children’s learning in many fields. The purpose of the study presented in this article is to examine how teachers can encourage children’s learning about people’s beliefs through narrating. Narratives play an important part in children’s learning to understand other people and how they will act according to what they believe, think or know. This study is based on video observations of six children, 3 and 4 years old, and their spontaneous personal narratives told to teachers over a period of 8 months. The narrative analysis revealed that in most of the narratives the teachers were passive listeners or were concerned about the structure of events. The teachers seldom asked questions about the children’s mental state or disagreed with the child in ways that revealed their different beliefs. Suggestions about implications of this study are that early childhood teacher education should focus on talking with children about what they may think or believe concerning narrated events, and also reveal what they think and believe themselves.     

Application of Eugene Nida’s Equivalence in the Translation of Economic News

In this essay,I will explore Nida’s formal and dynamic equivalence with respect to the translation of economic news.The exploration will start with interpreting of Nida’s equivalence theory and the translation material.Then an analysis of the translation will come and lead to criticism of Nida’s equivalence theory.