Review and Discussion of Children’s Conceptions of Computers

Today’s children grow up surrounded by computers. They observe them, interact with them and, as a consequence, start forming conceptions of how they work and what they can do. Any constructivist approach to learning requires that we gain an understanding of such preconceived ideas and beliefs in order to use computers as learning tools in an effective and informed manner. In this paper, we present five such conceptions that children reportedly form about computers, based on an interdisciplinary literature review. We then evaluate how persistent these conceptions appear to be over time and in light of new technological developments. Finally, we discuss the relevance and implications of our findings for education in the contexts of conceptual pluralism and conceptual categorisation.     

Teachers’ Conceptions of Gifted and Talented Young Children

Efforts by schools to cater more adequately for highly able students necessitate a shared understanding regarding the gifted and talented. This research aims to ascertain the qualitatively different ways in which teachers identify and describe gifted and talented children. It examines the variety of conceptions of giftedness held by teachers and analyses the patterns and inconsistencies among them. Initial findings of the study, conducted with 16 early childhood teachers (two male and 14 female), are reported. A qualitative phenomenographic research design was adopted because of its focus on revealing individual understandings (conceptions). These results show that teachers understand giftedness as a series of conceptions, namely excellence, potential, rarity, behaviour, innate ability, motivation and asynchrony. These are discussed with reference to existing theories and pertinent research. Results represent the initial findings of an ongoing major research project.     

Understanding Virtual Epidemics: Children’s Folk Conceptions of a Computer Virus

Our work investigates the annual outbreak of Whypox, a virtual epidemic in Whyville.net, a virtual world with over 1.2 million registered players ages 8–16. We examined online and classroom participants’ understanding of a computer virus using surveys and design activities. Our analyses reveal that students have a mostly na?ve understanding of a computer virus influenced by mythological or anthropomorphic perspectives; only few were able to describe computational elements. The 35 students who participated in a curricular intervention in addition to the virtual epidemic shared these na?ve conceptions initially, but developed more sophisticated views after the intervention. The discussion addresses possible explanations for students’ conceptions and implications for future instructional designs.     

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.     

Teachers’ and Children’s Perceptions of Creativity In High- and Low-Anxious Children

Abstract

Expectations of citizens for the role of the school board with respect to four educational concerns were examined with educational attainment and family income of citizens as independent variables. The population for the study was 1,794 citizens in twelve Wisconsin school districts. Citizens were placed in one of five education and one of five family income groups and mean expectation scores were treated statistically with analysis of variance and the Sheff6 post hoc means test. Expectation scares were obtained from responses to four sets of interview questions scaled from conservative to liberal. Generally, the higher the educational attainment and family income of citizens, the more liberal were their expectations for the role of the school board.     

Third-Graders’ Conceptions About the Origin of Species Before and After Instruction: an Exploratory Study

This study examines how third-graders’ conceptions about the origin of species are affected by formal instruction and whether children can learn not only about evolution but also about natural selection. We interviewed the same group of third-grade children (8–9 years old) twice, before and after following a curriculum about these topics. Creationist answers were very rare at both pre- and post-tests. The number of evolutionist answers increased significantly after instruction. However, children learned about evolution in a piecemeal way; they gave evolutionist answers for only some of the animals they were asked about and made several errors when putting classes of vertebrates on a time line. In addition, only a minority of children learned something about evolutionary mechanisms. They said that new-born animals can be different from the parents because of mutations but did not mention differential survival. These results challenge the views, according to which, cognitive biases (i.e. essentialism, teleological and intentional thinking) make children unreceptive to evolution.     

Children’s Appraisals of Gender Nonconformity: Developmental Pattern and Intervention

Gender-nonconforming (GN) children are often perceived less positively, which may harm their well-being. We examined the development of such perceptions and an intervention to modify them. Chinese children’s appraisals were assessed using multiple measures (verbal responses, sharing, and rank order task) after viewing vignettes of gender-conforming (GC) and GN hypothetical peers. In Study 1, children (N = 210; 4-, 5-, 8-, and 9-year-olds) were less positive toward GN than GC peers, especially if they were older or if the peers were boys. In Study 2 (N = 211, 8- and 9-year-olds), showing children exemplars of GN peers who displayed positive and GC characteristics subsequently reduced bias against gender nonconformity. These findings inform strategies aimed at reducing bias against gender nonconformity.     

Empire and Children’s Literature: Changing Patterns of Cross-Cultural Perspective

Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “Foreign Children,” Rudyard Kipling’s poem “We and They,” and Frances Temple’s youth novel The Beduins’ Gazelle are the texts submitted to detailed analysis in this article, which examines cross-cultural perspectives in relation to imperial and post-imperial social contexts. Stevenson is shown to portray the basic structure of an imperial cross-cultural perspective, which Kipling problematizes and calls into question. Analysis of Temple reveals her awareness of the problems and limitations that inhere in an imperial perspective and shows that her work presents innovative, contemporary approaches to the representation of cross-cultural perspectives.     

Darwin’s Book: On the Origin of Species

This essay is an interpretation of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. It focuses on the contents of the Origin as Darwin intended them to be understood and the background to the work, thus revealing the originality (or otherwise) of the work.     

Children’s Developing Ability to Resolve Disagreements by Integrating Perspectives

Children live in a world where disagreement is commonplace. Although disagreement can sometimes be explained by differences in people’s reliability, disagreement may also indicate that the referent elicits multiple perspectives. The present studies (total N = 129, 5- to 12-year-old ethnically diverse U.S. children, 42% girls) examined children’s ability to resolve disagreement among two individuals by identifying referents that integrated the perspectives, and considered the extent to which any age-related change could be explained by epistemological understanding (i.e., acknowledging that two perspectives can be right). Children’s age was positively correlated with their ability to integrate perspectives, and children performed at above-chance levels by approximately 10 years of age. Age differences in integrating perspectives were partially accounted for by epistemological understanding.     

Elementary School Children’s Explanations of Day and Night

Science & Education - Most students have interacted with scientific representations that are used as teaching resources in schools. Often these external representations present challenges for...     

The Polysystem and the Translation of Children’ s Literature

Polysystem Theory was developed in 1970s by Israeli scholar Itamar Even-Zohar,and was well known for its three circumstances.Children’ literature,as a special branch of literature,attracts more and more research nowadays.This paper explores the process of translation of Children’ s Literature in China under polysystem.     

Sensorimotor Control of Speech and Children’s Reading Ability

Studies of the role of phonological representations in learning to read have almost exclusively focused on speech perception. In the current study, we examined links between sensorimotor control of speech, reading, and reading-related abilities. We studied two languages, English and Dutch, which vary in the regularity of their spelling-to-sound mappings. There were 236 American and Dutch children, 4 to 8 years old, who performed an altered auditory feedback task in which the first formant of the /?/ vowel was altered. A stronger response to altered feedback for literate relative to preliterate children was observed, and this was particularly the case for the Dutch children. Moreover, the magnitude of the responses was related to precursors of reading in preliterate children and to reading skill in literate children. We propose that these findings could be related to changes in children’s speech production skills that facilitate the integration of orthographic and phonemic information.