Young children’s impressionable use of teleology: the influence of question wording and questioned topic on teleological explanations for natural phenomena

There is a significant body of research on children’s preconceptions concerning scientific concepts and the impact this has upon their science education. One active issue concerns the extent to which young children’s explanations for the existence of natural kinds rely on a teleological rationale: for example, rain is for watering the grass, or tigers’ stripes are for camouflage. It has been argued that this teleological tendency hampers children’s ability to learn about causality in the natural world. This paper investigates two factors (question wording and topic) which it is argued have led to a misestimation of children’s teleological tendencies within the area natural phenomena: i.e. those that are time-constrained, natural events or process such as snow, clouds or night. Sixty-six (5–8 years old) children took part in a repeated-measures experiment, answering both open and leading questions across 10 topics of natural phenomena. The findings indicate that children’s teleological reasoning may have been overestimated as open-question forms significantly reduced their tendency to answer teleologically. Moreover, the concept of teleology is more nuanced than often suggested. Consequently, young children may be more able to learn about causal explanations for the existence of natural phenomena than the literature implies.     

Australian science and technology academics and university-industry research links

Australian science and technology academics see advantages in closer research links with industry but at the same time are aware of potential dangers. Academics in these areas with industry research funding tend to be older and more senior than those without such funding, and a higher proportion of them hold national competitive grants. These industry-funded academics tend to spend longer hours at work and more time on postgraduate teaching, administration, committee work and interaction with colleagues. They also have better publication records.     

Choice of sprint start performance measure affects the performance-based ranking within a group of sprinters: which is the most appropriate measure?

Sprint start performance has previously been quantified using several different measures. This study aimed to identify whether different measures could influence the performance-based ranking within a group of 12 sprinters, and if so, to identify the most appropriate measure. None of the 10 performance measures ranked all sprinters in the same order; Spearman's rho correlations between different block phase measures ranged from 0.50 to 0.94, and between block phase measures and those obtained beyond block exit from 0.66 to 0.85. Based on the consideration of what each measure quantifies, normalised average horizontal external power was identified as the most appropriate, incorporating both block velocity and the time spent producing this velocity. The accuracy with which these data could be obtained in an externally valid field setting was assessed against force platform criterion data. For an athlete producing 678 +/- 40 W of block power, a carefully set-up manual high-speed video analysis protocol produced systematic and random errors of +5 Wand +/- 24 W, respectively. Since the choice of performance measure could affect the conclusions drawn from a technique analysis, for example the success of an intervention, it is proposed that external power is used to quantify start performance.