Children's knowledge of the earth's shape and its gravitational field

Abstract

One hundred and eight children aged between seven and 11 took part in a cross‐sectional study of the development of their concepts of the Earth and the direction of its gravitational field. A new form of ‘Earth drawing classification’ (EDC) was found to be drawn by 36% of the sample, together with the five classifications established in earlier work. This new EDC is conceptually contradictory and appears to be a critical development stage. It is the result of the pupils’ attempts to reconcile scientific information with their own common‐sense knowledge base. The educational implications of this are discussed. The relationship between the developmental sequence of their Earth drawings and the quality of their human figure drawing was also investigated. It was established that restricted drawing ability does not explain their non‐scientific early EDCs.     

An Essay is Being Written: Between Aggression and ‘Just Words’

If education tends to be viewed as an antidote to social violence, this paper turns to Freud’s study of the ‘beating fantasy’ to consider the fictional representation of psychical aggression in scenes of schooling and being schooled. It is argued that such representations both express and fend off libidinal passions at the heart of student/teacher relationships, and language itself. Drawing on clinical examples and a controversial piece of student writing, I suggest that the teacher’s greatest emotional challenge will be to read with an eye for the unspoken communication of forbidden desire held in written iterations of Freud’s ‘beating fantasy’, without acting on her own.     

Acquisition of the cardinal word principle: The role of input

We investigated whether specific input helps 3-1/2-year-olds discover that the last word in a count represents its cardinal value (i.e., the cardinal word principle). In Study 1, we contrasted four training approaches. The only approach to yield significant improvement was to label a set's cardinality and then immediately count it. This training is consistent with previously hypothesized mechanisms based on juxtaposing a set's cardinal label with its count in close temporal contiguity (e.g., 0105 and 0175), as well as general theories of comparison and categorization (e.g., Gentner, 2005). In Study 2, we asked parents to read picture books to their preschool children and found that they rarely provide cardinal labels immediately followed by counting, even when asked to read a book about number.