Supporting young children's explanations through inquiry science in preschool

This study examines the ways in which preschool teachers support the development of children's explanatory language through science inquiry. Two classrooms in a preschool center using a science inquiry curriculum were videotaped during a 5-week unit on color mixing. Videotapes were analyzed for how teachers facilitated children's explanatory language. An assessment of explanatory language was administered to 47 children in the center before and after the color mixing unit. Analysis of discourse revealed that teachers engaged children as conversational partners and as scientific investigators responsible for their own learning. Explanations were dynamically co-constructed by adults and children within the context of participation in scientific inquiry. By the end of the unit, children produced more on-topic responses, more standard color-mixing terms, and more causal connectives in their responses to the assessment of explanatory language.     

Fostering Understanding by Structural Alignment as a Route to Analogical Learning

The purpose of this study was to extend previous research on the conditions that may promote understanding and abstraction via structural alignment, that is, through a comparison between two partially understood situations. Structural alignment is a route to analogical reasoning which differs from the typical route where an analogy is made by eliciting an unknown situation from a very familiar one. Ninety-nine eighth graders were presented with two pairs of scenarios; the first depicting two phenomena of heat flow and the second, two phenomena of the changing state of matter. Participants were randomly assigned to five different conditions which varied in the degree to which they required a comparisonbetween the phenomena in the scenario pairs. For each pair of scenarios, participants were asked to describe the differences between the two phenomena, explain what happens in the phenomena, rate the similarity between the two, and justify the ratings. Results show that analogical reasoning was promoted more in the condition where participants were asked to jointly interpret the phenomena depicted in the scenarios. For both pairs of scenarios, students in this condition reached a deeper understanding; they were more able to identify alignable differences between the phenomena, and recognize the abstract and general higher-order relational structure implied by the perceptually different situations.     

Trying to Include but Supporting Exclusion Instead? Constructing the Roma in Slovak Educational Policies

Based on a social constructivist theoretical framework, this research study examines how the design of proinclusive educational policies and the general public construct the Roma students and parents in Slovakia. For this purpose, data from two selected educational policies and five focus groups conducted in five regions in Slovakia were analyzed. The findings demonstrate that the Roma are constructed negatively as irresponsible dependents and deviants not valuing education and incapable of making wise decisions about their lives. These findings can be considered relevant for policy formulation processes because proinclusive policies may sabotage their own goals if negative social constructions of a certain societal group are embedded in them.     

Analogical reasoning in restructuring scientific knowledge

This study presents the results of an experiment which investigated analogical reasoning in knowledge acquisition in a natural school setting. The aims were to evaluate the efficiency of analogy in the conceptual restructuring of a science topic and compare the effects of analogy in different learning conditions. Two analogical topics of physics (water flow and heat flow) were studied by means of two experiments performed in the classroom with concrete objects. Eighty-four 5th graders, divided into three experimental conditions (given analogy, constructed analogy, no analogy), took part in the study. The quantitative analysis mainly confirms the hypothesis that analogy can be a productive way to trigger a process of knowledge restructuring while students learn a new topic. However, the effective use of the analogy was affected by the experimental condition: When the analogy was constructed by the learners themselves, instead of being presented and justified by the teacher, it acted indeed as a more powerful tool in understanding the new topic which required changing their initial conceptions. The qualitative analysis shows the children’s explanations of the heat flow phenomenon and different conceptual outcomes of the learning process. Finally, educational implications are considered.     

Role of anomalous data and epistemological beliefs in middle school students’ theory change about two controversial topics

The question of theory change is crucial in knowledge construction, particularly in the process of conceptual change. This study was designed to investigate two factors that, in addition to initial theory preference, may play a crucial role in the process of theory change, that is, students’ interpretation of anomalous data on two controversial topics (the dinosaur extinction and the construction of the Giza pyramids in Egypt) and their epistemological beliefs about the nature of knowledge. Canonical correlation analyses suggested for both topics an association, stronger for the dinosaur extinction topic, between (a) acceptance of anomalous data (rated both as valid and inconsistent with the held theory), initial theory preference, epistemological belief in Certain Knowledge and (b) theory change. Data obtained from structure coefficients in canonical correlation analyses indicate that acceptance of anomalous data significantly contributed the most to theory change whereas the epistemological belief contributed the least. Finally, educational implications are drawn.     

The Process of Stress Assignment in Reading Aloud: Critical Issues From Studies on Italian

In polysyllabic languages the assignment of stress is crucial for understanding the reading process. Here we review empirical evidence, drawn mainly from studies on Italian, and discuss critical issues in understanding reading. We first discuss the lexical and sublexical mechanisms responsible for stress assignment and propose that the former is based on item-specific knowledge and the latter on the statistical-distributional knowledge that readers have acquired about their language. Then we examine the idea that stress and phonemes pertain to two dimensions of the word, which can be placed at two different representational levels. Finally, we analyze the effects of stress assignment on word articulation, a promising field for future investigation. These issues are addressed by reviewing the studies conducted in adult and young readers to outline the developmental trajectory of stress assignment and discuss how it operates in the reading system.     

Influence of Previous Knowledge, Language Skills and Domain-specific Interest on Observation Competency

Many epoch-making biological discoveries (e.g. Darwinian Theory) were based upon observations. Nevertheless, observation is often regarded as ‘just looking’ rather than a basic scientific skill. As observation is one of the main research methods in biological sciences, it must be considered as an independent research method and systematic practice of this method is necessary. Because observation skills form the basis of further scientific methods (e.g. experiments or comparisons) and children from the age of 4 years are able to independently generate questions and hypotheses, it seems possible to foster observation competency at a preschool level. To be able to provide development-adequate individual fostering of this competency, it is first necessary to assess each child’s competency. Therefore, drawing on the recent literature, we developed in this study a competency model that was empirically evaluated within learners (N = 110) from different age groups, from kindergarten to university. In addition, we collected data on language skills, domain-specific interest and previous knowledge to analyse coherence between these skills and observation competency. The study showed as expected that previous knowledge had a high impact on observation competency, whereas the influence of domain-specific interest was nonexistent. Language skills were shown to have a weak influence. By utilising the empirically validated model consisting of three dimensions (‘Describing’, ‘Scientific reasoning’ and ‘Interpreting’) and three skill levels, it was possible to assess each child’s competency level and to develop and evaluate guided play activities to individually foster a child’s observation competency.     

Emergent literacy and learning to write: A predictive model for italian language

The aim of the present study is twofold: (1) contribute to identifying a model for the variables that compose the emergent literacy construct and their relationships; (2) assess the predictive power of the emergent literacy model on early writing abilities in a transparent orthography language. We examined emergent literacy skills in 464 children (mean age 5.5, range: 48–6.1) who were followed longitudinally until entering the 1st grade in primary school. Exploratory and Confirmatory factor analyses were used to address questions on the nature of emergent literacy skills and their possible relationships. Regression analyses were implemented to evaluate the predictive capability of an emergent literacy model on word writing competences. The factor analyses showed three factorial dimensions (phonological, conceptual knowledge on writing system and textual) and their relationship. The regressions showed a significant prediction of conceptual knowledge on writing system and of phonological abilities on early writing abilities.