From Young Children’s Ideas about Germs to Ideas Shaping a Learning Environment

This paper is concerned with highlighting young children’s ideas about the nature, location and appearance of germs, as well as their reasoning strands about germs’ ontological category and biological functions. Moreover, it is concerned with exploring how all these could be taken into account for shaping a potentially fruitful learning environment. Conducting individual, semi-structured interviews with 35 preschoolers (age 4.5–5.5) of public kindergartens in the broader area of Patras, we attempted to trace their ideas about what germs are, where they may be found, whether they are good or bad and living or non-living and how they might look like in a drawing. Moreover, children were required to attribute a series of biological functions to dogs, chairs and germs, and finally to create a story with germs holding a key-role. The analysis of our qualitative data within the “NVivo” software showed that the informants make a strong association of germs with health and hygiene issues, locate germs mostly in our body and the external environment, are not familiar with the ‘good germs’-idea, and draw germs as ‘human-like’, ‘animal-like’ or ‘abstract’ entities. Moreover, they have significant difficulties not only in employing biological functions as criteria for classifying germs in the category of ‘living’, but also in just attributing such functions to germs using a warrant. Finally, the shift from our findings to a 3-part learning environment aiming at supporting preschoolers in refining their initial conceptualization of germs is thoroughly discussed in the paper.     

Preliminary Evolutionary Explanations: A Basic Framework for Conceptual Change and Explanatory Coherence in Evolution

This study aimed to explore secondary students’ explanations of evolutionary processes, and to determine how consistent these were, after a specific evolution instruction. In a previous study it was found that before instruction students provided different explanations for similar processes to tasks with different content. Hence, it seemed that the structure and the content of the task may have had an effect on students’ explanations. The tasks given to students demanded evolutionary explanations, in particular explanations for the origin of homologies and adaptations. Based on the conclusions from the previous study, we developed a teaching sequence in order to overcome students’ preconceptions, as well as to achieve conceptual change and explanatory coherence. Students were taught about fundamental biological concepts and the several levels of biological organization, as well as about the mechanisms of heredity and of the origin of genetic variation. Then, all these concepts were used to teach about evolution, by relating micro-concepts (e.g. genotypes) to macro-concepts (e.g. phenotypes). Moreover, during instruction students were brought to a conceptual conflict situation, where their intuitive explanations were challenged as emphasis was put on two concepts entirely opposed to their preconceptions: chance and unpredictability. From the explanations that students provided in the post-test it is concluded that conceptual change and explanatory coherence in evolution can be achieved to a certain degree by lower secondary school students through the suggested teaching sequence and the explanatory framework, which may form a basis for teaching further about evolution.     

Alternatives pour la formation des enseignants: deux expériences en Grèce du nord

The author analyses two experiments with alternative forms of training of teachers of modem languages, carried out in Greece in 1982 to 1985. Examining first the ideology of training, she first calls in question some basic assumptions concerning teacher models and the processes of training, which risk perpetuating traditional, teacher‐taught, attitudes. The concept of training is set against that of teacher autonomy; the rigidity suggested by ‘training’, it is suggested, can be counter‐productive. The approach adopted in the experiments described has been that of maximising autonomy.

The first experiment extended over three years, commencing 1982. It aimed at reestablishing the theory‐practice link, in the hope of bringing into being a ‘teacher‐researcher’. The strategies adopted are described, with an emphasis on the multiplier effect of the first group on return to their schools, and with a subsequent extension to initial training as well as in‐service. Despite difficulties, positive results were achieved.

The second experiment commenced in 1983 and drew upon the existing project. It aimed at the production of new curricula and evaluation methods, and upon new curriculum materials. Teachers were actively involved in the process, their involvement being essential in the eyes of the project team. The experience was highly innovatory, leading to a complete restructuring of class activities and to the emergence of new pupil‐teacher relationships, and of a new learning transaction.     

Students’ Preconceptions About Evolution: How Accurate is the Characterization as “Lamarckian” when Considering the History of Evolutionary Thought?

In this paper, the main points of Lamarck’s and Darwin’s theoretical conceptual schemes about evolution are compared to those derived from 15 years old students’ explanations of evolutionary episodes. We suggest that secondary students’ preconceptions should not be characterized as “Lamarckian”, because they are essentially different from the ideas that Lamarck himself possessed. Most students in our research believed that needs directly impose changes on animal bodies in order to survive in a given environment and accepted the possibility of extinction whereas Lamarck believed that it was the effect of use or disuse that would produce changes on body structures and that species would transform but would not die out. We conclude that the relationship between secondary students’ ideas and historical views on evolution should be treated more skeptically, given the differences in the historical, social and cultural contexts, and that instruction should focus on students’ ideas of need-driven evolution as well as on the role of chance in the evolutionary process.     

High‐school students’ reasoning while constructing plant growth models in a computer‐supported educational environment

This paper highlights specific aspects of high‐school students’ reasoning while coping with a modeling task of plant growth in a computer‐supported educational environment. It is particularly concerned with the modeling levels (‘macro‐phenomenological’ and ‘micro‐conceptual’ level) activated by peers while exploring plant growth and with their ability to shift between or within these levels. The focus is on the types of reasoning developed in the modeling process, as well as on the reasoning coherence around the central concept of plant growth. The findings of the study show that a significant proportion of the 18 participating dyads perform modeling on both levels, while their ability to shift between them as well as between the various elements of the ‘micro‐conceptual’ level is rather constrained. Furthermore, the reasoning types identified in peers’ modeling process are ‘convergent’, ‘serial’, ‘linked’ and ‘convergent attached’, with the first type being the most frequent. Finally, a significant part of the participating dyads display a satisfactory degree of reasoning ‘coherence’, performing their task committed to the main objective of exploring plant growth. Teaching implications of the findings are also discussed.     

Should Science Teaching Involve the History of Science? An Assessment of Kuhn’s View

Thomas Kuhn draws the distinction between textbook history of science and history of science proper. The question addressed in the paper is whether Kuhn recommends the inclusion of distortive textbook history in science education. It is argued, pace Fuller, that Kuhn does not make normative suggestions. He does not urge the teaching of bad history and he does not aim to deceive the scientists. He highlights the significance of the retrospective history of the textbooks as a condition for the practice of science. If science is to be seen as a practice and not as a set of propositions, then textbook history is instrumental in establishing and expanding the new paradigm. The other kind of history, the history of science proper, can only be taught as part of the students’ general education and not as part of science education.     

The development of the concept of alive by preschoolers through a cognivive conflict teaching intervention

The aim of this research was the conceptual change and transformation of the intuitive conceptions of preschoolers concerning life through a cognitive—conflict teaching intervention. Young children use the criterion of movement to justify the classification of objects as living or non-living, that is classify plants as non-living because they are immobile and mobile non-alive objects as living. The concept of life includes many sub-concepts and movement is a secondary and not a universal characteristic of living organisms. The subjects of this research were chosen according to their replies concerning the classification of plants as non-living. Subjects of the experimental group received a teaching intervention aiming at the change of their conceptual context about life and focusing mainly at the dependence of an organism to its environment. In the teaching intervention we used the procedure of cognitive conflict through the juxtaposition of live organisms to dead ones and mobile simulations. Our results show that all the children of experimental group presented a conceptual change classifying the plant as alive and using explanations including the dependence on environment and other functions, increasing the number of criteria used for justification of the animal as living.     

Students’ intuitive explanations of the causes of homologies and adaptations

This paper reports data from a study aiming to explore secondary students’ preconceptions and explanations about evolutionary processes. Students may exhibit both alternative and scientifically acceptable conceptions and bring different ones into play in response to different problem contexts. Hence, the examination of their explanations before instruction within different problem contexts is expected to highlight the concepts that instruction should put more emphasis on. To achieve this, an open-ended questionnaire in conjunction with semi-structured interviews was used to allow students to express their own views on issues related to evolution. Students’ explanations highlighted their lack of knowledge of important evolutionary concepts such as common descent and natural selection. In addition, many students explained the origin of traits as the result of evolution through need via purposeful change or as carefully designed adaptations. Rather than evolutionary, final causes formed the basis for the majority of students’ explanations. In many cases students provided different explanations for the same process to tasks with different content. It seems that the structure and the content of the task may have an effect on the explanations that students provide. Implications for evolution education are discussed and a minimal explanatory framework for evolution is suggested.