Children's conceptions of memory and imagination - from conceptual knowledge to metacognition. Phenomenographical study

Abstract

The article presents a research project which applied the methodology of phenomenography to describe children's conceptions of memory and imagination. The comparison of two mental concepts was considered a natural cognitive procedure, conducive to reflection on one's own knowledge concerning the features of thought processes and relationships between them. The graphic and verbal explications developed in the course of the task were used to build a map of children's ways of conceptualizing memory and imagination. A group of 59 nine-year-old children (third grade students of several Polish public schools) participated in the research. The conceptions identified as a result of the phenomenographic analysis (a/ memory and imagination as a mental action; b/ memory and imagination as a mental product, and c/ memory and imagination as the subject's resource) proved to be cumulative and inseparable, i.e. the conceptions with a higher level of complexity and sophistication contained elements of simpler, less mature conceptualizations. The analysis of the collected materials leads to the conclusion that organizing one's own metacognitive knowledge in terms of similarities and differences between cognitive processes can provide an important mechanism for learning, allowing to trigger the meanings’ movement between different dimensions of subject's awareness - implicit and explicit, subjective and objective one. The task designed as research tool can be used by teachers as a sort of scaffolding for awakening and supporting children's abilities which are in the zone of proximal development, in the course of intensive development. Conclusions and implications for further research are presented in the summary of the text.