Children's operational knowledge about weight

Abstract

This study explores children's knowledge regarding weight in the age span of five to sixteen years. It appears that children's views develop gradually from the tactile experiences. Thus, such schemes as ‘weight‐is‐a‐pressing‐force’, ‘weight‐is‐possessed‐exclusively‐by‐heavy‐objects’, ‘suspended‐substances‐are‐weightless’, ‘weight‐is‐heaviness‐to‐hold/move’, and others, are intuitively constructed at a young age. Children's applications of these schemata might be mutually contradictory in different physical situations, being gradually, pushed by the ideas of weight conservation. As the transition of the knowledge status is continuous and not synchronized between different aspects of reality, the regular classification of children between ‘conservers’ and ‘nonconservers’ of weight is rather imprecise. Children can simultaneously employ different operational schemata and concept images with regard to the same physical concept or phenomenon. The study implies that the identification of weight with gravitational force, as currently adopted by formal instruction, is not reached through natural development. There is a kinship between the mental image of weight spontaneously constructed by a child and the weight concept defined operationally.