Abstract
Children’s everyday activities enable them to learn some science even before entering preschool education and children bring these ideas with them when entering education settings. Some of these ideas, or else mental representations, may not be compatible with what is generally accepted by the scientific community. This paper presents the results of an empirical study, focusing on the construction of a precursor model that can support children’s scientific learning, in relation to the phenomenon of change of the state of water. The research included 91 children aged 5–6 which participated in a specifically designed teaching intervention. The intervention lasted approximately 55 min and was conducted at eight stages, during which children’s predictions and explanations for simple cases of change of the state of water were recorded. The analysis of children’s responses suggests that the specific teaching intervention can have a positive effect on children’s thinking in relation to the change of the state of water. A considerable number of pre-schoolers were able to take advantage of their involvement in the teaching intervention and construct a stable precursor model to support the development of their understanding, in relation to the water change of state phenomenon. It appears that precursor models can function in the minds of young children as intermediaries between mental representations of reality and scientific knowledge and prepare children’s thinking, forming the basis for a cognitive path towards cognitive processing and the formation of more complex models. The proposed intervention is compatible with the model used in science education and it is proposed to be used in moderation and should not replace children’s learning through play.
Highlights
Young children’s initiation in science in the early years has been an area of research interest for over 30 years, in the context of cognitive, developmental and educational psychology, and in the context of early childhood education as well as science education (Allen and KambouriDanos 2016; Fleer 1996)
The main research question focuses on whether, through systematically designed teaching activities, children aged between 5 and 6 years old are able to move from an intuitive approach to water state changes to the mental construction of a precursor model
The study was based on a teaching intervention that focused on supporting children’s scientific learning through a series of designed activities which aimed to activate a precursor model that would support the understanding of water state changes
Summary
Young children’s initiation in science in the early years has been an area of research interest for over 30 years, in the context of cognitive, developmental and educational psychology, and in the context of early childhood education as well as science education (Allen and KambouriDanos 2016; Fleer 1996) In all these contexts, it is apparent that children have the potential to approach phenomena and concepts, to develop reasoning and to construct stable forms and schemas of approaching the natural world (Kampeza 2006; Küçüközer and Bostan 2010; Kambouri 2011; Allen and Kambouri-Danos 2016; Ampartzaki and Kalogiannakis 2016; Pantidos et al 2017). Misconceptions can often pose strong barriers to learning science and can be detrimental to learning (Clement et al 1989; Kambouri 2015)
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