Abstract
The purpose of this article is to present an analysis to identify the reasoning processes and representations that preschool students develop about sound based on the inferential-representational approach. Participants were 18 preschool students between the ages of four and five attending three rural schools located in the Sierra Norte of Puebla, Mexico. Data were obtained through a 14 question semi-structured interview. From children’s answers to the formulated questions, an inferential analysis method was applied to identify intentionality, representation elements, sign-material expressions, representations, inferences, and coordination rules in students’ constructions. The results show that children build a basic set of epistemic tools to give meaning to their interpretations and can use them as surrogate reasoning to make inferences. This research constitutes the first approximation toward the understanding of preschool children’s reasoning forms with an inferential-representational approach and constitutes a new approach that puts forward new referents to analyze students of different ages. We consider that the described results and analysis have implications on science education at this educational level.
Highlights
The benefits of including science in preschool classrooms are undeniable
Research questions: How do children build their representations about sound? What is their reasoning process? Is there a set of a basic nucleus in which they base their inferences? To answer these questions, the objective of this study is to identify the reasoning processes and representations that students develop about sound at a preschool level using as a tool the inferential-representational approach analysis to answer these questions
The present paper focuses on analyzing representations that preschool children build about sound from an inferential-representational approach
Summary
The analysis of how students build their representations is still a fundamental question because it allows us to comprehend how we build physical understanding and give meaning to our surroundings. This knowledge lets us build effective strategies that improve teaching and learning processes in the classroom. Researchers have covered the fields of physics, chemistry, and biology at all educational levels; research in children under eight years old has been infrequent, especially in the field of physics [1] An example of this is the study of sound ideas.
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