The ability of children aged 6 and 9 years, respectively, to detect errors in a narrative based on incorrect information about evaporation in the water cycle

Abstract

Children begin to fully understand evaporation at the age of 11 years, but they already have some idea of this phenomenon in preschool age. The paper presents the results of a research exploring the understanding of evaporation by 6- and 9-year-old children. The research used the method of a narrative based on incorrect information in order to verify whether and how well children would discover the errors in that narrative and how they could explain the process of evaporation. The incorrect narrative method is inspired by the science fiction film genre, which uses false assumptions to prove something that is not true. According to the research, half of the children knew that evaporation accompanies the process of cloud formation, but only half of the children who knew that (one-fourth of the respondents) could detect an error in the narrative. The reason for that is believed to be children’s lack of critical thinking and limited structured knowledge of evaporation in the water cycle in nature.