Abstract
Scientific reasoning encompasses individuals‘ evaluation of evidence with regard to a given hypothesis. In this study, we investigated whether preschool children are able to reason with empirical evidence in the science context of elasticity. N = 63 preschoolers were presented with tasks following the deductive reasoning paradigm and were asked to evaluate the relevance of given events (objects) with regard to a hypothesis. In a repeated measures experimental design with three groups, we tested whether different forms of scaffolding (adaptive prompts with/without modeling of advanced reasoning) would promote children’s reasoning compared to a control group without intervention. We found that adaptive prompts with modeling significantly improved children’s evaluation of irrelevant events in the posttest. Further, these children’s reasoning patterns scored significantly higher than those of the control group. Our results suggest that preschool children are able to reason with evidence if they are given adequate support. Specifically, the modeling of advanced reasoning functioned as a scaffold beyond the use of adaptive prompts in irrelevant event evaluations.
Highlights
Background of the studyBased on prior studies revealing gains in elementary school students’ event evaluations in a training context (Robisch et al 2014) and in a classroom context (Grimm et al 2018), we investigated whether these effects will be found for preschool children
We investigated to what extent preschoolers will profit from scaffolding when evaluating empirical evidence with regard to a given hypothesis
In prior studies it was found that elementary school children are able to advance their deductive reasoning in the domain of elasticity both in a training setting (Robisch et al 2014) and in a classroom setting (Grimm et al 2018) by means of adaptive prompts, whereas modeling did not contribute to this effect
Summary
Scientific reasoning is regarded a process of sense-making from observations of natural phenomena, experiments, and data patterns (Sandoval et al 2014; Windschitl et al 2008). Studies with mostly four- to-six-year-old preschool children show that they are able to generate hypotheses, recognize data patterns, and use data to derive inferences (e.g., Köksal-Tuncer and Sodian 2018). Studies by van der Graaf et al (2016, 2018) showed that four- to six-year-old preschoolers can solve tasks of variable control and data covariation, and that variance in performance predicted children’s conceptual development. Fourto six-year-olds were able to generate evidence and verbal explanations needed for the falsification of an incorrect causal claim (Köksal-Tuncer and Sodian 2018). This strategy of falsification involves deductive reasoning (Lawson 2010) since the validity of claims is judged with suitable evidence
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