Development Of Science Concepts Research Articles

Young Children’s Development of Scientific Knowledge Through the Combination of Teacher-Guided Play and Child-Guided Play

Play-based approaches to science learning allow children to meaningfully draw on their everyday experiences and activities as they explore science concepts in context. Acknowledging the crucial role of the teacher in facilitating science learning through play, the purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how teacher-guided play, in conjunction with child-guided play, supports children’s development of science concepts. While previous research on play-based science learning has mainly focused on preschool settings, this study explores the possibilities of play-based approaches to science in primary school contexts. Using a qualitative methodology grounded in the cultural-historical theoretical perspective, children’s learning was examined during a science learning sequence that combined teacher-guided and child-guided play. This study revealed that the teacher-guided play explicitly introduced science concepts which children then used and explored in subsequent child-guided play. However, intentional teaching during the child-guided play continued to be important. Play-based approaches to science allowed children to make sense of the science concepts using familiar, everyday knowledge and activities. It became evident that the expectations and values communicated through classroom practices influenced children’s learning through play.

Development of science concepts within a Vygotskian framework

Vygotsky's work on the development of scientific concepts in childhood, as set forth in Thought and Language, is placed against the backdrop of his life. His ideas on the interrelationship between spontaneous everyday concepts and nonspontaneous scientific concepts, the interdependence of thought and language, and the relationship between school instruction and mental development are outlined and illustrated through examples. Differences between the theoretical positions of Vygotsky and Piaget are explored and recent work that extends and applies a Vygotskian sociocultural perspective to educational issues is summarized. Implications of this perspective for research and practice are discussed. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Development of science concepts within a Vygotskian framework

Vygotsky's work on the development of scientific concepts in childhood, as set forth in Thought and Language, is placed against the backdrop of his life. His ideas on the interrelationship between spontaneous everyday concepts and nonspontaneous scientific concepts, the interdependence of thought and language, and the relationship between school instruction and mental development are outlined and illustrated through examples. Differences between the theoretical positions of Vygotsky and Piaget are explored and recent work that extends and applies a Vygotskian sociocultural perspective to educational issues is summarized. Implications of this perspective for research and practice are discussed. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Development of science concepts in hearing impaired children studying in special schools and integrated settings

H. Sarangi, Research Scholar (UGC), Dept. of Special Education and Extension Services, National Council of Educational Research and Training, Sri Aurobindo Marg, New Delhi −110 016, India.

Dictionary of the History of Science

This work will be a valuable reference for students of the history and philosophy of science. More than 700 entries discuss the development of concepts in science, as the editors judged it more useful to have articles on the Atom, the Unconscious, or Mendelism, than on Dalton, Freud, or Mendel. This is a judicious approach, since the 16-volume Dictionary of Scientific Biography has recently been completed. Moreover, the present work includes an ample index of scientists, and the articles themselves are replete with personal names. Considerably more than a dictionary, the contributors, who are nearly all academics in the history of science or related fields, have in fact written highly condensed review articles, some running to several thousand words and many accompanied by suggestions for further reading. There is also a general bibliography. The analytical table of contents assigns all entries to ten categories: astronomy, biology, chemistry, earth sciences, historiography

The development of science concepts in primary children by discovery strategies

A year three/four class of thirty primary school children was selected and then exposed to a series of twenty discovery lessons on electricity, discovery learning being: The learning of scientific principles or concepts which occurs as a generalisation of experiences by the learner in the absence of direct telling by the teacher. (Carin and Sund, 1975) The performance of these children was evaluated, both before and after the discovery lessons, on the basis of their ability to solve problems requiring the application of one or more of the thirteen concepts covered. On comparing the performance of the “discovery” class on pre-test items with the performance of children from years three and four, as well as five to seven in other Perth suburban schools on subsets of these items, it was found that the “discovery” group was no better and no worse than other primary classes. A team of ten graders (examiners) was used for rating purposes. The Rasch Model was the statistical model used and enabled comparison to be made between the “discovery” group and all other class groups.

The use of motor activity learning in the development of science concepts with slow learning fifth grade children

AbstractThis study compared the motor activity technique of learning, using physical education activities, with traditional ways of developing science concepts with fifth grade slow learning children.Two groups of ten children each were equated on the basis of pretest scores. Both groups were taught by the same classroom teacher. One group was taught through motor activity learning and the other by traditional procedures.Both groups were retested after a two‐week teaching period, and again after a three‐month extended interval. The difference in the posttest scores favored the motor activity learning group, p < .01 (t = 4.33, df 9). The difference in the extended interval test also favored the same group, p < .001 (t = 6.37, df9).Using the differences in test scores as criteria for learning, the children in the motor activity learning group learned and retained significantly more than those in the traditional group.