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1.
Inquiry-based lessons have been demonstrated to improve children’s scientific thinking (i.e. reasoning abilities and domain-specific knowledge). Although empirical evidence shows that inquiry-based learning requires instruction, research comes from two approaches that have not been bridged yet: direct instruction of scientific reasoning and teacher training of verbal support. We investigated how these two types of instruction separately or combined strengthened children’s scientific thinking by comparing four conditions: baseline, direct instruction, verbal support, and a combined approach. Effectiveness of an inquiry-based lesson series on scientific reasoning abilities, vocabulary, and domain-specific knowledge (near and far transfer) were studied among 301 fourth graders. Results showed that both approaches strengthened different components of scientific reasoning abilities, and that a combination of instructions was most effective for scientific reasoning abilities, vocabulary, and domain-specific knowledge. Domain-specific knowledge acquisition was strengthened only when both instructions were provided. It can thus be concluded that each type of instruction has unique contributions to children’s science learning and that these instructions complement each other. Our study thus showed that inquiry-based lesson series when preceded by direct instruction of scientific reasoning and scaffolded with verbal support are most effective.  相似文献   

2.
In educational settings, continuous assessment of the child’s level of understanding is necessary to effectively utilize the principles of scaffolding and to create contexts that can advance the scientific reasoning of the child. In this article, we argue that a child’s performance is a dynamic notion that is created by all elements in an interaction, including the task. Therefore, we studied preschoolers’ levels of scientific reasoning varying different properties of the assessment context. Young children were interviewed about four scientific tasks using one out of four different protocols (varying in the degree of flexibility and adaptiveness) by an adult. In the first study, different task contents resulted in different performance levels. The second study indicated that the most structured protocol elicited the highest maximum level of reasoning in children and the highest percentage of correct predictions. The third study showed differences between the protocols in the adult’s verbal behavior. Adaptation in verbal behavior to different children by the adult did not result in higher scientific understanding by the children, whereas a higher degree of task structure did. Combined, the studies emphasize the importance of context, which has implications for assessment and teaching situations.  相似文献   

3.
The purpose of the present study was to test the hypothesis that student’s abductive reasoning skills play an important role in the generation of hypotheses on pendulum motion tasks. To test the hypothesis, a hypothesis-generating test on pendulum motion, and a prior-belief test about pendulum motion were developed and administered to a sample of 5th grade children. A significant number of subjects who have prior belief about the length to alter pendulum motion failed to apply their prior belief to generate a hypothesis on a swing task. These results suggest that students’ failure in hypothesis generation was related to abductive reasoning ability, rather than simple lack of prior belief. This study, then, supports the notion that abductive reasoning ability beyond prior belief plays an important role in the process of hypothesis generation. This study suggests that science education should provide teaching about abductive reasoning as well as scientific declarative knowledge for developing children’s hypothesis-generation skills.  相似文献   

4.
Understanding and using symbolic fractions in mathematics is critical for access to advanced STEM concepts. However, children and adults consistently struggle with fractions. Here, we take a novel perspective on symbolic fractions, considering them within the framework of relational structures in cognitive psychology, such as those studied in analogy research. We tested the hypothesis that relational reasoning ability is important for reasoning about fractions by examining the relation between scores on a domain-general test of relational reasoning (TORR Jr.) and a test of fraction knowledge consisting of various types of fraction problems in 194 s grade and 145 fifth grade students. We found that relational reasoning was a significant predictor of fractions knowledge, even when controlling for non-verbal IQ and fractions magnitude processing for both grades. The effects of relational reasoning also remained significant when controlling for overall mathematics knowledge and skill for second graders but was attenuated for fifth graders. These findings suggest that this important subdomain of mathematical cognition is integrally tied to relational reasoning and opens the possibility that instruction targeting relational reasoning may prove to be a viable avenue for improving children’s fractions skills.  相似文献   

5.
Explaining appears to dominate primary teachers’ understanding of mathematical reasoning when it is not confused with problem solving. Drawing on previous literature of mathematical reasoning, we generate a view of the critical aspects of reasoning that may assist primary teachers when designing and enacting tasks to elicit and develop mathematical reasoning. The task used in this study of children’s reasoning is a number commonality problem. We analysed written and verbal samples of reasoning gathered from children in grades 3 and 4 from three primary schools in Australia and one elementary school in Canada to map the variation in their reasoning. We found that comparing and contrasting was a critical aspect of forming conjectures when generalising in this context, an action not specified in frameworks for generalising in early algebra. The variance in children’s reasoning elicited through this task also illuminated the difference between explaining and justifying.  相似文献   

6.
ABSTRACT

This study investigated the influence of guidance instruction and type of activity on parental guidance of young children’s mathematics and scientific inquiry during cooking, games, and nature activities at home. Thirty families participated with their preschool-aged child; half were randomly assigned to an inquiry guidance instruction group and encouraged to support children’s reasoning with open-ended prompts and questions. Families participated in activities for one month, some of which they audio-recorded. Families engaged in processes of comparing, predicting, evaluating and concluding more often after inquiry guidance instruction, and incorporated inquiry processes into all activity types. Mathematics was most frequently observed in games and cooking. The results suggest that parents can use inquiry guidance to support preschoolers’ mathematics and scientific inquiry in a variety of activities performed at home. As children engage in inquiry-based learning during co-constructed activities with parents, they develop conceptual understanding of mathematics and scientific inquiry in a positive social context.  相似文献   

7.
The everyday conversations that occur between mothers and children, particularly those involving reasoning, are a major vehicle for the transmission of information and values to young children. This study explored the manner in which five Australian Chinese mothers engaged in reasoning talk with their preschool-aged children. A total of 83 instances of spontaneous reasoning talk were identified and analysed according to the manner in which the mothers justified their claims or statements, using Hasan’s reasoning structure framework to underpin the analysis. Both regulatory and nonregulatory contexts were analysed. The analysis revealed that in regulatory contexts, where a child’s behaviour is being controlled (for example, “eat up your dinner quickly”), mothers provided more socially based reasons to justify their directives. In nonregulatory contexts, such as shared reading, they used more logical reasoning based on universal laws of nature. The findings suggest that the reasoning talk that takes place between mothers and children provides a rich opportunity for mothers to convey their values to their children, with implications for children’s learning across a number of domains.  相似文献   

8.
While there is growing understanding about children’s moral reasoning for social inclusion and exclusion, we know little about how children reason specifically about the inclusion of aggressive children in school settings. To investigate children’s decisions about such inclusion and how they justified those decisions, this study reports data from 172 children interviewed in Year 1 (female?=?85, male?=?87), between the ages of six and seven and 155 children (female?=?78, male?=?79) who were interviewed again in Year 2. The children’s responses to scenarios regarding inclusion or exclusion of an aggressive child (who is bossy and pushes others around) in their play at school demonstrated that they were more likely to include an aggressive child in their play in Year 2 than in Year 1 of elementary school. They were also more likely in Year 2 to provide justifications that demonstrated a deeper understanding of the reasons for children’s aggressive behaviour at school. These data suggest that children’s school experiences may contribute to their ability to access multiple perspectives when reasoning about inclusion of others. Findings suggest the need to consider more closely how contextual experiences influence young children’s moral reasoning.  相似文献   

9.
Answering a call put forth decades ago by the higher education community and the federal government, we investigated the impact of US college coursework on student learning gains. Students gained, on average, 3.72 points on a 66-item test of quantitative and scientific reasoning after experiencing 1.5 years of college. Gain scores were unrelated to the number of quantitative and scientific reasoning courses completed when controlling and not controlling for students’ personal characteristics. Unexpectedly, yet fortunately, gain scores showed no discernable difference when corrected for low test-taking effort, which indicated test-taking effort did not compromise the validity of the test scores. When gain scores were disaggregated by amount of completed coursework, the estimated gain scores of students with quantitative and scientific reasoning coursework were smaller than what quantitative and scientific reasoning faculty expected or desired. In sum, although students appear on average to be making gains in quantitative and scientific reasoning, there is not a strong relationship between learning gains and students’ quantitative and scientific reasoning coursework, and the gains are less than desired by faculty. We discuss implications of these findings for student learning assessment and learning improvement processes.  相似文献   

10.
Viewing Tolstoy’s works from psychological and intellectual perspectives demonstrates his approach to children’s literacy and especially the development of reasoning, which he presents in his writing for children and the stories he includes in his New ABC book (1875a) and four Readers (1875b). This article examines Tolstoy’s reasoning approach in education and its application in his real happening stories for children. Some of Tolstoy’s ideas about upbringing that are expressed in his stories are similar to ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and a Swiss developmental physiologist contemporary to Tolstoy, Jean Piaget (1896–1980). Tolstoy’s real happening stories treat situations that a child might actually experience; they propose and teach scenarios that might influence a child’s or an adult’s thinking about ways to obtain an education. Thus, in Tolstoy’s approach to children’s education, reasoning becomes a pedagogical tool, used to develop knowledge, experience and critical thinking ability.  相似文献   

11.
There is a significant body of research on children’s preconceptions concerning scientific concepts and the impact this has upon their science education. One active issue concerns the extent to which young children’s explanations for the existence of natural kinds rely on a teleological rationale: for example, rain is for watering the grass, or tigers’ stripes are for camouflage. It has been argued that this teleological tendency hampers children’s ability to learn about causality in the natural world. This paper investigates two factors (question wording and topic) which it is argued have led to a misestimation of children’s teleological tendencies within the area natural phenomena: i.e. those that are time-constrained, natural events or process such as snow, clouds or night. Sixty-six (5–8 years old) children took part in a repeated-measures experiment, answering both open and leading questions across 10 topics of natural phenomena. The findings indicate that children’s teleological reasoning may have been overestimated as open-question forms significantly reduced their tendency to answer teleologically. Moreover, the concept of teleology is more nuanced than often suggested. Consequently, young children may be more able to learn about causal explanations for the existence of natural phenomena than the literature implies.  相似文献   

12.

The aim of the current study was to investigate to what extent children’s potential for learning is related to their level of cognitive flexibility. Potential for learning was measured through a dynamic testing procedure that aimed to measure how much a child can profit from a training procedure integrated into the testing process, including the amount and type of feedback the children required during this training procedure. The study followed a pre-test–training–post-test control group design. Participants were 153 6–7-year-old children. Half of this group of children were provided with a standardised graduated prompts procedure. The other half of the participants performed a non-inductive cognitive task. Children’s cognitive flexibility was measured through a card sorting test and a test of verbal fluency. Results show that cognitive flexibility was positively related to children’s performance, but only for children in the practice-only condition who received no training. These outcomes suggest that dynamic testing, and more in particular, the graduated prompting procedure, supports children’s cognitive flexibility, thereby giving children with weaker flexibility the opportunity to show more of their cognitive potential as measured through inductive reasoning.

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13.
To understand students’ argumentation abilities, there have been practices that focus on counting and analyzing argumentation schemes such as claim, evidence, warrant, backing, and rebuttal. This analytic approach does not address the dynamics of epistemic criteria of children’s reasoning and decision-making in dialogical situations. The common approach also does not address the practice of argumentation in lower elementary grades (K–3) because these children do not master the structure of argumentation and, therefore, are considered not ready for processing argumentative discourse. There is thus little research focusing on lower elementary school students’ argumentation in school science. This study, drawing on the societal-historical approach by L. S. Vygotsky, explored children’s argumentation as social relations by investigating the genesis of evidence-related practices (especially burden of proof) in second- and third-grade children. The findings show (a) students’ capacity for connecting claim and evidence/responding to the burden of proof and critical move varies and (b) that teachers play a significant role to emphasize the importance of evidence but experience difficulties removing children’s favored ideas during the turn taking of argumentative dialogue. The findings on the nature of dialogical reasoning and teacher’s role provide further insights about discussions on pedagogical approaches to children’s reasoning and argumentation.  相似文献   

14.
Research Findings: An emerging consensus is that casual, direct contact with nature influences the development of children’s biological knowledge. Here we review the existing literature on this topic, focusing on the effects of (a) rural versus urban rearing environments and (b) pet ownership and care on children’s biological concepts and reasoning. Although the research is limited, the evidence suggests that these factors positively influence children’s understanding of specific biological phenomena (e.g., internal organ function, biological inheritance) and reasoning patterns (e.g., anthropocentrism, ecological reasoning). Practice or Policy: In the modern context of diminishing outdoor playtime and limited experience with nature, this review highlights the importance of direct exposure to the natural world for children’s conceptual development in the domain of biology.  相似文献   

15.
Research Findings: Anthropomorphism—the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman entities—has long been a staple of children’s media. However, children’s experiences with anthropomorphic media may interfere with biological reasoning instead encouraging an anthropocentric view of the natural world. To date, little research has addressed the typical content of children’s storybooks about animals: Do these storybooks present factual information that may support early developing biological reasoning, or do they instead focus on human-centered, psychological information that may encourage anthropocentrism? We analyzed the types of causal explanatory information that commercial storybooks about animals provide to children about 2 biological concepts that have been extensively studied in the experimental literature: biological inheritance and the transmission of illness. Using coding schemes similar to those used in prior experimental literature to assess preschool-age children’s biological reasoning, we found that none of the anthropomorphized books presented children with scientifically accurate causal mechanisms. These books focused almost exclusively on social-emotional experiences as opposed to biological explanations, which may inadvertently encourage anthropocentric reasoning. Practice or Policy: Understanding more about the content of informal sources of early learning can help inform educators on how to best support developing knowledge about the natural world and biological properties.  相似文献   

16.
Research Findings: This study investigated folkbiological concepts that structure children’s moral reasoning regarding conservation. Participants (= 52; 7- and 10-year-olds, gender balanced) were interviewed regarding their values, moral obligations, and rights concerns for endangered and extinct animals. Across the 2 ages, children drew on the animal’s living status and teleology, as well as ecological relations, to ground their moral reasoning. Developmentally speaking, the younger children employed both nature-centered and human-centered moral reasoning, whereas the older children employed a complex form of moral reasoning that integrated human models of moral thinking with distinct biological understanding. Practice or Policy: The findings can improve education and policy that supports the next generation of conservationists. Educators can draw on these findings to develop class material and activities that teach children about ecological relations—knowledge children can employ to construct their moral arguments for conservation and protecting the environment. The findings revealed that children think about and value endangered animals in deep and beautiful ways. Policymakers can draw on the findings to frame their decision making—drawing more deeply on children’s values of the natural world to inform policy decisions. Drawing on children’s values in the development of environmental policy engages them in the policy process.  相似文献   

17.
ABSTRACT

Previous research on children’s moral reasoning usually used a quantitative approach and a pre-determined set of methods in order to establish early moral landmarks. We proposed a qualitative perspective on the basis of which we have formulated three main objectives: 1) to identify the main categories of behaviors that children spontaneously associate with the notion of morality, in line with Turiel’s Domain Theory; 2) to investigate children’s conceptions of moral and social-conventional rules and 3) to assess the gender differences in the use of care and justice reasoning, in line with Gilligan’s assertion that females are care-oriented and that males consistently use the justice orientation and infrequently use the care orientation. Ninety-two children (57% boys, mean age was 8.19 years) were required to describe morality in behavioral terms without being guided by specific indications from the researchers. Our results reflected a tendency towards morality perceived through behaviors directed towards others, namely through altruism, and also the domination of moral norms as compared to social ones, partially confirming Gilligan’s theory concerning gender specificities regarding moral reasoning in the questions of care and justice.  相似文献   

18.
Research has shown improvements in science, mathematics, and language scores when classroom discussion is employed in school-level science and mathematics classes. Studies have also shown statistically and practically significant gains in children’s reasoning abilities as measured by the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices test when employing the practice of “exploratory talk”. While these studies suggest that transfer of learning had taken place, a number of dialog-intensive designs have failed to find positive results, only reported delayed transfer, or have been criticized in terms of methodological rigor, small sample sizes, or because they have only shown small effect sizes. In this study, the claim is made that a particular set of studies which focused on exploratory talk and reasoning abilities, and which used designs that are better positioned to meet the standards mentioned above when presenting data in support of far transfer, provides robust evidence of far transfer within the framework of Barnett and Ceci’s taxonomy of transfer. Possible relationships between exploratory talk, argumentation, and key domains in the science of learning are considered in an attempt to explain the apparent far transfer effects when children engage in exploratory talk.  相似文献   

19.
This study aimed to examine the longitudinal relations of mathematics anxiety to quantitative reasoning and number knowledge in Chinese children. Three hundred and sixteen 6-year-old Chinese children in Hong Kong participated in two waves of assessments, eight months apart. Cross-lagged panel analyses showed that prior quantitative reasoning and number knowledge predicted lower mathematics anxiety, even after the effects of gender, mothers’ educational levels, and general anxiety were taken into account. However, earlier mathematics anxiety did not predict later quantitative reasoning and number knowledge. Our findings were consistent with the Deficit Theory, which postulates that mathematics anxiety comes from poor mathematical competence but not vice versa. We also found a reciprocal association between quantitative reasoning and number knowledge, in which initial quantitative reasoning had a stronger prediction on later number knowledge. Taken together with previous research, this result highlights the importance of quantitative reasoning in children’s mathematics learning and its role in mathematics education.  相似文献   

20.
An ultimate goal of higher education is to prepare our future workers with needed knowledge and skills. This includes cultivating students to become proficient reasoners who can utilize proper scientific reasoning to devise causal inferences from observations. Conventionally, students with more years of higher education are expected to have a greater level of scientific reasoning. Also expected traditionally is that studying science and engineering or attending top-rated universities can better promote students’ scientific reasoning than studying other majors or attending lower ranked institutions. In this study, we used Lawson’s Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning (LCTSR) with 1,637 Chinese students in different years of study, different fields, and different university tiers. It was found that regardless of which major or university students entered, their scientific reasoning measured by the LCTSR showed little variation across the entire 4 years of undergraduate education. Simply put, there was little association between tertiary-level learning and scientific reasoning. This study calls our attention to the status quo of higher education and motivates researchers across the globe to look into this issue in their own nations.  相似文献   

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