首页 | 本学科首页   官方微博 | 高级检索  
相似文献
 共查询到20条相似文献，搜索用时 46 毫秒
1.
For learning science, motivational beliefs such as confidence in one's science abilities and liking of science are associated with current and future science achievement, as well as continued interest in science classes and careers. However, there are currently no measures to test young children's motivational beliefs related to science learning. To meet this need, we developed the Puppet Interview Scales of Competence in and Enjoyment of Science (PISCES). We piloted PISCES with 113 kindergarten children in public schools participating in the Scientific Literacy Project (SLP). Factor analysis supported the multidimensional structure of young children's self-related beliefs about learning science. PISCES scales measured Science Liking, Science Competence, and Ease of Science Learning. Correlations among PISCES scales and achievement subtests provided evidence of PISCES's validity. Children's motivational beliefs varied as a function of length of time spent learning science, with competence beliefs associated positively with science experience. There were no gender differences.  相似文献   

2.
This paper explores children's beliefs about global warming and energy sources from a psychological perspective, focusing upon situational influences upon subjective beliefs, including perceived self‐efficacy. The context of the research is one of growing concern at the potential impacts of global warming, yet demonstrably low levels of self‐efficacy amongst both adults and children to effectively respond to this large‐scale environmental problem. Empirical research was conducted on a sample of 198 UK children and adults to explore the influence of a cooperative learning environment upon children's beliefs about global warming and energy. A comparative design was adopted, contrasting 9–12 year old members of the Woodcraft Folk educational organisation with non‐members of similar age and with adult members of the same organisation. Results indicate that cooperative learning environments can have a significant and positive effect upon children's beliefs about large‐scale environmental problems. In particular, Woodcraft folk children reported significantly higher levels of personal awareness and perceived self‐efficacy in relation to global warming in comparison to their peers. Secondly, unexpected differences were identified between levels of perceived self‐efficacy in children and adult Woodcraft folk. The implications of these differences for the design of educational programmes seeking to empower children to respond to global warming are discussed.  相似文献   

3.
We explored 30 Black Kindergarten‐2nd grade students' spoken narratives around pages of their science journals that the children selected as best for showing them as scientists. Because in all narratives, space–time relationships play an important role not only in situating but also in constituting them, we focused on such relationships using Bakhtin's (1981) construct of chronotopes. Our chronotopical analysis aimed at fleshing out the temporal and spatial features that were present in the children's journal pages, and in the children's ways of talking both about these features and about being scientists. Our goal was to better understand ways in which African‐American children identify with science and scientists in particular contexts: an interview with an adult who had visited their class throughout that year and a class where they were offered various opportunities to engage with science. Using six cases that maximized the variety of understandings we could develop vis‐à‐vis our research question, we show how the children's narratives were filled with differing space–time relationships in which the children found ways to showcase their agency. Thus, we provide insights into how the children authored relationships with science and scientists, negotiated the past with the present and possible future, and contextualized their narratives within various time‐spaces that had meaning for them. Moreover, multiple people populated the children's chronotopes and became intertwined with the space–time relationships that underlined their conceptions of themselves vis‐à‐vis science and scientists. Despite the varied conceptions of science and scientists that the children portrayed, their narratives communicated a high level of confidence in being able to do science and be scientists, and initiative in learning. The children's narratives were filled with hope, “able‐ness,” knowledge, affect, and possibility. These findings point to several considerations for practice. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 568–596, 2012  相似文献   

4.
Young children from around the world are accessing the internet in ever increasing numbers. The rapid increase in internet activity by children aged 4–5 years in particular is due to the ease access enabled them by touchscreen internet‐enabled tablet technologies. With young children now online, often independently of adult supervision, the need for early childhood cyber‐safety education is becoming urgent. In this paper, we report the early findings from a project aimed at examining the development of cyber‐safety education for young children. We argue that cyber‐safety education for young children cannot be effectively developed without first considering young children's thinking about the internet. In this paper, we use Vygotsky's ideas about the development of mature concepts from the merging of everyday and scientific concepts. We identify the potential range of everyday concepts likely to form the basis of young children's thinking about the internet as a platform for cyber‐safety education in the early years.  相似文献   

5.
The primary purpose of this study was to develop and apply a method for assessing teachers' context beliefs about their science teaching environment. Interviews with 130 purposefully selected teachers resulted in 28 categories of environmental factors and/or people who were perceived to influence science teaching. These categories were used to develop items for the Context Beliefs about Teaching Science instrument and provided evidence for content validity. Construct validity was partially confirmed through factor analysis that resulted in 26 items and two subscales on the final instrument. Using Ford's Motivation Systems Theory and Bandura's Theory of Collective Efficacy, additional evidence for construct validity was found in the modest correlation of context beliefs with outcome expectancy beliefs and the low correlation with science teaching self‐efficacy beliefs. The instrument was tested using 262 teachers participating in long‐term science professional development programs. These teachers possessed fairly positive context beliefs and, according to Ford's theory, should be capable of effective functioning in the classroom. It was concluded that the assessment of context beliefs would complement current science teacher self‐efficacy measures, thereby allowing researchers to develop profiles of science teachers' personal agency belief patterns. It could also be used to determine the factors which predict particular personal agency belief patterns, and assess teachers' perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of school science programs, and could be used in planning and monitoring professional development experiences for science teachers. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 275–292, 2000.  相似文献   

6.
This study explores the impacts of selected early science experiences in kindergarten (frequency and duration of teachers' teaching of science, availability of sand/water table and science areas, and children's participation in cooking and science equipment activities) on children's science achievement in kindergarten and third grade using data for 8,642 children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study‐Kindergarten cohort (ECLS‐K). A theoretical model that depicts the relationships between the study variables was developed and tested using structural equation modeling. Results demonstrated that availability of science materials in kindergarten classrooms facilitated teachers' teaching of science and children's participation in science activities. Likewise, the frequency and the duration of kindergarten science teaching was a significant predictor of children's science activities but not of the children's end of kindergarten science achievement scores. Children's engagement with science activities that involved using science equipment also was not a significant predictor of their end of kindergarten science achievement. However, children's participation in cooking activities was. Children's prior knowledge, motivation, socio‐economic status, and gender were all statistically significant predictors of their science achievement at the end of kindergarten and end of third grade. Results of this study indicate that early science experiences provided in kindergarten are not strong predictors of children's immediate and later science achievement. Findings of the study suggest that the limited time and nature of science instruction might be related to the limited effect of the science experiences. Implications for teacher education programs and educational policy development are discussed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 217–235, 2011  相似文献   

7.
Background:?There is concern in the education community regarding gender differences in reading, as girls regularly outperform boys. There is also concern about the consequences of low motivation for children's engagement in reading and learning. An important question is whether boys' motivation is more closely linked to their attainment compared with girls.

Purpose:?The aim of the study was to examine how closely children's reading skill correlates with their intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and competency beliefs. There was a particular focus on gender.

Sample:?There were 492 children (240 boys) aged 7–11 in this study from four primary schools in England, UK.

Design and methods:?Children completed a reading comprehension assessment and a questionnaire examining intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and competency beliefs relating to reading and schoolwork. For analysis, children were split into a younger (age 7–8) and older (age 9–11) age group.

Results:?In both the younger and older groups, the boys' competency beliefs in reading and intrinsic motivation for reading and schoolwork were significantly more closely associated with their level of reading skill, in comparison with the girls.

Conclusions:?The closer reciprocal relationship between boys' intrinsic motivation, competency beliefs and reading skill could be interpreted in at least two ways. Firstly, boys' motivation and beliefs in their ability may be more dependent on their success in reading. Alternatively, boys' motivation and competency beliefs may play a more significant role in the effort they put into reading.  相似文献   

8.
Abstract

This study describes the development of the Social Conflict Inventory (SCI), a self‐report teacher belief scale for assessing beliefs about young children's classroom peer conflicts. Three phases were involved in the construction of the SCI: item development, initial testing with one sample (n = 218), and follow‐up field test with a second sample (n = 395) that also addressed the convergent and concurrent validity of the instrument. Reliability and factor analyses conducted during the initial field test resulted in a reduction to 20 items (Cronbach’ s α = .87) with three subscales: General Orientation to Peer Conflict (α = .81), Cessation (α = .84), and Facilitation (α = .65). Similar patterns of factor loadings and reliabilities resulted from analyses of the follow‐up field test data. Overall, the SCI proved to be a reliable instrument for assessing the beliefs concerning the role of classroom conflicts in children's development and for differentiating among groups of teachers. Further use of the SCI in conjunction with other measures of teacher beliefs will contribute to a better understanding of its concurrent validity. Finally, the potential for its use in future studies to clarify the relationship between beliefs and actual classroom practices and as an instrument for assessing the effectiveness of specific classroom management training programs is discussed.  相似文献   

9.
Although including children with developmental disabilities in preschool classes has become increasingly common, little is known about how experiences in an inclusive classroom affect young children's development. In Study 1, 36 typically developing children (mean age = 55.2 months) attending an inclusive, university-based early childhood program were interviewed about their knowledge of and attitudes toward children with disabilities. Parents answered questions about: (a) expectations for their children's prosocial behaviors and (b) their own beliefs about interacting with children with disabilities. Parents' beliefs and children's attitudes toward children with disabilities were positively related to the frequency of children's actual contacts with classmates with disabilities during free play time. In Study 2, the beliefs and behaviors of 20 children from an inclusive university-based early childhood program and 18 children from an inclusive community-based program were compared. There was no difference between the two programs in the amount of contact typically developing children had with classmates with disabilities.  相似文献   

10.
Research Findings: This paper reports on children's use of science materials in preschool classrooms during their free choice time. Baseline observations showed that children and teachers rarely spend time in the designated science area. An intervention was designed to “market” the science center by introducing children to 1 science tool, the balance scale. Baseline measures showed that children did not know the scale's name or function. The intervention was expected to increase children's use of the science area and their knowledge about the scale. Children's voluntary presence and exploration in the science area increased after the balance scale intervention compared to in comparison classrooms. Furthermore, children who participated in this intervention demonstrated improved knowledge about the scale's function, whereas students in the comparison group did not. Practice or Policy: Adults can increase children's autonomous exploration of science tools and materials, and their knowledge about them, by offering particular kinds of large-group learning experiences.  相似文献   

11.
This paper reports a research study into the effects of rich, sustained visual arts instruction on 103 inner city 9‐year‐olds in two major US cities. We use the lenses of social learning theory, theories of motivation and self‐efficacy, and recent research on artistic thinking to investigate the programs' effects on children's self‐beliefs and creative thinking. The study enlisted a pre–post measure, treatment‐comparison group design along with structured observations of participant and comparison group classrooms. The arts students made significant comparative gains on a self‐efficacy scale and on an ‘originality’ subscale of a standard creativity test. These effects are attributed to children's engagement in art and to the social organization of instruction including reinforcing peer and student–adult relationships. Relationships between self‐efficacy beliefs and tendencies to think originally are explored.  相似文献   

12.
Children's developing reasoning skills are better understood within the context of their social and cultural lives. As part of a research–museum partnership, this article reports a study exploring science‐relevant conversations of 82 families, with children between 3 and 11 years, while visiting a children's museum exhibit about mammoth bones, and in a focused one‐on‐one exploration of a “mystery object.” Parents' use of a variety of types of science talk predicted children's conceptual engagement in the exhibit, but interestingly, different types of parent talk predicted children's engagement depending on the order of the two activities. The findings illustrate the importance of studying children's thinking in real‐world contexts and inform creation of effective real‐world science experiences for children and families.  相似文献   

13.
This article explores aspects of young children's three‐dimensional development in art making. Understanding young children's three‐dimensional awareness and development is often a neglected area of early childhood educators' education and practice and often children's creative potential is not fully realised. The present article is based on a small scale qualitative study which focused on understanding 5–6 year‐olds' representational intentions in three‐dimensional artworks, understanding of visual/design concepts and expressive use of media (scrap paper and mod roc). The findings of the study suggest that young children are able to create satisfying three‐dimensional representations giving emphasis on forms, uprightness, balance, movement and modeling of multiple sides.  相似文献   

14.
Research suggests that children's motivation to read is influenced by their level of reading skill and reading self-concept. However, it is possible that characteristics unrelated to reading, such as underlying personality characteristics, may also influence children's motivation to read. The current study examined the extent to which children's intrinsic reading motivation was predicted by their reading skill, reading self-concept, and personality characteristics. Two hundred and ninety five children (aged 10–11) completed questionnaires measuring reading motivation, reading self-concept, personality characteristics, and also completed a reading assessment. It was found that personality explained significant variance in intrinsic reading motivation after accounting for reading skill and reading self-concept. Furthermore, personality factors accounted for similar amounts of variance in intrinsic reading motivation as reading self-concept and skill. The implications for improving children's motivation to read are discussed, in addition to the importance of tailoring educational and motivational strategies to individuals.  相似文献   

15.
This study builds on and contributes to work on assessment of children in primary school, particularly in science. Previous research has examined primary science assessment from different standpoints, but no studies have specifically addressed children's perspectives. This article provides additional insight into issues surrounding children's assessment in primary school and how the assessment of science might develop in England after the science SATs (Standard Assessment Tests) were abolished in 2009. Some research suggests that primary science assessment via SATs is a major reason for the observed decline in children's engagement with science in upper primary and lower secondary school. The analytic focus on engaging children as coresearchers to assist in the process of gathering informed views and interpreting findings from a large sample of children's views enables another contribution. The study, based on a survey of 1000 children in primary and secondary schools in England and Wales, reveals that despite being assessed under two different regimes (high‐stakes national tests in England and moderated teacher assessment in Wales), children's views of science assessment are remarkably consistent. Most appreciate the usefulness of science assessment and value frequent, non‐SATs testing for monitoring/improving science progress. There was a largely negative impact, however, of science assessment on children's well‐being, particularly due to stress. The paper demonstrates that children provide an important perspective on assessment and that including their views can improve policy‐making in relation to primary science assessment.  相似文献   

16.
There is debate about the abstractness of young children's self‐concepts—specifically, whether they include representations of (a) general traits and abilities and (b) the global self. Four studies (N = 176 children aged 4–7) suggested these representations are indeed part of early self‐concepts. Studies 1 and 2 reexamined prior evidence that young children cannot represent traits and abilities. The results suggested that children's seemingly immature judgments in previous studies were due to peculiarities of the task context not the inadequacy of children's self‐concepts. Similarly, Studies 3 and 4 revealed that, contrary to claims of immaturity in reasoning about the global self, young children update their global self‐evaluations in flexible, context‐sensitive ways. This evidence suggests continuity in the structure of self‐concepts across childhood.  相似文献   

17.
This study describes the design and use of a valid and reliable instrument to measure teacher candidates' attitudes and beliefs about mathematics and science and the teaching of those subjects. The instrument, Attitudes and Beliefs about the Nature of and the Teaching of Mathematics and Science, was developed for the Maryland Collaborative for Teacher Preparation (MCTP), a statewide, standards‐based project in the National Science Foundation's Collaborative in Excellence in Teaching Preparation (CETP) Program. We report on two applications of the instrument: (a) a contrast between MCTP teacher candidates' and non‐MCTP teacher candidates' attitudes and beliefs about mathematics and science as they initially encountered reform‐based instruction in their undergraduate courses, and (b) a landscaping of how the MCTP teacher candidates' attitudes toward and beliefs about mathematics and science evolved over a 2.5‐year period. In support of current reform in science and mathematics teacher education, we determined that over an extended period the MCTP teacher candidates' attitudes and beliefs moved substantively and significantly in the direction intended. However, we also found that the non‐MCTP teacher candidates in the same reform‐based courses did not mirror this improvement in their attitudes and beliefs about mathematics and science or the teaching of those subjects. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 713–737, 2002  相似文献   

18.
Little is known about the flexibility of children's prosocial motivation. Here, 2‐ and 3‐year‐old children's (n = 128) internal arousal, as measured via changes in pupil dilation, was increased after they accidentally harmed a victim but were unable to repair the harm. If they were able to repair (or if they themselves did not cause the harm and the help was provided by someone else) their arousal subsided. This suggests that children are especially motivated to help those whom they have harmed, perhaps out of a sense of guilt and a desire to reconcile with them. Young children care not only about the well‐being of others but also about the relationship they have with those who depend on their help.  相似文献   

19.
In this study we explored how dramatic enactments of scientific phenomena and concepts mediate children's learning of scientific meanings along material, social, and representational dimensions. These drama activities were part of two integrated science‐literacy units, Matter and Forest, which we developed and implemented in six urban primary‐school (grades 1st–3rd) classrooms. We examine and discuss the possibilities and challenges that arise as children and teachers engaged in scientific knowing through such experiences. We use Halliday's (1978. Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press) three metafunctions of communicative activity—ideational, interpersonal, and textual—to map out the place of the multimodal drama genre in elementary urban school science classrooms of young children. As the children talked, moved, gestured, and positioned themselves in space, they constructed and shared meanings with their peers and their teachers as they enacted their roles. Through their bodies they negotiated ambiguity and re‐articulated understandings, thus marking this embodied meaning making as a powerful way to engage with science. Furthermore, children's whole bodies became central, explicit tools used to accomplish the goal of representing this imaginary scientific world, as their teachers helped them differentiate it from the real world of the model they were enacting. Their bodies operated on multiple mediated levels: as material objects that moved through space, as social objects that negotiated classroom relationships and rules, and as metaphorical entities that stood for water molecules in different states of matter or for plants, animals, or non‐living entities in a forest food web. Children simultaneously negotiated meanings across all of these levels, and in doing so, acted out improvisational drama as they thought and talked science. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47: 302–325, 2010  相似文献   

20.

This paper reports a small‐scale longitudinal enquiry into the development of children's ideas on light and vision. It followed the same class from Year 4 (age 9) through to Year 6 (age 11), but the greater part of the information came from Year 5. The data were derived from the children's drawings and written responses, and from small group interviews. Care was taken to ensure that the ideas elicited were the true beliefs of the children. No formal instruction in the subject had been given, nor was any attempted. In the analysis, the children's views have been classified according to a hierarchical set of models, which reflect the strong adherence to an active vision interpretation held by the majority. The extent of progression towards the more scientific view is reported. In the introduction and discussion comparison is made between contemporary non‐scientific conceptions of vision, and the speculations of pre‐scientific philosophers. A final section presents some implications of these findings for teaching the topic.  相似文献   

设为首页 | 免责声明 | 关于勤云 | 加入收藏

Copyright©北京勤云科技发展有限公司  京ICP备09084417号