8' Scientific Concepts

1
8. Scientific Concepts

• Outline
• Importance of science
• Childrens scientific knowledge
• 3 areas
• Physics
• Biology
• (Psychology)
• Theories
• Piagetian
• Theory-revision
• Domain-specificity
• Learning Outcomes

2
What is science? (Duschl, Schweingruber Shouse,
2006)

• A body of knowledge that represents current
  understanding of natural systems
• The process whereby that body of knowledge has
  been established and is being continually
  extended, refined, and revised.
• Students who are proficient in science
• know, use, and interpret scientific explanations
  of the natural world
• generate and evaluate scientific evidence and
  explanations
• understand the nature and development of
  scientific knowledge and
• participate productively in scientific practices
  and discourse.

3
Why teach science?

• Science is a significant part of human culture
  and represents one of the pinnacles of human
  thinking capacity.
• It provides a laboratory of common experience for
  development of language, logic, and
  problem-solving skills in the classroom.
• A democracy demands that its citizens make
  personal and community decisions about issues in
  which scientific information plays a fundamental
  role, and they hence need a knowledge of science
  as well as an understanding of scientific
  methodology.
• For some students, it will become a lifelong
  vocation or avocation.
• The nation is dependent on the technical and
  scientific abilities of its citizens for its
  economic competitiveness and national needs.
• (Duschl et al., 2006)

4
Scientific knowledge

• Not just accumulation of facts, but ways of
  thinking
• E.g. Primary school children know world is round,
  but their thinking reflects the idea that world
  is flat (Nussbaum and Novack, 1976 Nussbaum,
  1985)

5
Infants Young Children

• Surprisingly knowledgeable
• 4/5 months use contiguity to infer that events
  are related
• Expect collision to make object move
• Dont expect object to move without force
  (Leslie, 1982)
• 4-6 months understand principles of gravity
• Falling object will fall even if cant see it
  (Spelke, 1991)
• Look longer when an object passes through another
  (Baillargeon et al., 1985)
• 3-4 years understand causation
• Causes occur before effects (Bullock Gelman,
  1979)

6
Older children

• Surprisingly unknowledgeable
• 11 yr olds when we see an object, energy or rays
  come out of our eyes (Winer Cottrell, 1991)
• Children/college students car doors move at same
  speed on oval track (Levin et al., 1990)
• 8 yr olds predict trajectory of ball from curved
  tube incorrectly (Kaiser et al., 1986)
• 11 yr olds object dropped from moving vehicle
  falls straight (Kaiser et al., 1985)

7
Understanding Physics

• Time Speed
• Trains (Piaget,1946)
• Trajectories
• C-Shaped tube (Kaiser et al., 1986)
• Falling Objects (McCloskey et al., 1983
  McCloskey et al. 1980)
• Force Weight
• Balance scale (Inhelder Piaget, 1958 Siegler,
  1976)
• Force table (Pauen, 1996)

8
Trajectories
(Kaiser et al., 2000)
9
Force table
(Pauen Wilkening, 1997)
10
Understanding Biology

• Animacy
• 3yrs start to distinguish between
  animate/inanimate
• Bodies (Johnson Wellman, 1982)
• Based on psychology? (Carey, 1985)
• Death (Slaughter et al., 1999).
• Health Illness
• Illness as immanent justice (Piaget, 1932 Kister
  Patterson, 1980)

11
Understanding Biology

• Genetics
• Inheritance of acquired characteristics
• Belief can survive until adulthood
• Tailless mice (Clough Driver ,1991)

12
Perspectives on the development of science

• Science as a process of logical reasoning about
  evidence
• Inhelder Piaget (1958)
• Wason (1960, 1968)
• Will be covered in lecture 11
• Science as a process of theory change
• Carey (1985)
• Wellman Gelman (1992, 1998)

13
Child as Scientist

• Inhelder Piaget (1958)
• Understanding of scientific methods develops in
  adolescence as part of formal operational stage
• Predicts
• 1) children should be able to discover scientific
  concepts on their own
• 2) children should be able to generalise across
  contexts
• Support
• Correlation between success in science and
  reasoning ability (Piburn, 1990)
• Against
• conditional reasoning research

14
How does change take place?

• Piaget
• Radical restructuring of knowledge
• conflict ? disequilibrium ? cognitive change
• Preoperational stage
• Construct rudimentary concepts
• Concrete operational stage
• Concepts become systematic hierarchical classes
• Formal operations stage
• Second-order relations between categories
• Errors result from domain-general cognitive
  limitations (e.g., metacognition)

15
Health illness (Bibace Walsh, 1981)

• Based on Piagets ideas
• Preoperational stage (2-7 years old)
• Superstition or magical causes.
• Contagion catch colds from magic, the sun,
  trees, God
• Concrete-operational stage (7-11 years old)
• Contagion (catch illnesses from other people)
• Immanent justice-based
• Formal operational stage (11 years onwards)
• More sophisticated understanding
• Differentiate between internal and external
  causal agents.
• A cold may be transmitted externally
• The illness is in the body (internal) -
  malfunctioning of specific organ or process.

16
Problems with Bibace Walsh

• Piagets theory is domain general
• Logical structures which do not contain knowledge
• Why would domain-specific knowledge follow
  domain-general logical abilities?
• Adults do not necessarily have a scientific
  understanding of illness
• The role of experience
• Charman Chandiramani (1995)

17
Conceptual change

• Continuum of developmental change (Carey, 1991)
• Weak restructuring
• Start with basic assumptions
• Add/modify information
• Changing concepts
• Strong restructuring
• Old theory incompatible with new
• Change in scientific thinking
• Errors result from domain-specific
  misinterpretations (e.g. interpreting biological
  processes as psychological)

18
Theory of biology (Carey, 1985)

• Preschool 6 years
• Learn facts
• Animals are alive
• Babies come from inside mothers
• Can get sick from dirty food or playing with a
  sick friend
• Medicine makes people get better
• From around 7 years
• Develop a framework theory
• Process of conceptual change/strong restructuring
• E.g., living things category

19
Core Knowledge

• Theory-theory (e.g., Gelman, 2003 Carey
  Spelke, 1994, 1996 Wellman Gelman, 1992, 1998)
• Children start with innate knowledge
• Form naïve theories differ between domains
• Theory revised if does not account for
  experiences
• Stage-like, qualitative shifts in concepts
• Because of innate knowledge, earlier
  knowledge/ability than Piaget predicted

20
Domain-specific or domain-general?

• Domain-specific
• Entities and explanations go together (Carey
  Spelke, 1994)
• People psychological explanations
• Inanimate objects physical explanations
• Plants/animals biological explanations
• e.g. Voluntary vs reactionary movement (Smith,
  1978)
• 4 yr olds all movement is intentional
• 5 yr olds distinguish reflex from intention

21
Domain-specific or domain-general?

• Humans physicsbiologypsychology
• Explanations of human behaviour in 3/4 yr olds
  (Wellman et al., 2000)
• 4 types of story
• intended, mistake, biological, physical
• 3 types of explanation
• Psychological, biological, physical
• Causal reasoning across 3 domains interchangeable
  and flexible

22
Domain-specific or domain-general?

• Evidence from autism
• Impaired intuitive psychology
• Intact (advanced?) intuitive physics
• Limited intuitive biology? (Gopnik, Capps
  Meltzoff, 2000 )
• Or intact intuitive biology? (Binnie Williams,
  2000)

23
Learning Outcomes Reading

• Understand childrens scientific concepts.
• Understand and be able to evaluate theories of
  conceptual change.
• Know and be able to evaluate current research on
  scientific thought and the implications this
  research has for theories.
• Essential Reading (on Digital Resources)
• Garnham, A. Oakhill, J. (1994). Thinking and
  reasoning. Oxford Blackwell. Ch 17. pp.317-339
• Wellman, H. M., Hickling, A. K. Schult, C. A.
  (2000). Young children's psychological, physical,
  and biological explanations. In K. Lee (Ed),
  Childhood cognitive development the essential
  readings. Malden, Mass Oxford
• Further Reading
• See lecture webpage or .pdf handout

24
Questions to ask

• What are childrens scientific concepts?
• How do these change over time?
• Are scientific concepts domain-specific or
  domain-general?
• What do the theories say about the development of
  concepts?
• What research evidence is there in support of or
  against these theories?