KAK3203: SCIENCE FOR YOUNG CHILDREN

LECTURE 2

THEORIES RELATED TO SCIENCE EDUCATION FOR

CHILDREN

DIFFERENT WAYS OF HOW CHILDREN LEARN

• WORK IN A GROUP OF 4• IN 5 MINUTES MAKE A LIST

OF :

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THIS IS HOW CHILDREN LEARN?Children acquire knowledge and thinking skills through:

• Real experiences and cognition• They need a variety of experience• One idea must be approached from different angles• Single experience is not enough to build a reliable

intellectual concept.• Children absorbed information through concrete

experiences• Children are constantly absorbing meaning by observing

their environment• Children need numerous sensory experiences• Activities involving all the senses provide first-hand

experiences from which the child incorporate information into the development of concepts.

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THEORIES RELATED TO SCIENCE EDUCATION FOR YOUNG CHILDREN

1. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT THEORY BY JEAN PIAGET (1973)

• Piaget believed that YC think differently, thus they require different kind of curriculum -their thinking is still at the preoperational stage (3-7), egocentric, animistic and less logical.

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EGOCENTRIC = self-centered• Egocentrism is characterized by preoccupation with one's own internal

world. Egocentrics regard themselves and their own opinions or interests as being the most important or valid

• Egocentrism is very apparent in the relationship between two preschool children. Eg of how each child is completely oblivious to what the other is saying in this scenario:– Julie: "I love my dolly, her name is Tina"– Carol: "I'm going to colour the sun yellow"– Julie: "She has long, curly hair like my auntie"– Carol: "Maybe I'll colour the trees yellow, too"– Julie: "I wonder what Tina's eyes are made of?"– Carol: "I lost my orange crayon"– Julie: " I know her eyes are made of glass.“

• This type of monologue demonstrates the "egocentrism" of children's thinking in this stage. According to Piaget, egocentrism of the young child leads them to believe that everyone thinks as they do, and that the whole world shares their feelings and desires.

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Eg of egocentric thinking1. Egocentric thinking is when you believe something and

think everyone else should too, or you think because you think or feel something, everyone else does to. – Eg: when a child hides in plain view under a blanket but

sincerely believes they are missing. they think because they can't see you, that you can't see them.

– if a child is hungry, they assume you are too.– if a child likes power rangers, they may think that is the

perfect present for mommy because she must like them too.

2. A preschooler grabs a toy from his 18-month-old sister. When she starts to cry, he looks at her with surprise! He’s happy because he wanted the toy and now he has it. He can’t put himself in the place of his little sister. He doesn’t understand her sadness or anger. He doesn’t realize that his behavior has caused her to feel sad or angry.

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Animistic – magical thinking• Animistic thinking is the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities,

such as thoughts, wishes, feelings, and intentions.

• An example of animistic thinking would be "magical thinking" or the strong use of the child's imagination. Children in this three to four year old age group typically assign non-humanlike objects human-like meanings or purposes which results in animistic thinking.

• Example #1: A child thinks that dropping a doll actually caused the doll pain, because being dropped themselves would have caused he or she pain.

• Example #2: A child would think that it rains because the sky is sad and it is crying. This shows how the child gives the sky humanlike characteristics such as crying.

• Example #3: If the child is staring out the window and sees a ball move across the yard they would assume that they ball moved on its own. They do not have the capacity to think logically that the wind was the source of the movement of the ball.

• Example #4: A five year old was painting her original wood sculpture. The teacher passed by and commented, “I think you might like that better if you put on another coat.” Accepting the teacher’s suggestion, the child went to the lockers, selected a coat, and put it on as he/she returned to the painting area to find out if the teacher was right.

• Mum says to her child: the rice will cry if you drop them on the floor!

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• Think-Pair-Share – give 2 examples of animistic thinking in children

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• Children can focus on only one variable at one time, such as length or width – not both.

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They can focus on only one variable at one time, such as length or width – not both.

Think-Pair-Share: What other examples you can give for the above situation.

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Jean Piaget: Cognitive development and mental processes

• Piaget believed that people’s thinking changed as they learn and adapt to their environment;

• that the goal of thinking or the highest level of thinking people could develop is abstract thought.

• Abstract thought is the kind of thinking scientists use…this kind of thinking is called logical-mathematical thinking/intelligence.

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Cognitive Development

• According to Piaget, children construct knowledge through concrete, hands-on experiences.

• They construct knowledge of the physical world.

• The knowledge becomes their mental actions.

– Example: Of we say: C-H-A-I-R.

– We think about how chair look like, what’s it's for and where we can find it. All these pictures will come to our mind – it is called mental actions or mental processes.

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We may visualise these chairs

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Perhaps we will not visualise or think of these chairs

DISCUSSION:

DESCRIBED HOW CHILDREN LEARN AND CONSTRUCT KNOWLEDGE AND

UNDERSTANDINGS ABOUT THE WORLD:“CONSTRUCTIVISM”

CONSTRUCTIVISM : people construct their own understanding of the world, through experiencing

things and reflecting on those experiences. (CAN YOU GIVE AN EXAMPLE)

When learners encounter something new, they reconcile it with previous knowledge. They may

change what they believe, or they may discard the new information as irrelevant.

According to Piaget, knowledge is constructed through: (i) Assimilation and (ii) Accommodation

ASSIMILATION:• Is a process by which a person takes material into

their mind from the environment, make it fit into their existing knowledge.

• It is like your mind has a databases already built, with its fields and categories defined. If it comes across new information which fits into those fields, it can assimilate it without any trouble.

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Assimilation

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Assimilation - process by which new experiences are incorporated into an existing schema

Schema/schemas

• A schema (plural: schemas/schemata) describes an organized pattern of thought or behavior. It is a mental structure of pre-conceived ideas, or a framework.

• Schemas - ideas we have about the way things work.

• It is a representation in the mind, of a set of perceptions, ideas, and/or actions, which go together.

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ACCOMMODATION:

• When the new information cannot fit into the pre-existing ‘databases’, so it has to develop new ones to accommodate the new information forming schema.

• Accommodation is a process by which schemas are modified in light of new experiences

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Accommodation

Can you think of some examples to describe assimilation and accommodation?

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…….• Piaget proposed that children's thinking or

intellectual development occurs through four stages (sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational stages).

• He saw transitions taking place at about 18 months, 7 years and 11 or 12 years.

• Meaning, before these ages children are not capable (no matter how bright they are) of understanding things in certain ways.

• He used this to group children into several stages of development:

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Piaget’s Stages of Development

1. SENSORIMOTOR (Birth-2 yrs)

2. PRE-OPERATIONAL (2-7 years)

3. CONCRETE OPERATIONAL (7-11 years)

4. FORMAL OPERATIONAL (11 years and up)

Stage = a period in a child's development in which he or she is capable of understanding some things but not others.

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SENSORIMOTOR STAGE (Birth-2 yrs)

• A child can differentiate self from object

• Recognises self as actor/doer and begins to act intentionally: e.g. pulls a string to set mobile in motion or shakes a rattle to make a noise, etc.

• Achieves object permanence – ability to realise that things continue to exist even when they no longer present to the sense (peek-a-boo game)

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PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (2-7 years)

• At this stage, children learn to use language and to represent objects by images and words.

• Piaget noted that children in this stage do not yet understand concrete logic and cannot mentally manipulate information.

• They are unable to take the point of view of other people, which he termed egocentrism.

• They can classify objects by a single feature only: e.g. groups together all the red blocks regardless of shape or all the square blocks regardless of colour .

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CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE (7-11 years)

• Piaget considered the concrete stage a major turning point in the child's cognitive development, because it marks the beginning of logical or operational thought.

• The child is now mature enough to use logical thought or operations (i.e. rules) but can only apply logic to physical objects (hence concrete operational). Children become less egocentric and better at conservation tasks.

• This means that the child understands that although the appearance of something changes, the thing itself does not. He called this ability ‘CONSERVATION’.

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Conservation:• Example: if you take two pieces of string that are

the same length and scrunch one up, and if a child says that the scrunched one is shorter (the child has not reaches the conservation ability)

• Definition:• Conservation is the understanding that

something stays the same in quantity even though its appearance changes, i.e. that redistributing material does not affect its mass, number or volume.

• See video on Piaget’s Conservation tasks

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Piaget’s experiment: how children discover math concept

• He used pebbles: he lined them up in a row, counted them from left to right, and got ten.

• Then, just for fun, he counted them from right to left to see what number he would get, and was astonished that he got ten again.

• He put the pebbles in a circle and counted them, and once again there were ten. He went around the circle in the other way and got ten again. And no matter how he put the pebbles down, when he counted them, the number came to ten.

• He discovered here what is known in mathematics as commutative, that is, the sum is independent of the order.”(Piaget 1970)

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However you arrange them, the number is still the same

Conservation experiment

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Piaget's Theory of Conservation: When One Cup of Water is Less Than One Cup of Water

Figure 1. A preoperational-stage child exhibiting conservation of mass reasoning.

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Initial setup for testing conservation of mass.

Second step in the conservation of mass test.

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• This is the principle, which Piaget called the theory of conservation, in which the child realizes that properties of objects—such as mass, volume, and number—remain the same, despite changes in the form of the objects.

When do humans develop the concept of object permanence? How is object permanence important for the understanding of conservation?

FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE (11 years & above)

• At about age 11+ years, the child begins to manipulate ideas in its head, without any dependence on concrete manipulation;

• He/she can do mathematical calculations, think creatively, use abstract reasoning, and imagine the outcome of particular actions.

• They gain the ability to think in an abstract manner, the ability to combine and classify items in a more sophisticated way, and the capacity for higher-order reasoning.

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Implications of Piaget’s theory

• Piaget believed the time a child spends in each stage varies by environment. All children in a class are not necessarily operating at the same level

• Teachers could benefit from understanding the levels their children are functioning and should try to adjust their teaching accordingly

• In teaching science to young children, the teacher should emphasize methods of reasoning, so that the children can discover concepts through investigation.

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Vygotsky’s Theory of Social Learning

• Vygotsky's phases of everyday concept development and the notion of children's “working theories”– Children develop working theories through observing, listening,

doing, participating, discussing, and representing within the topics and activities provided for them

– As children gain greater experience, knowledge, and skills, their theories develop.

– He believed that development involves affective and cognitive components.

• Learning culture + social interaction– Vygotsky valued children's early experiences in families and

communities, viewing these as a foundation for later cognitive development.

– Vygotsky believed that learning involved much more than domain knowledge and included knowledge about becoming a contributing member of a community, culture and society.

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Vygotsky suggested that development depends on interaction with people

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• Vygotsky theory combines the social environment and cognition.

• Children will acquire the ways of thinking and behaving that make up a culture by interacting with a more knowledgeable person.

• Vygotsky believed that social interaction will lead to ongoing changes in a child's thought and behavior.

• Vygotsky suggested teachers help children learn through ‘scaffolding’.

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Vygotsky’s ZPDThe zone of proximal development (ZPD) is the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help.

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Comparison: Piaget and Vygotsky

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How children learn concepts

• Children explore the world with their senses. They look, touch, smell, hear, and taste.

• They are born curious and want to know all about their environment.

• As children learn to crawl, to stand, and to walk, they discover more on their own and learn to think for themselves.

• Babies/toddlers, as they crawl/walk, they discover space: big space, small spaces, space in a crib, playpen, room and space outside.

• With time, they develop spatial sense.

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• Children like to sort things. They put them in piles of the same color, same size, same shape, or with the same use.

• Young children pour sand and water into containers of different sizes.

• They pile blocks into tall structures and see them fall and become small parts again.

• All these activities of exploring and experimentation help to develop muscle coordination and the senses of taste, smell, sight, and hearing. These are skills that serve as a basis for future learning.

• As children enter preschool, exploration continues. At this time, however, children also begin to apply basic concepts to collecting and organizing data to answer a question.

• Children are learning the processes of science

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How children learn concepts• Concepts are the building blocks of knowledge; • They allow people to organize and categorize information. • During early childhood, children actively engage in

acquiring fundamental concepts and in learning fundamental process skills.

• We can observe children constructing and using concepts while they are playing.

• Examples: – one-to-one correspondence—putting pegs in pegboard holes or

passing one apple to each child at the table; – counting—counting the pennies from the penny bank or the

number of straws needed for every child at the table; – classifying—placing square shapes in one pile and round shapes

in another or putting cars in one garage and trucks in another; and

– measuring—pouring sand, water, rice, or other materials from one container to another.

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• Naturalistic Experiences– Naturalistic experiences are those initiated spontaneously by

children as they go about their daily activities. These experiences are the major mode of learning for children during the sensorimotor period. Naturalistic experiences can also be a valuable mode of learning for older children.

• Informal Learning Experiences– These experiences are not pre-planned: Eg.: Juanita (age 4) has

a bag of cookies. Mrs. Ramirez asks, “Do you have enough for everyone?” Juanita replies, “I don’t know.” Mrs. R. asks, “How can you find out?” Juanita says, “I don’t know.” Mrs. R. replies, “I’ll help you. We’ll count them.”

• Structured Learning Experience– Preplanned lessons or activities can occur in many different

ways. Eg., Cindy is 4 years old. Her teacher decides that she needs to practice counting. She says, “Cindy, I have some blocks here for you to count. How many are in this pile?”

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How children learn conceptExample 1: The Ramp (is a basic concept in physics.)

• Set two-foot-wide plywood board to lean against a large block to make a ramp.

• Give children a number of balls of different sizes and weights to roll down the ramp.

• Let them exploration and define the ideas of the game• The teacher might ask some questions such as, “What would happen if

two balls started to roll from the top of the ramp at the same time?” “What would happen if you changed the height of the ramp? Or had two ramps of different heights? Of different lengths?”

• The children could guess, explore what happens when they vary the steepness and length of the ramps or use different balls, observe what happens, communicate their observations, and describe similarities and differences in each of their experiments.

• They might observe differences in speed and distance contingent on the size or weight of the ball, the height and length of the ramp, or other variables.

• In this example, children could use the mathematical concepts of speed, distance, height, length, and counting (how many blocks are supporting each ramp?) while engaged in scientific observations.

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Other exampleExample 2: Fruits• Teacher brings several type of fruits to class: one red apple, one green

apple, two oranges, two grapefruit, and two bananas. • The children examine the fruit to discover as much about these fruits as

possible. • They observe size, shape, color, texture, taste, and composition using

counting and classification skills. (How many of each fruit type? Juicy or dry? Segmented or whole? Seeds or no seeds?)

• These observations may be recorded. (What is the color of each fruit? How many are spheres? How many are juicy?) The fruit can be weighed and measured, prepared for eating, and divided equally among the students.

• SO WHAT CONCEPTS ARE THEY LEARNING ABOUT FRUITS • THINK-PAIR-SHARE.

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• How would you provide young children with opportunities to see the math and science in their everyday activities?

• Suggest some examples.

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Children naturally love to explore, experiment and

handling equipment

How could teacher provide ‘scaffolding’ to children?

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If you are the teacher in this picture, what could be talking about with the children? TPS

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What would be the best environment for children to learn about the world?

What knowledge of the world that this child is learning?

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NATURE WALK IS ALWAYS VERY EXCITING, WHY?

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WHAT ARE THEY DOING/LEARNING?

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WHAT COULD CHILDREN DISCOVER FROM THIS ACTIVITY

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CHILDREN’S REPORT:LEARNING STORY

• OLDER CHILDREN CAN WRITE AND DRAW WHAT THEY SEE AND LEARN

• HELP THEM WRITE OR DRAW THEIR ‘LEARNING STORIES’.

• LOOK AT THIS PICTURE… – WHAT WAS THE ‘STORY’ THE CHILDREN WERE

TELLING YOU FROM THE PICTURE?

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• WHAT HAVE YOU LEART SO FAR ABOUT HOW CHILDREN SCIENCE?

• EXPLAIN HOW CHILDREN LEARN SCIENCE USING PIAGET’S THEORY

• WRITE A TWO-MINUTES PAPER

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