Tracing young children's scientific reasoning

This paper explores the scientific reasoning of 14 children across their first two years of primary school. Children's view of experimentation, their approach to exploration, and their negotiation of competing knowledge claims, are interpreted in terms of categories of epistemological reasoning. Children's epistemological reasoning is distinguished from their ability to control variables. While individual children differ substantially, they show a relatively steady growth in their reasoning, with some contextual variation. A number of these children are reasoning at a level well in advance of curriculum expectations, and it is argued that current recommended practice in primary science needs to be rethought. The data is used to explore the relationship between reasoning and knowledge, and to argue that the generation and exploration of ideas must be the key driver of scientific activity in the primary school.

From "try it and see" to strategic exploration: characterizing young children's scientific reasoning

This article explores ways of characterizing different dimensions and levels of scientific reasoning in early elementary school children, in the context of open explorations. The article focuses on children's performance on three probes which involve using evidence to generate and evaluate knowledge claims. A number of dimensions have been used to characterize children's approaches to exploration and knowledge construction, which demonstrate the interrelationship between conceptual knowledge and scientific reasoning. Children differed markedly across these dimensions, yet individual children were relatively consistent in their approach to the tasks. The major differences in performance are linked to fundamental distinctions in the way ideas are viewed in relation to evidence.

Young children learning about evaporation: a longitudinal perspective

This paper traces the learning pathways over a 4-year period of 12 children learning about evaporation. The findings show the complexity and dependence on context of children's understandings. Detailed transcripts for 2 children are used to demonstrate how understandings of phenomena are framed within a network of personal narratives of self that reflect children's different subjectivities as learners and school children, It is argued that the longitudinal methodology opens up a more complex and nuanced view of children's conceptual learning in school settings than is afforded by cross-sectional studies and that the focus on individuals over time compels a very different construction of the learner than is represented in mainstream conceptual-change literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers' pre-conceptions of young children's conceptions of number

This paper uses data from several sources to argue that while teachers of young children are reasonably accurate in their predictions of when the majority of children will achieve mastery of specific objectives in mathematics, they are much less likely 10 be aware of the conceptions of high achieving children, and that, as a result, their classroom activities constrain these students' learning.

The roles of prior experience and the timing of misinformation presentation on young children's event memories

The current study addressed how the timing of interviews affected children's memories of unique and repeated events. Five- to six-year-olds (N= 125) participated in activities 1 or 4 times and were misinformed either 3 or 21 days after the only or last event. Although single-experience children were subsequently less accurate in the 21- versus 3-day condition, the timing of the misinformation session did not affect memories of repeated-experience children regarding invariant details. Children were more suggestible in the 21- versus 3-day condition for variable details when the test occurred soon after misinformation presentation. Thus, timing differentially affected memories of single and repeated events and depended on the combination of event-misinformation and misinformation-test delays rather than the overall retention interval.

Toddler techies: a study of young children`s interaction with computers

This article describes an ethnographic study of children's behavioural interaction with multimedia within a familiar context. The rationale for such a study was to provide data and evaluation of the capabilities of young children in an expressly modified multimedia environment and to determine the usefulness of employing technology as an adjunct to young children's play. However, hermeneutic and interpretativist concerns for the study of human action and social practice in the use of technology also informs both the structural, procedural, and evaluative management of the study. Using customised children's software, observation focused on time spent using the computer, the attitude toward the computer, the reaction to the interface, their use and adaptation of the mouse, and adult interventions. Significantly, the results differ appreciably from previous research and possible grounds for this variation is explored.

Evidence of metacognitive awareness in young children who have experienced a repeated event

Two studies examined children's confidence judgments in the accuracy of their memories after repeated experience of an event. Children aged 5 to 6 years took part in an event once or four times, were provided with misinformation either shortly after (Study 1) or a while after (Study 2), and interviewed with yes/no recognition questions 3 months later. Children in the repeated-experience conditions were highly confident of their accurate responses to questions about items that were identical rather than variable across occurrences, and this discrimination was best at the shorter delay. The results show that children were able to metacognitively monitor the accuracy of their responses to qualitatively different kinds of details, and indicate that age is not the only determinant of metacognitive awareness after being misled. Rather, the nature of event representations must also be considered.

'Marvin the Mouse'; can he assist police to elicit evidence from young children?

This study investigated the usefulness of a computer program designed to assess young children's understanding of words that may be relevant to an investigative interview about assault. Forty-one police officers conducted two interviews with five- to six-year-old children (one was conducted with the program and one without). The program's effectiveness was based on the interviewers' ratings of the usefulness of the program as well as three independent indices of interviewer-child rapport. Overall, the police officers perceived the program to be an extremely useful pre-interview assessment. However, the program had little impact on the officers' style of questioning and the nature of the children's responses. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Using activity theory in researching young children's use of calculators

Constructivist and socio-cultural perspectives in mathematics education highlight the crucial role that activity plays in mathematical development and learning. Activity theory provides a socio-cultural lens to help analyse human behaviour, including that which occurs in classrooms. It provides a framework for co-ordinating constructivist and socio-cultural perspectives in mathematics learning. In this paper, we adopt Cole and Engeström's (1991) model of activity theory to examine the mediation offered by the calculator as a tool for creating and supporting learning processes of young children in the social environment of their classroom. By adopting this framework, data on young children's learning outcomes in number, when given free access to calculators, can be examined not only in terms of the mediating role of the calculator, but also within the broader context of the classroom community, the teachers' beliefs and intentions, and the classroom norms and the division of labour. Use of this model in a post hoc situation suggests that activity theory can play a significant role in the planning of future classroom research.

The development of young children's mathematical understanding

Early childhood mathematics education research is burgeoning in Australasia. This chapter highlights and critiques key research in the area that has been published between 2004 and 2007. In particular, it considers specific mathematical topics such as number and numeracy, space and measurement, and structure and patterning; contextual matters such as links among home, school, pri or·to·sch 001 settings and community, indigenous learners and mathematics learning as children start school; assessment of mathematics learning in early childhood settings and the professional development of early childhood teachers of mathematics. It concludes with some suggestions for fruitful areas of future research.