Elementary children’s retrodictive reasoning about earth science
We report on interviews conducted with twenty-one elementary school children (grades 1-5) about a number of Earth science concepts. These interviews were undertaken as part of a teacher training video series designed specifically to assist elementary teachers in learning essential ideas in Earth...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Kura Publishing
2012-11-01
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| Series: | International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://iejee.com/index.php/IEJEE/article/view/9/7 |
| Summary: | We report on interviews conducted with twenty-one elementary school children (grades 1-5) about a
number of Earth science concepts. These interviews were undertaken as part of a teacher training
video series designed specifically to assist elementary teachers in learning essential ideas in Earth
science. As such, children were interviewed about a wide array of earth science concepts, from rock
formation to the Earth’s interior. We analyzed interview data primarily to determine whether or not
young children are capable of inferring understanding of the past based on present-day observation
(retrodictive reasoning) in the context of Earth science. This work provides a basis from which curricula
for teaching earth and environmental sciences can emerge, and suggests that new studies into the
retrodictive reasoning abilities of young children are needed, including curricula that encourage
inference of the past from modern observations. |
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| ISSN: | 1307-9298 1307-9298 |