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The main aim of this research was to investigate how children's collaborative storytelling could be scaffolded through technologically mediated resources and how these resources can be made more effective by scaffolding around them. The benefits of providing children with resources, encouraging them to construct their own representations and to interact with each other while they make their story were investigated with respect to the quality of their subsequent storytelling. The first piece of work presented in this thesis is a qualitative case study aimed at exploring how the collaborative storytelling task could be resourced with and without technology, as well as the effectiveness of scaffolding around the technology through adult guidance, and whether the potential benefits could be maintained once the additional guidance was withdrawn. Although the study found that the (technology mediated and non-technological) resources provided did not support for children's engagement in discussion and storytelling, providing scaffolding around these resources was effective at promoting discussion and good collaborative storytelling. Specifically, adult guidance designed to encourage children to articulate their story ideas through questions was shown to benefit children's engagement in discussion and the quality of their collaborative storytelling. Moreover, the children continued to engage in discussion and to produce well structured, rich and coherent stories once the additional guidance was withdrawn. The second study presented in this thesis was of an experimental nature. It built on the findings from the case study by employing more structured resources as well as making the task more ecologically valid for the children through the introduction of a real audience and the matching of the participants with familiar peers (i.e., school mates). The study investigated the benefits of encouraging children to construct their own representations by comparing a task where children were presented with pictures they could manipulate and a task where children were encouraged to construct their own dynamic drawings over these pictures. The study found that children's collaborative stories were longer when the children were encouraged to construct their own dynamic drawings. The stories were also qualitatively better, as they contained more structural elements and were richer in style. However no differences were found between the stories in the two tasks with respect to extent to which children were able to build coherently on each others' contributions. This is argued to have been due to the fact that little shared understanding was established among the children about their collaborative story as a result of a lack of engagement in interactive discussion. The third study was also experimental in nature, and it investigated the benefits of complementing children's construction with scaffolding specifically aimed at encouraging them to discuss their story as this was being made. The study compared a task where children making a story together were encouraged to construct their own dynamic drawings with a task where they were also required to use a set of question prompts to discuss their ideas. It was found that when they were required to engage in reciprocal questioning, the children discussed their story more. The quality of the children's collaborative stories was also better when the children were supported through question prompting. Not only were the stories longer, but they also contained more structural elements and were richer in style. Moreover, when they were telling their stories, the children built more coherently on each other's contributions. Finally, a correlation was found between the number and type of questions asked by the children while they were making their stories together and the quality of the stories produced. These findings suggest that the engagement in discussion combined with the construction of dynamic drawings encouraged children to articulate and elaborate on their story ideas, therefore enabling the production of longer and better stories. Also, the children's engagement with each others' ideas may have facilitated the establishment of a shared understanding about the collaborative story, thus making it possible for children to build on each others' ideas during storytelling.

Η
 παρούσα
 εργασία
 έχει
 ως
 σκοπό
 να
 διερευνήσει
 τις
 νοητικές 
παραστάσεις
 των
 μαθητών
 της
 πέμπτης (Ε’)
 Δημοτικού
 σχετικά
με τη δομή του ηλιακού συστήματος και πιο συγκεκριμένα αναφορικά με τα εξής χαρακτηριστικά του : α. το κέντρο του ηλιακού συστήματος, β. τα δομικά μέρη του ηλιακού συστήματος (αριθμός και ονόματα πλανητών), γ. τη σφαιρική μορφή των πλανητών, δ. τις σχετικές θέσεις, αποστάσεις από τον ήλιο και τα σχετικά μεγέθη των πλανητών και ε. την κίνηση των πλανητών γύρω από τον ήλιο (περιφορά) και γύρω από τον άξονά τους (περιστροφή). Μελετάται
 επίσης
 η
 επίδραση
 ενός εκπαιδευτικού προγράμματος σε σχέση με τα παραπάνω θέματα, το οποίο σχεδιάστηκε και υλοποιήθηκε σε 61 μαθητές. Γι’
 αυτό
 το
 σκοπό,
πραγματοποιήθηκαν
 ατομικές
 συνεντεύξεις, στο
στάδιο
 των pro-tests ,
ώστε
 να 
γίνει
 ανίχνευση
 των
 νοητικών
 παραστάσεων
 των
 μαθητών για
 τη δομή του ηλιακού συστήματος,
 όπου
 τα
 παιδιά
 καλούνταν
 να σχεδιάσουν το ηλιακό σύστημα όπως πίστευαν ότι είναι και έπειτα να απαντήσουν σε ορισμένα σχετικά ερωτήματα. Ακολούθησε
 η
 Διδακτική παρέμβαση (υλοποίηση των εκπαιδευτικών δραστηριοτήτων). Έπειτα
οι
μαθητές
συμμετείχαν
σε νέες ατομικές συνεντεύξεις στο
στάδιο
των
post- tests ίδιες
 σε
 περιεχόμενο 
και
 δομή με
 τις
 πρώτες,
 προκειμένου
 να
 αξιολογηθεί
 η
 επίδραση
 της
 διδασκαλίας 
στις νοητικές τους παραστάσεις. Από 
την 
ανάλυση
 των
 αποτελεσμάτων προκύπτει ότι
 οι
 αντιλήψεις των μαθητών αναφορικά με το ηλιακό σύστημα και τα βασικά χαρακτηριστικά του μετατοπίστηκαν από διαισθητικού και συνθετικού τύπου στις επιδιωκόμενες επιστημονικού τύπου σε μεγάλο ποσοστό, κάτι το οποίο καταδεικνύει την αποτελεσματικότητα της διδακτικής παρέμβασης που έλαβε χώρα. / The present research aims to elicit the conceptions of students in the fifth grade (E') of Greek primary school regarding the structure of solar system and specifically in regard to the following characteristics : a. centre of solar system, b. the structural parts of solar system (Number and names of planets), the c. shape of the planets, d. the relative positions, distances and relative sizes of the planets and e. the movement of the planets around the sun and around their axis. The effectiveness of an educational program concerning the above issues, which was designed and implemented to 61 students, individual interviews took place ( pre- tests) in order to, detect students’ initial ideas about the structure of the solar system, during which children were asked to draw the solar system and answer relative questions. The teaching intervention took place subsequently (implementation of educational activities) . Afterwards, the students participated again in individual interviews, (post – tests), which were the same in content and structure with the first interviews (pre-tests), so that the results could be comparable . The results show that the majority of students’ conceptions concerning the solar system and its basic characteristics, changed as they progressed from intuitive and synthetic models to the expected scientific model, which shows the effectiveness of the teaching intervention that took place.

Ο ηλεκτρομαγνητισμός είναι το θέμα που πραγματεύεται η παρούσα εργασία. Αναγνωρίζοντας το σημαντικό ρόλο που παίζουν, κατά τη διαδικασία της μάθησης οι βιωματικές νοητικές παραστάσεις σχεδιάστηκαν και πραγματοποιήθηκαν δύο πειραματικές καταστάσεις που συνδέουν τον ηλεκτρισμό με το μαγνητισμό ώστε να οδηγηθούμε στην ανίχνευση των νοητικών παραστάσεων των μαθητών της ΣΤ΄τάξης του Δημοτικού σχολείου για τον ηλεκτρομαγνητισμό. Στο πρώτο μέρος παρουσιάζεται τόσο η επιστημονική όσο και η σχολική γνώση, όπως αναφέρεται στο ΑΠΣ του Δημοτικού Σχολείου, για τον ηλεκτρισμό, το μαγνητισμό και τον ηλεκτρομαγνητισμό, καθώς και η θεωρητική παρουσίαση του όρου "νοητικες παραστάσεις" και αναφορά σε σχετικές με το θέμα της εργασίας έρευνες από τη διεθνή και ελληνική βιβλιογραφία. Στο δεύτερο μέρος παρουσιάζεται το μεθοδολογικό πλαίσιο της εργασίας και το αντικείμενο της έρευνας.Στο τρίτο μέρος παρουσιάζονται τα αποτελέσματα, ο τρόπος επεξεργασίας των δεδομένων και η ανάλυσή τους. Τέλος στο τέταρτο μέρος επιχειρείται μια σύνοψη των αποτελεσμάτων και μια αναφορά στα συμπεράσματα που προέκυψαν από την ερευνητική διαδικασία. / -

A series of studies were conducted with the aim of showing that the Representational Redescription (RR) model (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992) can be used a general model of cognitive development. In this thesis, 3 aspects of the RR model were explored. The first set of experiments involved analysing the generalisability of RR levels across tasks in a domain. In an initial study, the levels of the RR model were successfully applied to a balance scale task. Then, in a subsequent study, children’s RR levels on the balance scale task were compared with their RR levels on a balance beam task (see Pine et al, 1999). Children were seen to access the same level of verbal knowledge across both tasks. This suggests that it is verbal knowledge which provides the basis for generalisation of knowledge. The second set of experiments involved a consideration of the RR model in relation to the domain of numeracy. The levels of the RR model were applied to children’s developing representations for the one-to-one and cardinality principles. The RR levels were shown to have utility in predicting children’s openness to different types of “procedurally based” and “conceptually based” teaching interventions, with pre-implicit children benefiting from procedural interventions, and children who have implicit and more advanced representational levels benefiting from conceptual interventions. The final study involved a microgenetic analysis of children’s representational levels on the balance beam task. The findings from this study indicated the importance of a period of stability prior to a cognitive advance, and demonstrated that cognitive advances can be driven by changes in the verbal explanations that are offered, rather than changes in successful performance. This provides support for the mechanism of change proposed by Karmiloff-Smith, 1992. Together, the findings indicate that the RR model provides a useful perspective about the cognitive development of children. In particular, the thesis highlights when children can use the same representations for different tasks in a domain and suggests the mechanism that brings about representational change.

Η συγκεκριμένη εργασία πραγματεύεται μία διδακτική προσέγγιση του φαινομένου της διάλυσης λευκών στερεών ουσιών σε δύο διαφορετικούς διαφανείς διαλύτες. Σαφέστερα, σκοπός της εργασίας είναι η μελέτη της ενδεχόμενης εννοιολογικής αλλαγής στη σκέψη παιδιών προσχολικής ηλικίας αναφορικά με το εν λόγω φαινόμενο μετά την υλοποίηση ενός εκπαιδευτικού προγράμματος. Τα αποτελέσματα της έρευνας έδειξαν ότι οι μαθητές προσχολικής ηλικίας μετά την εφαρμογή του εκπαιδευτικού προγράμματος είναι σε θέση να συγκροτήσουν συλλογισμούς συμβατούς με το σχολικό μοντέλο για το φαινόμενο της διάλυσης στερεών ουσιών σε υγρούς διαλύτες. / This paper deals with a teaching approach about the phenomenon of dissolution of white solids in two different transparent solvents. The aim of this paper is the study of the possible conceptual change in preschool children's thinking about this phenomenon after the implementation of an educational program. The results showed that preschool students are able to compose reasoning compatible with the school model about the effect of the dissolution of solids in liquid solvents after the implementation of the educational program.