Abstract The aim of this study was to explore and describe the pupils' thoughts on seed and its development into seedling. Twenty nine Swedish pupils at the age of 7 and 10 years old were interviewed about their knowledge of seeds. It turned out that pupils often have so-called everyday belief to describe the natural science phenomenon by connecting their explanations to phenomena in everyday life to which they are familiar. To describe the process of seed developing into seedling is something that most of the pupils believe to be difficult and this resulted mostly in the answer ‘it is growing.’ Children have some knowledge about what seeds need in order to germinate but they do not mention the importance of oxygen as a component of seed to be able to germinate and grow. They mean instead that it is sufficient with soil, water and sun. The older pupils, however, are more often than the younger pupils able to connect their reflections to a more scientifically correct description based on terms belonging to the phenomena, though these terms sometimes are wrongly used. The conclusion is that pupils have lots of thoughts about science phenomena, and in this case about seed these conceptions are not entirely scientifically accurate, but instead often based upon experiences from their everyday life or their conceptual world. In addition they often use elements of anthropomorphic, animistic and teleological interpretations in their explanations of natural science phenomena.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-3444 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Fjellman, Ulrika |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Fakulteten för samhälls- och livsvetenskaper |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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