Thus study was designed to explore how children learn about a scientific-reasoning strategy while engaged in parent-child activity, and specifically to answer two research questions: 1) Can children learn and transfer a scientific reasoning strategy when provided training situated within parent-child activity? and 2) How do parents support young childrens learning and transfer of a scientific reasoning strategy? Thirty parent-child dyads with younger (5- to 6-years-old) and older (7- to 8-years-old) children were recruited to engage in shared scientific-reasoning activities in which they were provided training in the Control of Variables Strategy (CVS): a strategy for designing unconfounded experiments and interpreting the experimental outcome. Families were provided opportunities to apply and transfer their learning of the strategy while exploring materials in two domains in two sessions spaced one month apart.
When provided training situated within parent-child activity, 5- to 8-year-old children demonstrated that they could learn to use CVS. Although both older and younger children were able to learn the strategy, age-related differences were detected in childrens transfer abilities. While older children continued to improve in their use of CVS at the second session, younger childrens performance decreased. In answer to Research Question 2, this study illuminated ways that parents and young children engage in scientific activity and build on subsequent related activity. To support childrens engagement, parents varied their support in the design and execution of experiments and they engaged in conversations that supported planning and evaluating activity. Parents reminded children of the strategy and redirected activity to support the generation and evaluation of interpretable evidence. We observed that parents sometimes explicitly reminded children of prior shared activity; these parents were more likely to have children who later became the most reliable users of CVS. Further research is needed, however, to establish causal links between specific types of parent support and patterns of parent-child activity and resultant child learning and transfer.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-12032004-131602 |
| Date | 14 December 2004 |
| Creators | Fender, Jodi Galco |
| Contributors | Kevin Crowley, Michael Ford, Ellice Forman, David Klahr, Christian Schunn |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-12032004-131602/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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