The acquisition of scientific knowledge: the influence of methods of questioning and analysis on the interpretation of children's conceptions of the earth

• Published in: Infant and child development Vol. 20; no. 6; pp. 432 - 448
• Main Authors: Frède, Valérie, Nobes, Gavin, Frappart, Sören, Panagiotaki, Georgia, Troadec, Bertrand, Martin, Alan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chichester, UK John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 01.11.2011; Wiley-Blackwell; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc; Wiley
• Subjects: Astronomy; Attitudes; Child development; Children; Children & youth; Coding; Cognitive Processes; Comparative Analysis; Concept Formation; conceptual change; Earth; Elementary School Science; Foreign Countries; France; Humanities and Social Sciences; Interviewing; Interviews; Knowledge; Mental models; Primary Education; primary school children; Psychology; Science Instruction; scientific knowledge development; Statistical Analysis; Theorists; Variance analysis; France; scientific knowledge development; Earth; primary schoolchildren; conceptual change
• ISSN: 1522-7227; 1522-7219; 1522-7219
• DOI: 10.1002/icd.730

Studies of children's knowledge of the Earth have led to very different conclusions: some appear to show that children construct their own, non‐scientific ‘theories’ (mental models) of the flat, hollow or dual Earth. Others indicate that many young children have some understanding of the spherical (scientific) Earth, and that their knowledge lacks the coherence of mental models. The reasons for these contrasting views were tested by interviewing French children (N = 178) aged 5–11 years and varying the different methods used in previous research, namely the types of questions (open and forced‐choice), the form of representation (two‐dimensional pictures and three‐dimensional models), and the method of analysis (the mental model theorists' coding scheme and a statistical test for associations using MANOVA). Forced‐choice questions resulted in higher proportions of scientific answers than open questions, and children appeared to have naïve mental models of the Earth only when the mental model theorists' coding scheme was used. These findings support the view that children tend to have ‘fragments’ of scientific knowledge, and that naïve mental models of the Earth are methodological artifacts. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.