ebook img

Constructing Science: Connecting Causal Reasoning to Scientific Thinking in Young Children PDF

387 Pages·2022·20.674 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Constructing Science: Connecting Causal Reasoning to Scientific Thinking in Young Children

Constructing Science Constructing Science Connecting Causal Reasoning to Scientific Thinking in Young Children Deena Skolnick Weisberg and David M. Sobel The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2022 Massachusetts Institute of Technology This work is subject to a Creative Commons CC-BY-ND license. Subject to such license, all rights are reserved. The MIT Press would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers who provided comments on drafts of this book. The generous work of academic experts is essential for establishing the authority and quality of our publications. We acknowledge with gratitude the contributions of these otherwise uncredited readers. This book was set in Stone Serif and Stone Sans by Westchester Publishing Services. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Weisberg, Deena Skolnick, author. | Sobel, David M., author. Title: Constructing science : connecting causal reasoning to scientific thinking in young children / Deena Skolnick Weisberg and David M. Sobel. Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021045987 | ISBN 9780262044684 (paperback) Subjects: LCSH: Science—Methodology. | Reasoning in children. | Scientific ability. | Science—Study and teaching—Psychological aspects. | Constructivism (Education) Classification: LCC Q175.32.R45 W45 2022 | DDC 501—dc23/eng/20211214 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021045987 For Michael— D.S.W. For Lisa, Paulina, and Nate— D.M.S. Contents Acknowledgments ix I The Foundations of Scientific Thinking 1 How Do We Develop the Capacity to Think Scientifically? 3 2 The Evolution of Rational Constructivism 21 3 Beyond Rational Constructivism 61 4 Variables Relating Causal Reasoning to Scientific Thinking 93 II Bridging Causal Reasoning to Scientific Thinking 5 A New Blicket Detector Task 125 6 Contextualization in Causal Reasoning and Scientific Thinking 135 7 Causal Reasoning and the Development of Metacognitive Thinking: Cross-S ectional and Longitudinal Investigations 153 III Children’s Explicit Definitions of Abstract Concepts 8 Children’s Definitions of “Science” 177 9 Children’s Definitions of “Learning” and “Teaching” 219 10 Children’s Definitions of “Pretending” 239 IV Conclusion 11 What Does It Mean to Engage in Scientific Thinking? 271 Notes 289 References 307 Index 359 Acknowledgments Dave and Deena met at the 2007 meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development. We immediately skipped a bunch of talks in favor of arguing for three hours about Superman. This led to a collaboration on a set of projects on children’s understanding of fiction and fantasy worlds. When the fantasy papers became reality, we started a new collaboration on children’s causal reasoning and scientific thinking. This led to a funded col- laborative grant, which led to collecting a lot of data, which in turn led to writing this book. We would first like to acknowledge that much of the empirical work described in this book was supported by that collaborative grant from the National Science Foundation (Young children’s beliefs about causal systems: Learning about belief revision in the lab and in museums, grants 1661068 to Dave and 1929935 to Deena). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recom- mendations expressed in this material are those of Dave and Deena and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Some of the work described in this book was the result of an earlier grant that Dave received from the National Science Foundation (Explaining, exploring, and sci- entific reasoning in museum settings, grant 1420548). Dave was also supported by NSF grants 1917639 and 2033368 during the process of writing this book, and Deena received additional support for this book’s completion from Vil- lanova University’s Subvention of Publication Program. Both Deena and Dave have collaborators, students, and staff who were instrumental in making a lot of this research happen. At the top of the list are a set of postdoctoral researchers (many of whom are now in faculty positions), graduate students (many of whom are now postdoctoral researchers, faculty, or successful members of the private sector), and staff who collaborated on

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.