This research investigates the interconnectedness of scientific inquiring at the early childhood level, as we explore the discourse-in-interaction processes occurring within small inquiry groups of 5-and 6-year-old children. The rationale behind this research is to explore the nature of science-related discourse, and to that end, this work focuses on student-to-student interactions as they collaboratively investigate water. As we document the nature of children's ways of explaining, imagining, and representing the properties of water, we demonstrate the constructions of understandings as displayed and emergent from these interactions. The study has generated outcomes about the discursive ways of young children's enacting of knowledge about science, as the analysis reveals that by positioning scientific inquiry as a fluid process children were able to enact science collaboratively and through multimodal means. As such, the study reveals a wide range of indicators to children's understandings about water and to the processes in which students worked together to construct science within discourse-in-interaction.
This ethnographic research examines how children enact developing understandings in science through multiple interactions. Grounded in sociocultural theoretical frameworks, we consider learning to be a social, cultural practice, with understandings as coconstructed between participants through talk and in interactions. With these underpinning frameworks, we have explored water activities in kindergarten and examined how children and teachers collaboratively constructed science investigations to explore questions as they emerged from open-ended activities. The analysis revealed how children's investigations were mediated by their own speculations and explanations. Our primary claim herein is that children's questions, speculations, and insights were used collaboratively by teachers and children, and as such, became a structure in this classroom that supported children in taking agency. In this process, science curricula and working theories on science phenomena were generated. This was facilitated by teachers' openness to emergent approaches for their science curriculum. Through a discussion of these claims, an emphasis is placed on the value of students being positioned as co-constructors of science curricula. Furthermore, the integral role of the teacher in emergent curricula is introduced and developed as critical
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