In this paper, we present the findings of research on mental representations of thermal conduction on the metal of children aged 5-6 years. The research was carried out using interviews of 87 urban area kindergarten students in Greece. The children were asked for predictions and macroscopic descriptions of phenomena illustrated in 3 different tasks during which simple thermal conduction experiments were performed with both daily and non-daily materials. The research results clearly show the vast majority of children express mental representations which are far from the scientific models used in education. Moreover, many children can make predictions on heat conduction without being able to analyze their way of thinking. Finally, differences were found in heat conduction on familiar and non-familiar materials used by children. Findings of the current research study are likely to equip teachers with the appropriate basic tools for designing their teaching interventions in the lessons of heat and thermal conduction for children aged 5-6 years.

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In the last decades, constructivism has dominated Early Childhood Science Education. Within this context, alternative ideas of pre-school pupils have been thoroughly explored and analyzed. Nevertheless, research on these ideas in individuals with learning difficulties remains scarce. Aiming to fill this gap, the present study explores alternative ideas on thermal phenomena of pupils with learning difficulties and compare them with those without learning difficulties. For this purpose, an experimental investigation was conducted with 25 pupils with learning difficulties ( M = 72,50 months, s.d. = 8,11) and 25 pupils without learning difficulties ( M = 72,50 months, s.d. = 9,50). Drawing from constructivist theory, a structured, computerized tool (A.I.H.E.T) was developed to fulfill research’s goal. Findings suggest that pupils with and without learning difficulties use almost the same ideas on thermal phenomena, on a different frequency though. The results support further the findings of other research, according to which inclusive science education not only is feasible but also it has great benefits for students with and without learning difficulties. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43545-022-00603-5.

This article attempts to highlight inscriptions, i.e., photographs, drawings, diagrams, or graphs as autonomous carriers of meaning that can illuminate the different dimensions of a scientific concept. In addition, the article examines the inherent potential of diverse types of inscriptions to be combined with each other creating conceptual sequences and thus, crafting a narrative for the formation of a concept. For the formation of conceptual sequences the proper synthesis of both naturalistic and abstractive inscriptions that hold different types of information and complement each other is suggested. That is, inscriptions such as photographs that hold morphological relevance with their referent describing at the same time the everyday knowledge, as well as inscriptions such as graphs or equations that, from a morphological perspective, have a no linear connection to their referent and are related to the typical visual code of school knowledge. Thus, existing, transformed, or novel inscriptions can create conceptual continuums offering logical connections between visual codes from everyday experience and the codes of diagrams, graphs, and equations. From both the teachers and the students, when inscriptions cooperate with the human body, oral language, and other elements of the space, constitute a critical aspect in multimodal communication within school classrooms.

The aim of the current study was to examine the way in which preschool children deal with the concept of sound. For this purpose, a study was carried out in the context of detecting and categorizing the mental representations among young children of sounds which propagate through space from source to the receiver. Specifically, 91 preschool children aged 5–6 years voluntarily participated in individual semi-structured interviews which were carried out by three researchers in a special area of kindergartens. During these interviews, the children were asked to express their views on the three following axes: the concept of sound itself; the subjective characteristics of sound; and the phenomenon of the production and propagation of sound. The results of the research showed that while a small percentage of children recognized the propagation of sound in space, the vast majority of them associated sound with either the object that produced it or with the object that received it.