From Young Children’s Ideas about Germs to Ideas Shaping a Learning Environment

Abstract

This paper is concerned with highlighting young children's ideas about the nature, location and appearance of germs, as well as their reasoning strands about germs' ontological category and biological functions. Moreover, it is concerned with exploring how all these could be taken into account for shaping a potentially fruitful learning environment. Conducting individual, semi-structured interviews with 35 preschoolers (age 4.5-5.5) of public kindergartens in the broader area of Patras, we attempted to trace their ideas about what germs are, where they may be found, whether they are good or bad and living or non-living and how they might look like in a drawing. Moreover, children were required to attribute a series of biological functions to dogs, chairs and germs, and finally to create a story with germs holding a key-role. The analysis of our qualitative data within the "NVivo" software showed that the informants make a strong association of germs with health and hygiene issues, locate germs mostly in our body and the external environment, are not familiar with the 'good germs'-idea, and draw germs as 'human-like', 'animal-like' or 'abstract' entities. Moreover, they have significant difficulties not only in employing biological functions as criteria for classifying germs in the category of 'living', but also in just attributing such functions to germs using a warrant. Finally, the shift from our findings to a 3-part learning environment aiming at supporting preschoolers in refining their initial conceptualization of germs is thoroughly discussed in the paper.

Teaching activities for the construction of a precursor model in 5- to 6-year-old children's thinking: the case of thermal expansion and contraction of metals

“…A first finding concerns the cognitive readiness of the children when they approach natural phenomena and concepts. As long as we agree that the cognitive development of the children is also important within the framework of preschool education institutions, from an educational point of view there is still an important issue not dealt with herein but already supported by other researches, namely the development of relevant science learning activities corresponding with both the research results and the limits of the actual work framework in the kindergarten (Resta-Schweitzer and Weil-Barais 2007; Kampeza and Ravanis 2009;Ergazaki, Saltapida, and Zogza 2010;Papandreou and Terzi 2011).…”

“…Thus, the use of different theoretical background, methods and pedagogical practices has shown that young children can approach systematically the natural world and construct in their thinking pre-concepts compatible with those of natural sciences, in several cognitive learning fields of natural sciences, such as biological phenomena (Zogza and Papamichael 2000;Christidou and Hatzinikita 2006;Ergazaki, Saltapida, and Zogza 2010), optical phenomena (Resta-Schweitzer and Weil-Barais 2007; Gallegos-Cázares, Flores-Camacho, and Calderón-Canales 2008; Ravanis 2010), astronomical phenomena (Kampeza 2006;Papandreou and Terzi 2011), properties of matter (Ravanis, Koliopoulos and Hadzigeorgiou 2004;Hatzinikita 2006;Vellopoulou and Ravanis 2010) electric and magnetic phenomena (Tsatsaroni, Ravanis, and Falaga 2003;Papadopoulou and Poimenidou 2008).…”

Microbes Should Be Central to Ecological Education and Outreach

“…These early-childhood misconceptions about microbes are not just restricted to their morphology or size, but also extend to their role in nature. Many studies in classrooms have shown that for children of all ages, microbes are exclusively associated with diseases and deficiencies in hygiene ( 10 , 19 , 27 ). This seems reasonable and reflects the history of microbiology guided by practical problems like health issues and food spoilage.…”

“…Interestingly, although students acknowledge that germs are everywhere ( 27 ), they hold an incomplete picture of the interrelationships between macro- and microorganisms. For example, young students consider microbes as a strictly human problem, rather than seeing microorganisms as one of many organisms in the ecosystem, or as pathogens or symbionts for other organisms ( 19 , 27 ). In general, students think of humans as the center of the ecosystem rather than one member interdependent with other organisms such as microbes ( 26 , 40 ).…”

Measuring and Changing Preschool Children's Stuttering Attitudes

“…From this perspective, children may be inclined to believe that learning-especially that which is related to lexical and semantic gains-is associated with stuttering. Second, children's belief that stuttering comes from germs is possibly linked to their knowledge that germs threaten one's physical well being (Ergazaki, Saltapida, & Zogza, 2010). Preschool Messages such as these may cause children to associate germs with all undesirable conditions.…”