Preschool Children’s Reasoning about Sound from an Inferential-Representational Approach

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to present an analysis to identify the reasoning processes and representations that preschool students develop about sound based on the inferential-representational approach. Participants were 18 preschool students between the ages of four and five attending three rural schools located in the Sierra Norte of Puebla, Mexico. Data were obtained through a 14 question semi-structured interview. From children’s answers to the formulated questions, an inferential analysis method was applied to identify intentionality, representation elements, sign-material expressions, representations, inferences, and coordination rules in students’ constructions. The results show that children build a basic set of epistemic tools to give meaning to their interpretations and can use them as surrogate reasoning to make inferences. This research constitutes the first approximation toward the understanding of preschool children’s reasoning forms with an inferential-representational approach and constitutes a new approach that puts forward new referents to analyze students of different ages. We consider that the described results and analysis have implications on science education at this educational level.

Preschool Children Science Mental Representations: The Sound in Space

“…These were children who seemed to be on the verge of transition from immediate transmission to reasoning with characteristics of operational transitivity. The recognition of the presence of sound between a source and receiver is also a finding of another study [28]. Finally, a third group of children (15.4-20.9%) insisted on the production of sound solely from voices and did not refer to any kind of propagation.…”

“…In the three tasks of the first RQ, it seemed that 14-20% of students recognized sound independently of its sources of production, its origin, or particular forms that manifest itself such as musical sound. The conceptualization of sound as a distinct physical entity is a finding of relevant research that has focused on this issue [28,33]. However, the vast majority of children (61.5-72%) refer to sound in close relation to the sources of production and the activities that produce distinct sounds, as well as to human hearing.…”

“…In most of these cases, young children associated sound with their own actions as well as with objects that produce sounds [12], while they considered that sound has the properties of a material object [13]. In accordance with the substantial entity of sounds are the findings of Gallegos-Cázares et al [28]. In particular, the researchers studied the propagation of sound with 18 preschool children aged 4-5 years old and found that children of this age deal with sound as a material entity that requires space to propagate in order to be listened.…”

Razonamiento de los estudiantes de preescolar sobre los fenómenos físicos

“…Algunos estudios representativos sobre fenómenos físicos son los de Gallegos-Cázares et al (2008; sobre el tema de la luz y los colores. Más recientes son los de Calderón-Canales et al (2019) y Gallegos-Cázares et al (2021) sobre el tema del sonido, así como el de Canedo y Gómez (2022) sobre modelos precursores sobre la flotación. Si bien hay algunos estudios sobre pensamiento crítico para el caso de las ciencias naturales que analizan procesos genéricos con gran diversidad de temas, en ellos no se analizan los modelos y representaciones que niños y niñas construyen para interpretar los fenómenos; por ejemplo, los trabajos de González (2016) y Ramírez (2019) que fomentan el desarrollo de procesos de indagación con actividades sobre electricidad, o bien, trabajos con docentes de preescolar para proporcionar un marco conceptual en temas de física (Olvera et al, 2018) y trabajos con docentes para el desarrollo de habilidades científicas (Nieto et al, 2021) con la finalidad de que comprendan mejor los procesos naturales.…”

Research Trends and Development Perspectives in Early Childhood Science Education: An Overview

“…For example, the aim of a particular research paper on 4-5 year-old children was the identification of the reasoning processes and representations that they develop regarding sound [43]. The analysis of the interviews that took place illuminated the intentionality, representations, sign-material expressions, inferences, and coordination rules in children' mental constructions.…”