The development of scientific knowledge of the Earth

Abstract

Investigation of children's knowledge of the Earth can reveal much about the origins, content and structure of scientific knowledge, and the processes of conceptual change and development. Brewer (1992, 1994) claim that children construct coherent mental models of a flat, flattened, or hollow Earth based on a framework theory and intuitive constraints of flatness and support. To examine this account, 62 children, aged 5 -10 years, and 31 adults ranked 16 pictures according to how well they were thought to represent the Earth. Even young children showed scientific knowledge of the shape of the Earth. There was little or no evidence of naïve mental models, indicating that any intuitions or constraints must be very weak. Instead, before they acquire the scientific view, children's knowledge of the Earth appears to be incoherent and fragmented.

The science of cycology: Failures to understand how everyday objects work

“…In this and the subsequent experiments, error scores were almost as high on the forced-choice task as on the freehand drawing task, indicating that production problems were not the primary cause of people's deficiencies (Kaiser et al, 1992;Nobes, Martin, & Panagiotaki, 2005). Some posttest comments were "I think context matters, I know a bike when I see it but it's different to recall [it] when sat in a room"; "Thinking about it in more detail, I realised I had no idea about its structure"; "I can't believe I found it so difficult to remember what a bike frame looks like!…”

Primary students’ conceptions of the Earth: Re-examining a fundamental research hypothesis on mental models

“…Siegal et al, 2004;Vosniadou, Skopeliti & Ikospentaki, 2004) are based on interviews, drawings and open-ended questions. On the other hand, research evidence based on 3D models or pictures selection tasks and forced-choice questions advocates the fragmented knowledge (Nobes et al, 2003(Nobes et al, , 2005Panagiotaki et al, 2006;Siegal et al, 2004;Straatemeier et al, 2008).…”

“…Although arguments in favor of both methods of collecting data can be articulated, the first approach, using drawings and open-ended questions, possesses a major disadvantage originating from the researchers' difficulty in consistently interpreting children's immature sketches (Nobes et al, 2003(Nobes et al, , 2005. Further to this, a main issue in this research area is the method of classification.…”

“…Thus, children's knowledge Moreover, an association of gender and age with the two LCs was tested. The literature has shown unclear results as far as the effect of gender on children's knowledge about the earth is concerned, while the effect favors elder children (Nobes et al, 2003(Nobes et al, , 2005Panagiotaki et al, 2006;Siegal et al, 2004;Straatemeier et al, 2008). Figure 3 shows the proportion of pupils per LC in each grade level, and Figure 4 shows the proportion of pupils per LC of each gender.…”

“…Thus, some of the cross-cultural studies provided clues of inconsistent knowledge, shifting towards the 'fragmented knowledge perspective'. For instance, studies initially attempting to verify the above results, by using three-dimensional model selection tasks and forced-choice questions (Nobes et al, 2003;Panagiotaki, Nobes, & Banerjee, 2006;Siegal, Butterworth & Newcombe, 2004) or using picture selection tasks instead of drawings and open questions (Nobes, Martin & Panagiotaki, 2005;Straatemeier, van der Maas & Jansen, 2008) have reached different conclusions. The findings of these studies suggested that children's knowledge of the earth is not coherent and theory-like, but inconsistent, supporting the fragmented knowledge hypothesis.…”