Using dialogic interventions to decrease children’s use of inappropriate teleological explanations

Abstract

A belief in teleology is often suggested to be a barrier in children's science education. Many studies have catalogued children's use of teleological explanations, but fewer have developed approaches to tackle children's use in scientific contexts. This paper reports two studies that utilised dialogic interventions alongside Concept Cartoons to do just that. Study 1 (5-to 7-yearolds, n = 54) addressed teleological explanations for natural phenomena (e.g., snow or rainbows) and Study 2, (9-to 10-year-olds, n = 24) explored organisms' traits (e.g., giraffes' necks or zebras' stripes). Both studies found that after only short discussions about styles of explanation in science, children's acceptance of teleological explanations was significantly reduced and they were more likely to endorse appropriate scientific explanations. These results suggest that teleology need not be a major barrier to teaching and learning about causality as it can quickly and effectively be addressed.

Influence of self‐assessment and conditional metaconceptual knowledge on students' self‐regulation of intuitive and scientific conceptions of evolution

“…This finding is important because group SA−CMK− received the same information regarding key concepts during the intervention phase (e.g., through a simulation and a list of all key concepts) and even received more subject‐specific knowledge when the intervention groups had the intervention on conditional metaconceptual knowledge; yet students in the group SA−CMK− used fewer key concepts than the groups receiving one or both interventions. Thus, our findings demonstrate that while solely teaching subject‐specific knowledge may improve students' conceptual knowledge to some extent, the improvement is much greater when intuitive conceptions are also explicitly addressed (see also Aptyka et al, 2022; Colton et al, 2018; Halls et al, 2021; Nehm et al, 2022; Pickett et al, 2022).…”

“…However, the aforementioned studies did not investigate the individual effects of different instructional approaches to deal with student conceptions, leaving the question of how best to address intuitive conceptions. Other studies have indicated positive effects of instructional approaches that address students' conceptions such as refutation texts (Pickett et al, 2022), clarifications of misconceptions (Aptyka et al, 2022), discussions about common misconceptions using active learning approaches (Colton et al, 2018), group discussions about styles of scientific explanations (Halls et al, 2021), or direct challenges to intuitive thinking (Wingert et al, 2022). However, no rigorous experimental intervention study exists yet that investigates the effectiveness of specific metaconceptual approaches that are based on self-regulated learning and metacognition and directly address students' intuitive conceptions.…”

“…Instructional approaches based on metacognition and self‐regulated learning are assumed to be especially powerful in dealing with students' intuitive conceptions (Asshoff, 2020; González Galli et al, 2020; Gresch, 2020; Shtulman & Walker, 2020). However, there are more studies describing students' intuitive conceptions and fewer investigating the effectiveness of specific instructional approaches in dealing with these conceptions (Asshoff, 2020; Halls et al, 2021; Millar et al, 2006; Nehm et al, 2022). Within evolution education, research has shown that many teaching strategies address students' intuitive conceptions of evolution ineffectively (Gregory, 2009; Legare et al, 2018; Shtulman & Walker, 2020; Tibell & Harms, 2017).…”