Core Skills in Elementary School Science

• In Event: Policy Implications for Science and Math Education, Visual Spatial Learning, and Neuromyth

Abstract

Recent years have seen substantial improvements in teaching of reading and early arithmetic, based on rigorous analysis of the component skills involved in learning in these areas and the ways in which they develop. Despite the importance attached to science, there has been little comparable work that might provide a steer to elementary school teachers on how to help put in place key early skills in this area of learning. What work there is has mostly focused on scientific thinking abilities relating to hypothesis generation, hypothesis testing and the drawing of appropriate conclusions, but there is clear evidence that these are relatively late acquisitions and arguments in favor of early abilities are overstated. Recent research suggests that attention ought in fact to focus first and foremost on improving verbal skills relating to description and explanation of phenomena, because language is central to the organization of cognition in relation to causal understanding. From infancy, children typically show accurate awareness of the association between causes and outcomes in a range of areas which enables them to anticipate outcomes correctly. However, evidence from neuroimaging and behavioral studies indicates that this sensitivity relies on a distinct neural system to that involved in language-based ideas about causal principles. These ideas seem to be acquired instead from everyday conversations, show inaccuracies that are not evident in implicit anticipations, and initially at least interact with event perception in complex and largely uncoordinated ways. This analysis has important implications for early science education. In particular, it suggests that the key early components of science learning are 1) accurate observation, 2) the ability to describe and reason explicitly about causal connections, and 3) application of knowledge of mechanisms and processes that might explain these connections. It also suggests that the first ability remains largely inaccessible in educational terms until it becomes integrated with verbal description. This helps explain the results of research showing that direct manipulation of causal outcomes has positive impact on conceptual accuracy, especially where such interventions are shaped by collaborative dialogue between learners. This provides a social context in which there are many different eyes to attend to observation of outcomes, and good reason to express and reason about these outcomes explicitly, providing a crucial linkage between observation and description. It may also help younger learners manage the informational load involved in keeping track of everything by distributing this between students. Teachers have an important strategic role to play not just in organizing effective observational activities, but in providing the language to capture ideas about mechanisms and processes at the moment when learners have accurately identified causal connections and are beginning to seek explanations of these. Bringing these three core skills together in coordinated fashion provides the basis for the emergence of genuine scientific thinking abilities.

Author

• Andrew Kenneth Tolmie, Institute of Education - London