Fundamentals of Experimental Science in Early Science Education

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

The aim of this project is to investigate the thinking processes of young children and to find out how these processes affect children's ability to learn science in elementary school. The main focus of the research will be on how children learn to design simple experiments and how they understand experimental outcomes so that they can reach conclusions based on hard evidence. Throughout the project, there will be two intertwined strands of effort, lab-based studies and classroom-based studies. The expectation is that results from the lab studies will form the basis for the design of improved curriculum units that are grounded in cognitive theory and that can be implemented within the constraints of real classroom situations. Conversely, the expectation is that the classroom observations and assessments will raise questions that will be studied in the lab. The research will involve several interrelated studies. One will determine whether or not teaching children the basics of experimental design will enable them to understand better the results of others' scientific investigations, for example, other children's science fair posters, or claims they hear about what "scientists have discovered." Another study will investigate children's understanding of various types of error that can occur during the design, setup, execution, and analysis of experiments. The goal is to find out how children react when they see that things don't always turn out exactly the same way when they run the "same" experiment repeatedly. In addition, part of the research will explore the effect of presenting science instruction via a computer interface rather than with a live teacher. One of the studies will examine pre-school children's ability to generate notations for simple procedures that involve sequences of actions. Such an ability is an important precursor to using notation in the science lab.