ERIC Number: EJ1371943
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023-May
Pages: 25
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0036-8326
EISSN: EISSN-1098-237X
Family Conversations about Species Change as Support for Children's Developing Understandings of Evolution
Science Education, v107 n3 p810-834 May 2023
To examine the ways that 6- to 11-year-old children's conversation with their parents support their developing understandings of evolution, 49 parent-child dyads participated in a study with two elicited discussion tasks: origins of species and potential species change. Conversational data were transcribed, coded, and qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed to compare the appearance of reasoning in each type of task. Quantitative analyses revealed correlations between tasks in informed naturalistic reasoning as well as differences in the way reasoning was expressed in each task. In addition, parent-child dyads with older children were more likely to use informed naturalistic reasoning than parent-child dyads with younger children. A subset of the data was analyzed qualitatively and showed that irrespective of how much evolution reference was present in the conversation, parents supported their children's learning through scaffolding. However, greater amounts of nonscientific reasoning appeared in the groups with less evolution talk. This study demonstrates that family talk about evolution varies with context both within and between families.
Descriptors: Family Relationship, Evolution, Children, Parent Child Relationship, Thinking Skills, Scaffolding (Teaching Technique), Animals
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2191/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A