Investigating the mathematical and scientific thinking of children’s concepts on the floating and sinking of various objects.
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this small scale study was to observe how children apply mathematical and scientific reasoning to various objects that sink or float. The study was designed to test the hypotheses that social interaction is related to cognitive change, that children progress through developmental stages in an understanding of science. Two children were used for the investigation a boy aged eleven and a girl aged six. The data was collated from video-recorded tasks. The participant’s predictions and explanations were coded. Findings revealed that when the children experienced cognitive conflict or were challenged by the researcher this could cause conceptual change, leading to a developmental progression in the children’s scientific thinking. INTRODUCTION Considerable research exists on the mathematic and scientific thinking of children. Selly, N (1993) proposed a developmental progression of children’s scientific understanding, relating to floating and sinking. Selly argues that young children have a very practical view of buoyancy. As children realise that their explanations are insufficient, they progress through a series of what Selley termed Hypotheses from 1, 1A,2,3,and 4. Cognitive changes in the development of mathematical and scientific concepts are Piaget’s discovery learning, this occurs when children are lone learners working mostly on their own. To get children to progress with their thinking Paiget and his colleagues would challenge pupils and their thinking creating conflict and producing disequilibrium that would initiate the equilibrium processes, producing cognitive change. This links to Selley’s (1993) H 4 (Hypothesis) referred to as the equilibrium which requires the mental deployment of
