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The use of scaffolding to promote preschool children’s competencies of evidence-based reasoning
(2021)
Scientific reasoning encompasses individuals‘ evaluation of evidence with regard to a given hypothesis. In this study, we investigated whether preschool children are able to reason with empirical evidence in the science context of elasticity. N = 63 preschoolers were presented with tasks following the deductive reasoning paradigm and were asked to evaluate the relevance of given events (objects) with regard to a hypothesis. In a repeated measures experimental design with three groups, we tested whether different forms of scaffolding (adaptive prompts with/without modeling of advanced reasoning) would promote children’s reasoning compared to a control group without intervention. We found that adaptive prompts with modeling significantly improved children’s evaluation of irrelevant events in the posttest. Further, these children’s reasoning patterns scored significantly higher than those of the control group. Our results suggest that preschool children are able to reason with evidence if they are given adequate support. Specifically, the modeling of advanced reasoning functioned as a scaffold beyond the use of adaptive prompts in irrelevant event evaluations.
In der Dissertation wird das Antwortverhalten von Kindern bei der Koordination von Theorie und Evidenz untersucht. Diese Fähigkeit ist besonders beim naturwissenschaftlichen Lernen relevant. Dazu werden zwei Studien vorgestellt. In der ersten Studie, der Querschnittsstudie wird das Antwortverhalten von Kindern im Alter von fünf bis neun Jahren am Beispiel der Leitfrage: „Warum springt ein Ball?“ untersucht. Verschiedene Vermutungen wie zum Beispiel „Dinge, die rund sind, springen“, werden geprüft. In der zweiten Studie, dem Kernstück der Arbeit werden zwei Fördermaßnahmen zum Training der Koordination von Theorie und Evidenz bei fünf- bis sechsjährigen Kindern vorgestellt.