| In order to determine what elementary school children think about biology and the inside of the body, 100 children between 5 and 10 years of age were asked to draw the inside of the body and respond to a 10-item Biological Knowledge questionnaire. To determine the effects of various discursive strategies on improving initial knowledge of biology and the inside of the body, participants were then randomly assigned to one of five experimental conditions in which they were asked to respond to questions designed to induce developmental change in biological knowledge. These strategies differed in terms of the cognitive demands placed on the participant to answer the question (Sigel, 1993). Post-tests were administered to assess advances over initial conceptions. With regard to drawings, development proceeds from initial admixtures of anatomical and non-anatomical body parts (5-6 yrs), to anatomical representation with erroneous location (6-7 yrs.), to proper location without functional integration, to representation of a functionally integrated system (8-9 yrs.), to representation of at least 2 functionally integrated systems (10 yrs.). With regard to questionnaires, for 5-7 year-olds, results indicate a predominance of thinking about biology in "psychological" terms, with some participants reasoning in a "mechanical" fashion, and none exhibiting genuine biological knowledge. For 8-10 year-olds, reasoning is predominantly in mechanical terms, with a small percentage exhibiting genuine biological knowledge. In addition, High level distancing strategies and Analogies had a significant effect on pre and post-test scores for 5-7 year-olds on drawings and questionnaires, and for 8-10 year-olds on drawings. Further, these strategies significantly reduced the discrepancy between scores on initial drawings and questionnaires for 5-7 year-olds, indicating improvement in representational competence. Developmental and educational implications are discussed. |
