Constructing Science: Connecting Causal Reasoning to Scientific Thinking in Young Children

Description

An examination of children’s causal reasoning capacities and how those capacities serve as the foundation of their scientific thinking. Young children have remarkable capacities for causal reasoning, which are part of the foundation of their scientific thinking abilities. In Constructing Science, Deena Weisberg and David Sobel trace the ways that young children’s sophisticated causal reasoning abilities combine with other cognitive, metacognitive, and social factors to develop into a more mature set of scientific thinking abilities. Conceptualizing scientific thinking as the suite of skills that allows people to generate hypotheses, solve problems, and explain aspects of the world, Weisberg and Sobel argue that understanding how this capacity develops can offer insights into how we can become a more scientifically literate society. Investigating the development of causal reasoning and how it sets the stage for scientific thinking in the elementary school years and beyond, Weisberg and Sobel outline a framework for understanding how children represent and learn causal knowledge and identify key variables that differ between causal reasoning and scientific thinking. They present empirical studies suggesting ways to bridge the gap between causal reasoning and scientific thinking, focusing on two factors: contextualization and metacognitive thinking abilities. Finally, they examine children’s explicit understanding of such concepts as science, learning, play, and teaching. Contents Acknowledgments I. The Foundations of Scientific Thinking 1. How Do We Develop the Capacity to Think Scientifically? What Is Scientific Thinking? Scientific Thinking in Childhood I: Content Knowledge Scientific Thinking in Childhood II: Doing Science Scientific Thinking in Childhood III: Defining “Science” Outline of the Book 2. The Evolution of Rational Constructivism Theory Theory (or the Child-as-Scientist Metaphor) A Problem with the Child-as-Scientist Metaphor Causal Reasoning as Associative Learning Constraining Causal Inferences Bridging Statistical Learning to Causal Models What Are Causal Graphical Models? Blicket Detectors Back to Associative Reasoning Bayesian Inference A Concern about Mechanisms Levels of Explanation 3. Beyond Rational Constructivism Nonindependence Where Does a Concept of “Cause” Come From? Active Learning The Social Nature of Learning Questions of Explanations 4. Variables Relating Causal Reasoning to Scientific Thinking Age Complexity Use of Scientific Content Observing versus Generating Data Recognizing and Using the Control of Variables Strategy Learning from Exploration and Play Diagnosis and Belief Revision Metacognition Building Bridges II. Bridging Causal Reasoning to Scientific Thinking 5. A New Blicket Detector Task How the Task Works Adults’ Performance Children’s Performance Further Uses of the New Blicket Detector Task 6. Contextualization in Causal Reasoning and Scientific Thinking The Role of Contextualization in Adult Reasoning The Role of Contextualization in Development (or, What’s Fantasy Got to Do with It?) Context in Causal Reasoning and Scientific Thinking Blickets to Butterflies Comparing Contexts Blicket-saurus 7. Causal Reasoning and the Development of Metacognitive Thinking: Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Investigations The Disagreement Task School Partnership and Longitudinal Sample Performance on the Disagreement Task Performance on Causal Reasoning Tasks Relations between the Causal Reasoning Task and the Disagreement Task Relations to Standardized Metrics of Academic Achievement What Do These Data Tell Us about the Relation between Causal Reasoning and Science Education? III. Children’s Explicit Definitions of Abstract Concepts 8. Children’s Definitions of “Science” Intensions and Extensions Children’s Conceptions of “Science” “What Is Science?” Testing the Relation between Definitions of “Science” and Measures of Scientific Thinking Do Definitions of “Science” Relate to Scientific Thinking? “Is That Science?” Children’s Understanding of What Makes an Investigation Scientific Developing an Understanding of What Science Is 9. Children’s Definitions of “Learning” and “Teaching” “What Is Learning?” Children’s Understanding of When Learning Happens Children’s Understanding of the Relations between Learning and Play “What Is Teaching?” 10. Children’s Definitions of “Pretending” “What Is Pretending?” The Continued Adventures of Moe the Troll Building Fictional Worlds Imagination and Causal Reasoning Counterfactual Thinking in Development Possibility and Probability The Role of Inhibition Imagination and Science IV. Conclusion 11. What Does It Mean to Engage in Scientific Thinking? Causal Reasoning as a Foundation for Scientific Thinking Explicit Understanding of Science Constraints and Enabling Conditions: Relations among Knowledge and Skills Constructing Scientists What Constructing Science Means Notes Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 References Index