Preschoolers' induction of the concept of material kind: A study on the use of comparison
The process of comparison has been found to be a crucial mechanism underlying young children's categorization of objects. Through the hypothesized «structural alignment» of objects, important common properties may be discovered. |
| In science education, comparison is the basic cognitive process involved in students' inductive reasoning, whereby patterns and structures are identified across instances as a basis for the construction of theories and rules. |
| Our study investigates young children's ability to employ comparison processes in order to form conceptual categories regarding the concept of material kind within the context of objects' «floating and sinking». |
| In an experimental within-groups design, we have five-year-olds observe either how one object made of a certain material is immersed in water (one standard condition) or how two objects made of the same material are immersed in water (two standard condition) in total of 12 tasks. |
| To test the importance of language in the comparison process, we further vary whether the standards shown to the children are unlabelled or whether they are labelled with respect to the material they consist of. |
| After having observed the standard/s, the child is shown four objects, only one of which is made of the same material as the observed standard(s) while the others serve as distractors because of shape, mass, or volume. |
| The findings of this ongoing study show that children improved from the one-standard unlabelled condition to the two-standard labelled condition on average from 39% to 58% (N=16). |
| Apparently, the presentation of two same-material objects and the assignment of the common property of either sinking or floating to both of them already induced comparison processes in five-year-olds, who were thus able to overcome their prevalent tendency toward the distracting items. |
| Further applications in early science learning which induce processes of comparison are thus implicated by this research. |
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Team
Dr. Ilonca Hardy (ETHZ/Universität Frankfurt),
Miriam Leuchter (PH Zentralschweiz)
Dr. Henrik Saalbach (ETHZ)
Prof. Dr. Elsbeth Stern (ETHZ),
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