| Popis: |
Children’s first attempts at explaining biological events point to original thinking strategies highlighting aspects of space, time and causality in the phenomena. Biology teaching in the school should work towards developing and integrating different kinds of children’s thinking activities about biological facts, stimulating their growth and their dynamic re-organizations. The aim is to gradually bring the nativity of childish models up to the complexity of scientific ones. Discussions, observations and direct handling may produce a gradual replacement of children’s simple ways of interpreting complex phenomena, developing more effective, varied and hierarchical strategies for understanding. A progressively more scientific way of looking can easily be elicited in children’s interpretations, taking into account the net of interwoven causalities which supports biological complexity. On the basis of tape-recorded discussions and other children’s products, I have been looking for the evolution of children’s interpretations of biological phenomena, following the development of their cognitive strategies through long-lasting class activities. |
