Abstract
Children’s knowledge of earth possesses the potential to unravel their understanding of scientific concepts in the young age. Researchers have claimed that children prepare earth’s mental models which are coherent in nature. However, the understanding of earth of children is related to their age as has been indicated in recent research and the older children demonstrate improved understanding of the spherical shape of earth whereas younger children believes earth to be disc shaped. This study establishes this fact by testing 214 children, out of which 107 were of age group 5 to 6 and 107 were of age group 8 to 9. The younger children possess incoherent views about earth while older children are more scientific in their research. Panagiotaki, Nobes and Banerjee (2006) also demonstrated that forced-choice questions in comparison to open-ended question yields more correct responses which, however is not found in this study.
Introduction
Vosniadou and Brewer (1992) deployed the technique of structured interview which involved the children to draw the earth on the basis of their conception of it. The research included children from first to fifth grade. The results of the study indicated that children, in their conceptions related to earth try and merge several conflicting concepts about earth. It ranges from children drawing a flat surface and showing standing people on the surface to the picture of a sphere which is hollow and has a platform inside it so that people can stand on it. Some children also drew two earths with one being flat and other round. The influence of cultural aspects has also been noticed in the children concepts of earth. For an instance, Indian children have been demonstrated to believe that a water body supports the earth; however this concept is not demonstrated by Australian or American (Samarapungavan, Vosniadou, & Brewer, 1996). The varied concepts can be attributed to the perception of an inherent logic and the correlation of the earth’s nature and cycle of day and night, cosmological bodies, gravity and seasons.
In the study by Vosniadou and Brewer, they discovered the correlation of coherence with the earth’s mental models. They demonstrated that children with the view that earth’s shape is spherical are less likely to consider the possibility of falling of its edge. Nobes et al (2003) challenges the mental models interpretation and found through their study that children from the age of 4 to 8 have fragmented knowledge. Young children are vulnerable to fragmentation of their concepts however; it’s difficult to develop the model of earth without any coherence of the concept. Hayes, Goodhew, Heit, and Gillan (2003) through their findings suggest that when the information about the gravity and earth’s size is provided to children, they created the spherical mental model and this finding is in sync with the theoretical view of coherence.
In problem solving situations, individuals generate mental models as representation of with the structure of domain-specific concepts. Through mental models, casual explanations of physical phenomena, as well as predictions are provided. Mental models are beliefs that are generated by observation or information given in the cultural contexts. Children’s primary earth’s mental model is that of a flat physical object which is stable and supported and has sun and sky above. Dual mental model of earth is the resultant of reconciliation of the flat and spherical models of earth by children without abandoning any presupposition of their framework theory underlying the flat model.
The consistency of answers might also be the function of method of questioning adopted. Vosniadou, Skopeliti, and Ikospentaki (2004) findings suggest that the answers and their consistency also depend upon the questioning method adopted with children. It was evidenced that questions with forced choice answers augmented the chances of obtaining answers which were scientifically correct; however internal consistency was increased in the answers obtained through the open method.
This research paper follows the work of Panagiotaki, Nobes and Banerjee (2006) and conducts the study on 214 children, segregated in two categories, one older (8-9 years of age) and older (5-6 years of age). The two modes of questioning from children have been adopted in this paper, open and forced-ended questions. The aim of this research is
That forced-ended question results in more responses in comparison to open ended questions.
Methodology
Participants
The participants of this study were in total 214 children, out of whom female children were 113 and male children were 101. The children belonged to two groups of age; 5 -6 aged children numbered 107, also labeled as ‘younger’ and 8-9 aged children numbered 107 labeled ‘older’. The students of PSY2231 Developmental Psychology enrolled these children and interviewed them.
Materials and Design
The questionnaire was prepared based on the work of Panagiotaki, Nobes and Banerjee (2006) and involved two methods of questioning. . One mode deployed open questions and the second deployed questions with forced-choice answers. Appendix A demonstrates the interview schedule for each type of questioning.
Procedure
The informed consent was procured from the children’s parents or wherever applicable guardians. After this, interviews with children were conducted in individual session. Panagiotaki, Nobes and Banerjee (2006) scheme of data coding was used. ‘Consistent Scientific’ earth model was accorded to the children who gave all correct answers to the questions. ‘Inconsistent or non-scientific’ earth model was accorded to the children who gave incorrect answers to the questions.
Hypothesis
This study has been conducted to ascertain the impact of mode of questioning on the answers of children of their conception of earth and their responses are more scientific with the advancement of the age of children. To analyze the data, the hypotheses which are formed are:
Older children make more scientific responses in comparison to younger children
Older children do not make more scientific responses in comparison to younger children
Previous studies suggest that forced-ended questions results in more correct responses than open-ended questions. This study test the data obtained to confirm the results of the previous studies, hence
Forced-choice questions get more scientific responses from children
The responses of children are not affected by questions being forced-ended.
Data Analysis Method
Chi square analysis is being used to analyze the data. This method is being used here as the data is categorical and not group means. The data is available in the form of set of mutually exclusive classes and the numbers have been counted of items which fit in each class. Runyon et al. (2000) give the example of asking a number of students what they are majoring in. The answers of the children classified as inconsistent/non-scientific against scientific are not dependent on age group, that is younger or older and data collection method, which is forced-choice questions and open questions.
Results
Correlation between response type and mode of data collection was not significant.
The findings of the study indicate that responses of children were not dependant on the mode of questioning but the response of children was found to be linked to the age of the children. ‘Younger’ Children made more non-scientific or inconsistent responses and ‘Older’ children made the responses which were scientific.
Discussion
The study examined the relationship of children’s age with their conception of earth along with testing the effect of mode of questioning on the children responses about earth. The relationship between the research questions, framed to assess the impact of method of questioning on responses of children was assumed to be positive based on prior research. It was evident from the data that older children made scientific responses and younger children were incoherent in their responses. Hence, it was anticipated that older children would demonstrate better knowledge of earth in comparison to younger children.
The findings of the study related to age were coherent with the assumption that older children (8 to 9 years of age) have more scientific notion of earth in comparison to younger children (5 to 6 years of age). The result of the study does not support the second hypothesis, which stated that questions with forced-choice answers generate correct children responses. The data gathered could not establish any relationship between the method of questioning and correct response rate of children.
Our study establishes that younger children less scientific concept of earth while older children display an increased level of earth’s conception. This has been researched and stated by many researchers (Nussbaum & Novak, 1976; Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992, 1994; Diakidoy et al., 1997; Vosniadou, 1994) that younger children, 5 to 7 years of age don’t form a spherical mental model of earth. They perceive that earth is flat or disc-shaped as they see it from their view. The mental model also states that children at this age have incoherent ideas about earth and most of the children believe earth to be flat in this age. Benson and Haith (2009) also mention that young children’s comprehension of physical phenomena is prejudiced by their aptitude to deal with complexity and their ability to deal with extra variables increases with age.
Both, open-ended questions and forced-choice questions were deployed for this study and it was expected that results obtained would by similar to the study of Vosniadou, Skopeliti, and Ikospentaki (2004) and Panagiotaki, Nobes and Banerjee (2006) who suggested through their research that questions with forced-choice answers yield more correct responses from children. However, our study did not find any relation between the responses of the children and the method of questions. The rationale behind; Panagiotaki, Nobes and Banerjee (2006) and Vosniadou, Skopeliti, and Ikospentaki (2004) arriving at similar results may lie in the structure and content of their questionnaire. The questions asked by both researchers in forced-choice questions were almost same and were based on Forced choice questionnaire and open-ended questionnaire used by and Siegel et al (2004) and Vosniadou and Brewer (1992). The questionnaires were modified very little and hence, the results obtained were similar though the studies were conducted on different set of children in different conditions. Our mode of questioning were based on Panagiotaki, Nobes and Banerjee (2006) but our instrument were independently designed which led to it yielding independent results. This statement here presents a further scope of research wherein the research may test the results derived from using two sets of questionnaires on same group. The results obtained depend on the questions asked during the interview as has been researched that children also give incoherent answer due to non-understanding the question.
Methodological Issues
This study has yielded some results which are not in concurrence with the results of earlier studies. This may results from the method adopted to conduct the study.
The method of interviewing children as deployed by Vosniadou & Brewer (1992) and Vosniadou et al (2004) represents some issues. The interview involves repeated enquiry from children on one single question, molded in different forms. This method can confuse young children as they are not capable of handling several variables simultaneously. Another potential problem is that children may not completely understand the words in interview and this may lead to incoherent replies. Forced-choice questions involve one intuitive and one scientific question and hence, this makes the questionnaire biased towards scientific approach of children. Moreover, this questionnaire compels children to adopt a scientific children while replying which is different from mental model approach. This also leads to children replying more scientifically and forming correct replies as they have only two options and no explanation or drawing or conceptualization is required. Hence, both open-ended and forced-choice questionnaire have possible error sources which demonstrate the possibility on incorrect data gathering technique. While performing this study, there is a scope of performing these errors. The rationale of maintaining eye contact with children while interviewing may not completely justify the responses to be correct.
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