Secondary Science - Living Things
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Piaget identifies five stages of children’s development of “Life Concepts”: • Age 0-5: No concept • Ages 6-7: Anything active is alive. • Ages 8-9: Only things that move are alive. • Ages 9-11:If it appears to move, it is alive. • Over 11: Only animals and plants are alive. “Concepts of Living” according to "Children's Ideas about Life and Living Processes" • Living: Linked to child’s developing conceptual framework about biological processes. • Animal: Important to teach all children about concrete biological concepts. Need teaching strategies to develop discrimination and generalization skills. Children have more knowledge about larger animals. • Plant: Plant knowledge is much narrower than other areas. The younger the individuals were the less likely they could generalize a criteria for what is a plant. • Classification: Younger individuals assign organisms randomly, rather than hierarchical. • Species: Sixteen year old and younger showed little understanding of species. • Cell Theory: Students have conflict/confusion between what is a “cell” versus what is a “molecule”. • Adaptation: Only, a small percentage of students after studying “A” level biology could explain process of evolutionary change. • Organization of the Body: Structure and Function – Carey contends that there is a shift in children’s thinking from a holistic, human-centered view to a view where children recognize that body functions work collaboratively. My understanding of this selection on “Living Things” that over time there is an increase in one’s perception and knowledge regarding the concept of “living”. The change occurs gradually with age, expert input, and with a greater knowledge base, development of a more sophisticated criteria of what is alive or not, and the use and development of classification systems of living organisms.
Children’s Ideas About Life - “Living Things”
Piaget identifies five stages of children’s development of “Life Concepts”: • Age 0-5: No concept • Ages 6-7: Anything active is alive. • Ages 8-9: Only things that move are alive. • Ages 9-11:If it appears to move, it is alive. • Over 11: Only animals and plants are alive.
The Concept of 'Living'
Pioneering studies on children's ideas of 'living' were carried out by Jean Piaget. He identified five stages:
Stage 0: No concept. Stage 1: Things that are active in anyway are deemed alive. Stage 2: All things that move are deemed alive. Stage 3: Things that appear to move by themselves are deemed alive. Stage 4: Adult concept - animals and plants are deemed alive.
Various other researchers began to study this type of progression in a child's concept of 'living'. Bell pointed out that commonly used words such as 'living', 'dead' and 'animal' may be used to label different concepts by different people. Arnold and Simpson found no steady improvement from age 10-15. Tamir found that there was no significant difference with age in children's ability to classify sixteen pictures as living or non-living.
Children often attribute human characteristics, thoughts, emotions and intentions to non-human things. Inagaki found that children do not readily accept that human are a kind of animal. A number of studies on children's concept of death have suggested that children progress to an intuitive biological conceptualization by the age of 9 or 10. A study by Sequiera showed that children tended to conceptualize death in terms of a human or animal model.
The Concept of 'Animal'
Researchers report that to many students animals are only the large land mammals, and they have a much more restrictive definition of an "animal". Bell report that teaching about animals as consumers did not affect pupils understanding of animals or their role in the food web. However, extending the definition of animals helped.
The Concept of 'Plant'
Again, research has shown that children have a much narrower meaning of the word 'plant'. Bell found that children often did not categorize a tree or a seed as plants. Pupils choose 'plant', 'tree' and 'flower' as exclusive groups.
Classification
Most 7-year-olds can assign organisms to groups, but their groups are mutually exclusive rather than hierarchical. Older the child, the more numerous the groups. Children tend to focus on individual features of the plants rather than on the whole plant. Many students relied on everyday use of class names such that jellyfish and starfish were classified as fish.
The Concept of 'Species'
Pupils from 5-16 recognized that all dogs belong to one group, but they showed little understanding of the basis of this grouping. They showed little knowledge of the genetic basis of the concept 'species'.
Cell Theory
Pupils seem to suffer from interference between the concepts of 'cell' and 'molecule'. There is often confusion between the two concepts about the shape, the size, and the role of each in a living thing.
Adaptation
Pupils tend to see adaptation in a naturalistic sense, undertaken to satisfy the organisms' need or desire to fulfill some future requirement. Most will give the Lamarckian interpretation that individual can dapt to change in the environment if they need to, and that these adaptations are inherited.
