Engaging young students in scientific investigations: prompting for meaningful reflection

This study examined the verbal prompts a tutor used to promote reflection and young students’ responses to these prompts. Seven children (ages 8–12) participated in 260 min of one-on-one tutoring to learn scientific concepts related to gear movement; the tutor spontaneously provided these students with 763 prompts for reflection. Prompts reliably induced reflection: Students responded verbally 87% of the time. Turn-by-turn discourse analysis revealed seven distinct types of prompts and 11 distinct types of verbal responses. High-level prompts were strongly associated with high-level responses. A log-multiplicative association model with two dimensions (temporality and certainty) represented the relationships between prompt and response types; from this model, odds ratios estimated the strength of association between specific pairs of prompt and response types. Findings are discussed in terms of the effects that reflection may have on students’ developing understanding of scientific concepts.

本研究考察了一名导师用于促进反思的言语提示以及年幼学生对这些提示的反应。七名儿童（年龄在8 - 12岁）参加了260分钟的一对一辅导，以学习与齿轮运动相关的科学概念；导师自发地为这些学生提供了763个反思提示。这些提示确实引发了反思：学生87%的情况下会做出言语回应。逐轮话语分析揭示了七种不同类型的提示和11种不同类型的言语回应。高级别的提示与高级别的回应密切相关。一个具有两个维度（时间性和确定性）的对数乘法关联模型呈现了提示类型和回应类型之间的关系；通过该模型，比值比估计了特定的提示类型和回应类型组合之间的关联强度。研究结果从反思可能对学生不断发展的科学概念理解产生的影响方面进行了讨论。