CAREER: Curiosity, exploratory play, and the foundations of scientific inquiry

职业：好奇心、探索性游戏和科学探究的基础

• 批准号: 0744213
• 负责人: Laura Schulz
• 金额: $ 75万
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-06-01 至 2015-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0744213&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Curiosity; exploratory; play; foundations

The proposed project investigates the broad claim that it is through exploratory play that young children learn causal relationships that provide a foundation for early science education. The work has important implications for education research and materials develop because it engages central assumptions underlying inquiry-based instruction and the design of museum exhibits. The investigator suggests that exploratory play is consistent with formal principles of causal learning. She predicts that children (ages 4-9 years) selectively engage in such play a) when observed evidence provides equal support for more than one plausible hypothesis, and b) when observed evidence provides strong support for a hypothesis that is implausible given the child?s naïve theories. The PI suggests that these two conditions of exploration are united by a common learning mechanism (captured by Bayesian inference models). She will conduct 10 studies, including modeling and randomized controlled experiments, looking at children?s interest in exploring ambiguity and at their abilities to design informative interventions. The specific causes investigated fall roughly within the domains of mechanical engineering and intuitive physics, as the children explore the working of gears and switches and the relation of mass to balance, but the work has implications for the understanding of causation in STEM fields more broadly. The proposed research will be conducted in collaboration with the Boston Children?s Museum and the Museum of Science.

拟议的项目调查了一个广泛的主张，即幼儿通过探索性游戏学习因果关系，为早期科学教育奠定了基础。这项工作对教育研究和材料开发具有重要意义，因为它涉及基于探究的教学和博物馆展品设计的核心假设。研究者认为探索性游戏符合因果学习的正式原则。她预测，儿童（4-9 岁）会选择性地参与这样的游戏：a）当观察到的证据为多个看似合理的假设提供同等支持时，b）当观察到的证据为考虑到儿童天真的理论而难以置信的假设提供强有力的支持时。 PI 表明，这两种探索条件通过共同的学习机制（由贝叶斯推理模型捕获）统一起来。她将开展 10 项研究，包括建模和随机对照实验，观察儿童探索模糊性的兴趣以及他们设计信息干预措施的能力。随着孩子们探索齿轮和开关的工作原理以及质量与平衡的关系，研究的具体原因大致属于机械工程和直觉物理学领域，但这项工作对于更广泛地理解 STEM 领域的因果关系具有重要意义。拟议的研究将与波士顿儿童博物馆和科学博物馆合作进行。