Collaborative Research: A Cross-Cultural View of Biological Thought

语言、文化和经验如何影响儿童对整个自然世界，特别是对生物概念的发展理解？私人投资机构通过跨语言、跨文化和发展研究来解决这些问题。之前的研究主要是基于中产阶级、城市和技术先进人群的儿童。这种狭窄的经验基础限制了我们确定儿童持有的任何生物学概念是否具有普遍性的能力，以及儿童早期概念是如何被他们所处的语言和文化社区塑造的。在国家科学基金会以前的资助下，私人投资机构在一系列文化和语言社区(例如印度尼西亚、尤卡泰克玛雅人)、与自然的直接经验的丰富性方面也不同的社区(城市、农村、欧洲裔美国人、农村印第安人)对幼儿和成年人的生物知识和推理进行了全面调查。跨语言发展研究证实，语言影响基本概念的发展，如“活着”。本项目将扩大我们的语言基础(波兰语、保加利亚语、土耳其语)，以追求语言对生物学概念发展的影响。来自研究人员的最新证据表明，与之前的理论相反，以人类为中心的生物学既不是发展的必然阶段，也不是与动植物贫乏经历的必然结果。相反，以人类为中心的生物学似乎是一种习得的文化模式。目前这项提议的目标是加深我们对自然文化模式的理解，并探索它们在儿童对生物的理解发展中的作用。研究人员将使用各种测量、学习和推理任务来检查儿童如何整合和协调与自然有关的不同知识来源和文化模式(如与父母的对话、书籍、迪士尼电影、探索频道)。这一建议代表了基础科学，但它也与一些国家和实践目标有关。通过加深我们对来自不同文化群体(城市和农村印第安人以及美国多数派文化)的幼儿给他们的美国课堂带来的生物学知识的理解，我们应该能够改进科学教学。我们研究人群的多样性使我们能够确定哪些发展模式具有广泛的共性，并在我们观察到变异的地方，理解文化实践如何塑造对生物学的理解。对语言作用的研究还可以提出一些策略，以减少日常使用的生物类术语(如“活的”)与学校所需的概念(如“活的东西”)之间的混淆。同样重要的是，这项研究将在增加被研究人口和研究他们的研究人员的多样性方面取得重大进展，加强研究伙伴关系，促进研究基础设施，以此作为在科学研究、教育政策和教育实践领域增强部落机构能力的一种手段。

How do language, culture and experience influence children's developing understanding of the natural world in general and of biological concepts in particular? The PIs address these questions through cross-linguistic, cross-cultural and developmental studies. Previous research has been based mainly on children from middle-class, urban, technologically advanced populations. This narrow empirical base limits our ability to determine whether any of the biological concepts held by children are universal, and how children's early concepts are shaped by the linguistic and cultural communities in which they are immersed. With previous NSF funding, the PIs launched a comprehensive investigation of biological knowledge and reasoning in young children and adults from a range of cultural and linguistic communities (e.g. Indonesian, Yukatek Maya), communities that also varied in the richness of their direct experiences with nature (urban, rural European-American, rural Native-American). Cross-linguistic developmental studies established that language affects the development of basic concepts such as "alive." The present project will broaden our base of languages (Polish, Bulgarian, Turkish) to pursue linguistic influences in the development of biological concepts. Recent evidence from the investigators suggests that, in contrast to previous theorizing, a human-centered biology is neither an inevitable stage of development nor an automatic result of impoverished experience with plants and animals. Instead it appears that an anthropocentric biology is a learned cultural model. The goal for the current proposal is to deepen our understanding of cultural models for relating to nature and to explore their role in the development of children's understanding of biology. The investigators will use a variety of measurements and learning and reasoning tasks to examine how children integrate and coordinate different sources of knowledge and cultural models (e.g. discourse with parents, books, Disney movies, Discovery channel) related to nature.This proposal represents basic science, but it also is relevant to a number of national and practical goals. By sharpening our understanding of what biological knowledge young children from various cultural groups (urban and rural Native-American as well as U.S. majority culture) bring to their U.S. classrooms, we should be able to improve science instruction. The diversity of our study populations allows us to determine which patterns of development have broad generality and, where we observe variation, to understand how cultural practices shape understandings of biology. The studies of the role of language may also suggest strategies for reducing the confusion between everyday uses of biological kind terms (e.g. "alive") and concepts needed in school (e.g. "living thing"). No less important, the research will make significant strides to increase the diversity of the populations being studied and the researchers studying them, reinforce research partnerships, and foster research infrastructure as a means of empowering tribal institutions in the domain of scientific research, educational policy and educational practice.