Collaborative Research: A Cross-Cultural View of Biological Thought

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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.