Emerging Research-Empirical Research--Evolving Minds: Children's Learning of Natural Selection from Picture Books

本研究项目的目标是设计课堂水平的干预措施，以绘本作为教学工具，引导学生通过自然选择对生物适应有一个基本的了解。该提案得到了相关领域专家的支持，以帮助开发“量身定制”的绘本，向伍斯特公立学区32所学校的400名幼儿园到二年级（K-2）学生传达复杂的科学信息。本研究的问题包括：(1)在小学至二年级的课堂上，使用绘本故事书是否可能促进对自然选择适应的科学准确和富有成效的理解；(2)这种课堂干预最有效的组成部分是什么；(3)以人类或非人类动物作为解释对象时，幼儿对复杂生物学概念的学习是否更准确；(4)关于自然选择机制的早期指导是否改变了幼儿在未经指导的情况下通过参考功能来解释自然实体的倾向，目的论偏见是大龄学生科学不准确推理的核心。在nsf支持的试点研究的基础上，这项研究将由四个独立的研究组成，每个研究都建立在前一个研究的经验教训之上。前三项研究将包括前测、干预、即时和延迟后测设计，以探讨K-2年级学生对自然选择逻辑的学习和概括的个体水平变化。研究四将是课堂层面的干预，其结构取决于前三个研究积累的智慧。它将包括与小群儿童一起阅读图画书，然后对他们的学习进行评估。这些顺序研究将由申请人口头管理。

The goal of this research project is to design classroom-level interventions that will guide students toward a basic understanding of biological adaptation through natural selection using picture books as pedagogical tools of instruction. The proposer engages support from experts in related fields to help develop "tailor-made" picture books to convey complex scientific information to 400 kindergarten through second grade (K-2) students in 32 schools in the Worcester Public School District. The questions for the study include: (1) whether it is possible to foster a scientifically accurate and productive understanding of adaptation by natural selection in Grades K-2 classrooms using picture storybooks; (2) what the most effective components of such a classroom intervention are; (3) whether complex biological concepts are more accurately learned by young children when explanations are couched in terms of human or in terms of non-human animals; and (4) whether early instruction about the mechanism of natural selection modifies young children's untutored tendency to explain natural entities by reference to function, a teleological bias is at the heart of older students' scientifically inaccurate reasoning. Building on a NSF-supported pilot study, this research will consist of four individual studies, each building on lessons-learned from the one before. The first three studies will include a pre-test, intervention, immediate, and delayed post-test design to explore individual-level changes in grade K-2 students' learning and generalization about the logic of natural selection. Study four will be a classroom-level intervention whose structure depends on wisdom accumulated from the first three studies. It will involve picture book reading sessions with small groups of children followed by assessments of their learning. These sequential studies will be administered orally by the proposer.