Collaborative Research: A Cross-Cultural View of Biological Thought

语言、文化和经验如何影响儿童对自然世界的理解，特别是对生物概念的理解？pi通过跨语言、跨文化和发展研究来解决这些问题。以前的研究主要是基于中产阶级、城市和技术先进人群的孩子。这种狭隘的经验基础限制了我们确定儿童所持有的生物学概念是否具有普遍性，以及儿童的早期概念是如何被他们所沉浸的语言和文化社区塑造的能力。在NSF之前的资助下，pi对来自不同文化和语言社区（如印度尼西亚语、尤卡特克语玛雅语）的幼儿和成人的生物知识和推理进行了全面的调查，这些社区在与自然的直接体验方面也各不相同（城市、农村的欧美人、农村的印第安人）。跨语言发展研究证实，语言会影响“活着”等基本概念的发展。目前的项目将扩大我们的语言基础（波兰语、保加利亚语、土耳其语），以追求语言学对生物概念发展的影响。最近来自研究人员的证据表明，与先前的理论相反，以人为中心的生物学既不是发展的必然阶段，也不是与植物和动物缺乏经验的自动结果。相反，以人类为中心的生物学似乎是一种习得的文化模式。当前提案的目标是加深我们对与自然相关的文化模式的理解，并探索它们在儿童对生物学理解的发展中的作用。研究人员将使用各种测量方法和学习推理任务来研究儿童如何整合和协调与自然相关的不同知识来源和文化模式（例如与父母的对话、书籍、迪士尼电影、探索频道）。这一建议代表了基础科学，但它也与许多国家和实际目标有关。通过加深我们对来自不同文化群体（城市和农村的美国原住民以及美国主流文化）的幼儿将什么生物知识带入美国课堂的理解，我们应该能够改善科学教学。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普遍性，并且在我们观察到变化的地方，了解文化实践如何影响对生物学的理解。对语言作用的研究也可以为减少日常使用的生物学术语（例如：英语和英语）之间的混淆提供策略。“活着”)和学校需要的概念(例如：“生物”)。同样重要的是，这项研究将在增加被研究人口的多样性和研究他们的研究人员方面取得重大进展，加强研究伙伴关系，并促进研究基础设施，作为在科学研究、教育政策和教育实践领域赋予部落机构权力的一种手段。

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.