"Everyday biology" and its interaction with school biology

该项目旨在研究幼儿通过日常生活经验获得的生物学知识的性质及其与学校生物学的相互作用。使用访谈方法的研究表明，长期在家中饲养动物(例如金鱼)的幼儿开始将大多数动物共有的不显著的生物学特性归因于其他与人类不同的动物；4岁和5岁的儿童，甚至3岁的儿童，对于某些现象，他们认识到体内的某些东西并不完全受制于他们的意图。这些结果和其他结果一起表明，学龄前儿童有一种生物学形式，可以被称为“日常生物学”。对小学和幼儿园教师的问卷调查和一些初步观察表明，在动植物饲养的教学中，不仅幼儿园教师，而且小学教师经常给幼儿人格化的解释和/或反馈，有时过于人格化。实验研究表明，给出能激活儿童对人类的知识的暗示，往往会促进他们对生物的理解；然而，成年人给出的一些过于人格化的解释往往会抑制儿童的生物理解。未来需要研究开发更具体、更详细的教学方法，帮助儿童阐述他们的日常生物学。

This project aimed at examining the nature of young children's biological knowledge acquired through everyday life experience, and its interaction with school biology. Studies using interview methods indicated that young children who had raised animals (e.g., goldfish) for an extended period at home came to attribute non- salient biological properties shared by most animals to other animals dissimilar to people; children of ages 4 and 5, and even of 3 for some phenomena, recognized that something inside the body is not fully subject to their intention. These results, along with others, suggest that young children before schooling have a form of biology, which might be called "everyday biology".Questionnaires given to elementary and kindergarten teachers and some pilot observations revealed that in the instruction for raising animals and plants not only kindergarten teachers but also elementary ones often gave young children personifying explanations and/or feedback, sometimes overly personifying. Experimental studies showed that giving hints which would activate children's knowledge about humans tended to facilitate their biological understanding; however, some overly personifying explanations given by adults tended to inhibit children's biological understanding.Future studies are needed to develop more concrete and more detailed instructional methods helping children elaborate their everyday biology.