Build on children's anthropomorphic explanations as bridges into scientific concepts instead of correcting them¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

Rather than the two common constructivist responses of ignoring animistic ideas or teaching as if they were true, this strategy takes a child's anthropomorphic explanation and uses it as a direct link towards orthodox science content. In the floating and sinking example, Hayley's idea of water 'not liking things to be in it' is developed into notions of networks, food chains, interdependence and pollution, while explanations about feeling safer are related to size and density and then to forces in water. The authors argue that developing such explanatory frameworks with children is the next step towards a feminist view of science.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Teachers must elicit and take seriously students' own anthropomorphic accounts, hearing the 'wrong' approaches as valuable rather than sarcastically contradicting them.

Constraints¶

• Some explanations are harder to bridge than others: the authors note Paul's and Melanie's security-based accounts are more difficult than Hayley's.

Target Learners¶

• primary and secondary school science students

Target Learning Goals¶

• progressing from students' own animistic or anthropomorphic ideas towards orthodox scientific explanations of phenomena such as floating and sinking, breathing and combustion

Affordances¶

• Feminist Interconnected Science Framework

Related Strategies¶

• Refutation Texts

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Watts, Mike; Bentley, Di. (1991). An Instructional 'Mali-Trap': Anthropomorphic and Animistic Thought in Constructivist Science Education. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED336269