1.- Which are children´s aged 5-6 ideas about flotation/immersion phenomena after a designed instructional process?

2.- Are children aged 5-6 able to construct a precursor model based on a density approach?

 

1.- To identify children’s aged 5-6 conceptual evolution in flotation/immersion phenomena.

2.- To identify children’s aged 5-6 precursor models construction.

The design used in this exploratory research was a case study (Merrian, 1998) in a public kindergarten classroom in Barcelona, Spain, using a qualitative approach. The study was conducted in a public preschool with 20 children aged 5-6 years who were assigned to five groups which purpose was to instigate ideas exchange (Rafal, 1996). The research was constructed en three parts: a) pre-interview, b) instructional process, and c) post-interview. Interviews about events (Osborne, 1980; Osborne and Freyberg, 1991) were used both in the pre-interview and in the post-interview. The purpose in the interview was to determine the children’s existing knowledge and experience about floating and sinking. The instructional process was an attempt to support and develop the children’s conceptual understanding of floating and sinking. The teaching approach was collaborative (Boulter, 2000), using a guided discovery learning (Ausubel and Robinson, 1969) and following an orientation, experimental session and elaboration progression in the instructional process (Driver and Oldham, 1986; Brown and Palincsar, 1989, in Havu-Nuutinen, 2005). The post-interview was an attempt to identify changes in children’s reasoning and scientific precursor model construction. Individuals pre-interviews, instructional sessions, and individual post-interviews were audio and video recorded and the material was later analyzed. The qualitative analysis of the results has two aspects. On the one hand, children’s reasoning was formed and classified in categories. On the other hand, it was attempted to keep up with changes in children’s answers between the introductive and the final period of the instruction.

 

The results of this research appears to support the idea that children aged 5-6 can build a precursor model of flotation and immersion of objects based on an intuitive concept of density. There were 7 children (41.2 % taking into account that 3 children already in the initial phase considered material a factor related with flotation) that formed such precursor model during the experimental process, 1 of them has given contradictory answers and in the group (9 subjects), where children initially gave answers related to the factor weight, 6 of them shifted to the precursor model. We also point out that some children used a representation based on approaches of the factors of weight and volume. In the initial phase, were 9 children predicted that flotation depended on these factors, 3 of them at the final period continued using this approach. Four children that initially gave contradictory answers or no answers shifted to weight approach. There were two particular cases in which 1 children did not answer either the initial and the final period and another one that shifted from the material approach to no answer (regression).