How Does a Bicycle Work? A New Instrument to Assess Mechanical Reasoning in School Aged Children (original) (raw)
Reasoning about structure and function: Children's conceptions of gears
Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 1998
Twenty-three second graders and 20 fifth graders were interviewed about how gears move on a gearboard and work in commonplace machines. Questions focused on transmission of motion; direction, plane, and speed of turning; and mechanical advantage. Several children believed that meshed gears turn in the same direction and at the same speed. Many second graders provided very incomplete explanations of transmission of motion. Most children confused mechanical advantage with speed. Yet as the interview proceeded, several fifth graders generalized conceptions about transmission of motion into a rule about turning direction. They increasingly justified their ideas about gear speed by referring to ratio. Children's reasoning became more general, formal, and mathematical as problem complexity increased, suggesting that mathematical forms of reasoning may develop when they provide a clear advantage over simple causal generalizations.
Forces and Motion: How Young Children Understand Causal Events
Child Development, 2013
How do children evaluate complex causal events? This study investigates preschoolers' representation of force dynamics in causal scenes, asking whether (a) children understand how single and dual forces impact an object's movement and (b) this understanding varies across cause types (Cause, Enable, Prevent). Three-and-a half-to 5.5-year-olds (n = 60) played a board game in which they were asked to predict the endpoint of a ball being acted upon by one or two forces. Children mostly understood the interactions of forces underlying each type of cause; only 5.5-year-olds could integrate two contradictory forces. Children perceive force interactions underlying causal events, but some concepts might not be fully understood until later in childhood. This study provides a new way of thinking about causal relations. Consider the everyday events of an ordinary playground: children throwing Frisbees, blocking soccer balls, and helping each other push their friends on the swing. Psychologists tend to describe these complex scenes with simple causal mechanisms (Michotte, 1963) or chains of simple causes (e.g.
Children's beliefs about instances of mechanical and electrical causation
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 1981
Two moin questions were asked regarding young children's beliefs about causal mediation: What sorts of beliefs about causal mediation are reflected by children's incomplete explanations of causal situations? In particular, do children hold a false belief in action at a distance or do they realize that something must mediate between cause and effect? When presented with a non-visible connection between cause and effect (Experiment I), the children's incomplete (Piagetion Stage 1) explanations either reflected the correct expectation of a mediating connection or else merely reflected identification of the causal agent and no concern one way or another with the issue of causal mediation. This was also the case when the mediating connection was visible and present at the outset (Experiment II). In neither experiment (both of which involved mechanical causation) was there evidence of a false belief in action at a distance. A third experiment involved instances of electrical causation in order to maximize the chances of tapping a false belief. The rationale was that, in their everyday lives, although children do have first-hand experience with the mediating connection in instances of mechanical causation, they do not have such experience with instances of electrical causation. The results from the third experiment were analogous to the results in the other two. It was concluded that, with respect to instances of physical causality, young children do not hold a false belief (in action at a distance) that is later relinquished. Rather, their concerns are, at first, restricted to identifying the causal agent and do not include any beliefs, true or false, about the issue of causal mediation. When they eventually do deal with the question of causal mediation, children hold approximately correct beliefs. In
2009
Reasoning about mechanisms is one of the hallmarks of disciplined inquiry in science and engineering. Despite the central importance of mechanistic reasoning, its origins are not well understood. Numerous curricular efforts involve simple machines and related physical systems, but these do not yet build toward a systematic and longer-term vision for promoting the development of reasoning about mechanisms. The research we describe here was developed in partnership with a team of engineers and science educators who aim to support the early development of mechanistic reasoning through a curriculum that challenges children to design kinetic toys called MechAnimations. Our research aims to characterize the intellectual resources available to children as they engage in design challenges and to describe the process by which these design activities may promote development of mechanistic reasoning. This paper provides an in-depth look at children’s prior understandings of a key aspect of Mec...
Introducing mechanics by tapping core causal knowledge
Physics Education, 2008
This article concerns an outline of an introductory mechanics course. It is based on the argument that various uses of the concept of force (e.g. from Kepler, Newton and everyday life) share an explanatory strategy based on core causal knowledge. The strategy consists of (a) the idea that a force causes a deviation from how an object would move of its own accord (i.e. its force-free motion), and (b) an incentive to search, where the motion deviates from the assumed force-free motion, for recurring configurations with which such deviations can be correlated (interaction theory). Various assumptions can be made concerning both the force-free motion and the interaction theory, thus giving rise to a variety of specific explanations. Kepler's semi-implicit intuition about the force-free motion is rest, Newton's explicit assumption is uniform rectilinear motion, while in everyday explanations a diversity of pragmatic suggestions can be recognized. The idea is that the explanatory strategy, once made explicit by drawing on students' intuitive causal knowledge, can be made to function for students as an advance organizer, in the sense of a general scheme that they recognize but do not yet know how to detail for scientific purposes.
We commonly have a strong sense of causality as events unfold. We often experience one event as causing another. Both perceptual and cognitive processes have been proposed as the explanation for causal experience. However, neither philosophy nor psychology have been able to provide decisive arguments one way or another. Theorists claiming that the origin of causal representation is the perceptual system argue that " certain physical events give an immediate causal impression, and that one can 'see' an object act on another object, produce in it certain changes, and modify it in one way or another " (Michotte, 1946/1963, p.15). On this view there exists a perceptual mechanism that transforms visual sequences of events into a representation of cause. Michotte hypothesized that causal perception was specific to caused motions of objects. More recently Susanna Siegel (2010) argued visual experiences might represent causal relations of a much larger variety. I argue that only the causation of motion is represented by the perceptual system. The questions this essay aims to answer are (i) is there a perceptual mechanism capable of attributing a causal relation, and (ii) if such a mechanism exists what kind of causal experiences are the result of its operations. My discussion of these questions unfolds as follows. Before confronting the questions of this essay I will explicate a few key terms. Then, I will distinguish two senses of causation and two theses concerning the visual representation of causation. The first thesis is the narrow causal thesis , which holds that caused motion of objects is the only mode of causation represented in visual experience. The broad causal thesis is not specific to what kind of causation is represented in visual experience. Following this, I will lay out the proposals for explaining causal experience from Michotte and Siegel's argument for the broad causal thesis. I then turn to evidence that infants representing launching events involves more than representations of spatiotemporal properties as well as evidence suggesting that computations performed by the perceptual system are responsible for the attribution of causation.
Research Note: Understanding children's common-sense reasoning about motion
Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 1992
Previous research into children's ideas about physical phenomena has shown that these ideas are very different from those of the scientist. The area of dynamics has produced a large body of research data, mainly particularly descriptive accounts of children's reasoning, which are not always easy to interpret. There is also a difference of opinion about how these conceptions should be viewed. That is, whether children's ideas in dynamics should be described as systematic mental structures or as nd h c temporary constructions. It is not easy, however, to see how to empirically test the merits of these different positions. This thesis set out to test a particular theoretical hypothesis about the content and nature of cormnonsense reasoning about motion.
Science & Education, 2010
This paper presents an analysis of the different types of reasoning and physical explanation used in science, common thought, and physics teaching. It then reflects on the learning difficulties connected with these various approaches, and suggests some possible didactic strategies. Although causal reasoning occurs very frequently in common thought and daily life, it has long been the subject of debate and criticism among philosophers and scientists. In this paper, I begin by providing a description of some general tendencies of common reasoning that have been identified by didactic research. Thereafter, I briefly discuss the role of causality in science, as well as some different types of explanation employed in the field of physics. I then present some results of a study examining the causal reasoning used by students in solid and fluid mechanics. The differences found between the types of reasoning typical of common thought and those usually proposed during instruction can create learning difficulties and impede student motivation. Many students do not seem satisfied by the mere application of formal laws and functional relations. Instead, they express the need for a causal explanation, a mechanism that allows them to understand how a state of affairs has come about. I discuss few didactic strategies aimed at overcoming these problems, and describe, in general terms, two examples of mechanics teaching sequences which were developed and tested in different contexts. The paper ends with a reflection on the possible role to be played in physics learning by intuitive and imaginative thought, and the use of simple explanatory models based on physical analogies and causal mechanisms.
Spontaneous Reasoning of Secondary School Teachers about the Relativity of Mechanical Magnitudes
1993
This paper presented by the author at the Third International Seminar - Misconceptions and Educational Strategies in Science and Mathematics, held at Cornell University, has as its main theme the misconceptions resulting from the spontaneous thinking of students and teachers of high school physics about the relativity of mechanical magnitudes.<br> It is based on a research work carried out by Villani and Pacca with a questionnaire produced by these two professors and Brazilian researchers that applied them to a sample of Brazilian students graduated in Physics.<br> The author of this communication used this questionnaire with only one more question and applied it to a sample of 53 teachers of Physics with very varied experiences in the teaching of this subject..<br> The conclusions drawn from the research with teachers were identical to those that were withdrawn by the Brazilian researchers with the students graduated in Physics.