Conclusion

The use of the draw-and-tell technique to probe Taiwanese young children’s conceptions of learning science

Drawings have been used to elicit young children’s views, experiences and

understanding by listening to them as they draw and by studying their narratives and interpretations (Einarsdottir, Dockett, & Perry, 2009). The drawing method, especially

conjoined with interviews, has been successfully used to explore children’s ideas

about abstract conceptions such as technology (Rennie & Jarvis, 1995). The draw-and-tell approach has few limits for young children, and allows them to reveal their ideas or perspectives that remain hidden when other methods are implemented

(Scherz et al., 2006). Moreover, previous studies of early science education have paid little attention to the examination of young children’s conceptions of learning science

in any depth (Tsai, 2004; Tsai et al., 2008; Lee et al., 2008; Lin et al., 2008; Lin et al., 2012).

Therefore, the first research question of the current study is: To what extent is the draw-and-tell technique beneficial to producing Taiwanese young children’s conceptions of learning science? The result shows that 66.8% of all of the young children in the current study could draw and narrate their conceptions of learning

science. This result suggests that the draw-and-tell technique is a potential way of understanding Taiwanese young children’s conceptions of learning science. Both

“learning” and “science” are abstract concepts which are difficult for young children

to describe clearly. It will encourage researchers to adopt this technique to probe young children’s conceptions of learning science as it provides another perspective of

conceptions of learning from those conducted with other qualitative or quantitative methods. It could also be an effective and promising method of probing young

children’s conceptions of learning. Therefore, by using this technique, young

children’s conceptions of learning science could be further investigated in the future.

Taiwanese young children’s conceptions of learning science

The comprehension of young children’s conceptions of learning science will help

educators to scrutinize and improve their existing pedagogical practices and design better learning environments for young children.

Consequently, according to the drawings elicited from Taiwanese young children

and the follow-up narrative phase, their conceptions of learning science and the relationships among the young children’s conceptions of learning science were

explored.

In this study, the five top conceptions of learning science were: observation, listening to the teacher, doing, looking and memorizing.

Observation constituted the highest percentage (55.4%) of the children’s conceptions of learning science. Observation has been recognized as an important initial skill and is essential in early years and primary science (Harlen &Winter, 2004;

Johnston, 2005). All scientific inquiry begins with the skill of observation. It is therefore not surprising that these children demonstrated their conception of learning science as observation. In science education, observation is the foundation of all of the other skills; without properly observing phenomena, a scientist cannot adequately

communicate, classify, measure, infer or predict his/her findings. Observation is more

than simply noticing something, however; it involves perception (becoming aware of something by means of the senses) and the recognition of the subject’s importance or

significance.

In the current study, Taiwanese young children observed creatures, plants,

natural phenomena and so on. Moreover, the observation can be regarded as the initial scientific learning activity which leads to other activities. For example, in the drawing and narration of child# B16, she made observation records after her observation. In the drawing and narration of child# I15, he gained knowledge about how to fly a kite after his scientific observation. These examples give an account of scientific

observation as being vital to early science education, and it may contribute to follow-up and advanced scientific learning activities.

What also deserves to be mentioned is that looking also constituted 27.8% of the young children’s conceptions of learning science. It is worth considering the

difference between observation and looking. Looking is passively looking at

phenomena, while observing is actively looking at phenomena and paying attention to the details (Matthews, 1993). In the study, the children could clearly discriminate these two conceptions of learning science. For example, consider the comment of child# O11, “We just went to the rice field to look at the rice. We didn’t do anything,

just looked. Learning science is to look.” However, observation for young children is

a learning process; they have to focus on the details and change in objects in their

science learning. Child# B21 drew some people visiting the garden and pool on campus. He said, “In science learning, the teacher took us to the garden and pool to look at the flowers and fish.” Yet, the teacher of child# B21 explained that she let the children observe the garden and pool frequently. Apparently, young children’s conceptions of learning science are not necessarily equal to their teacher’s

conceptions of teaching science.

Listening to the teacher is the second highest frequency of Taiwanese young children’s conceptions of learning science. Listening to the teacher is a form of formal

instruction; that is, it is an academic talk to a class of students to communicate a body of knowledge and to guide them through an area of study. It is still the most common means of learning in traditional classrooms and is particularly relied on to deal with teaching large classes. According to curriculum theory, listening to the teacher (i.e.,

lecturing) is especially useful for conveying knowledge, and is the basic level of Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956). Also,

listening to the teacher is probably the oldest learning method and still the method most widely used throughout the world (Vartuli & Rohs, 2009), even in early childhood settings. In this study, 35.6% of the children’s conceptions of learning

science involved listening to the teacher. Although some children demonstrated many conceptions of learning science in their drawings, listening to the teacher is the crucial conception. For example, the child# B16 demonstrated doing, reading and thinking in her drawing, but the conception of listening to the teacher is still emphasized. The Preschool Curriculum Outline (2012) puts less emphasis on listening to the teacher

and more on exploration, questioning, and hand-on activities. The factors contributing to young children’s conceptions of learning science as listening to the teacher deserve

consideration.

The scientific method is a way to ask and answer scientific questions by making observations and doing experiments (Hodson, 1996). “Doing” also constituted a high percentage (30.6%) of the children’s drawings of their conceptions of learning

science. Any learning method that requires the learner to be active, rather than

passive, accords with the belief that children learn best by direct experience (Hodson, 1988). Most practicing science teachers think that doing (experiment) has a key role to play in teaching and is popular with many children (Solomon, 1980). In the cognition learning domain of the Preschool Curriculum Outline (2012), the three cognitive learning abilities include information gathering, information arrangement, and problem solving. These abilities need to be further cultivated by hands-on experience. The Taiwanese young children’s abundant doing of activities in early

science learning is revealed in this study. Cultivation, a capillary action experiment, a

static electricity experiment, and a floating and sinking experiment were all presented in the children’s drawings. The question of the accuracy of the experiments is most

worthy of attention. For example, child# D1 drew a volcanic eruption experiment.

Through the researcher’s consultation with the teacher, the experiment was just a simulation of a volcanic eruption. Therefore, the view that the teacher must possess sufficient scientific knowledge is advocated.

Interestingly, the activity of memorizing does not constitute a large proportion of

the data. This is very different from the conceptions of learning science among high school students in Taiwan (Tsai, 2004). For older students’ science learning,

memorizing many formulas, definitions, and laws is necessary. Memorizing is classified as rote learning, which is a memorization technique based on repetition.

Only 11% of the young children in this study revealed conceptions of learning science as memorizing. Most children expressed that they were asked to remember the names of creatures and planets. One explanation of this is that in Taiwan, there are no national standard tests for early childhood programs and there are multiple curricula, so the children can experience more constructive science lessons. Furthermore, early science education ideally focuses on scientific inquiry.

Although some learning activities (such as reading, discussing, recording,

measuring, comparing, predicting, and thinking) are relatively low in frequency in the current study, they were still depicted by some of the children. This may suggest that early science instruction and learning has the potential to involve more complicated activities.

Further, according to Marton et al., the conceptions of learning form a hierarchy.

Follow-up studies (e.g., Marton, et al., 1993; Tsai, 2004) have used various terminologies to describe the taxonomy of hierarchical relations among these

conceptions (e.g., reproductive vs. transitive; lower-level vs. higher-level; fragmented vs. cohesive). The current study also defined the Taiwanese young children’s

conceptions of learning science’s hierarchical structure (see Table 4.7). Among these children’s conceptions of learning science, observation, listening to the teacher, doing,

looking and memorizing had the highest percentages. However, these all belong to

relatively lower/reproductive conceptions of learning science. Therefore, how to cultivate young children’s higher/constructive conceptions of learning science could

be considered.

In terms of the symbols of learning, it can be found that most of the children in this study perceived that “objects” are necessary when they are learning science.

Therefore, for these young children, learning science may be a process of gaining

science knowledge from the objects. From the participants’ drawings, the objects are

real things such as animals, plants, scales, and eggs. Real objects are in widespread use in early science education in Taiwan. In the broadest sense, a learning object is anything that has an educational purpose (Wiley, 2000). Learning objects can be of

two kinds: resources and scaffolding (Hannifin & Hill, 2002). From the Taiwanese young children’s drawings and narrations, the objects which they depicted belong to

resource objects that give them easy access to information in a just-in-time fashion, and this can be factual or skills based.

In addition, this study attempted to predict the young children’s learning activities by using the general learning symbols and scientific learning symbols they drew as predictors. The dependent variables were listening to the teacher,

memorizing, looking, reading, discussing, doing, observing, recording, measuring,

comparing, predicting, and thinking. The kindergarten teachers, therefore, can provide various learning materials and approaches to enhance young children’s scientific learning activities. Young children’s general learning symbols (technology tools,

books and pictures) played a very powerful role in the learning activities of listening to the teacher, memorizing, looking, doing, observing and thinking. In other words, those children provided with technology tools, books and pictures as learning materials in their science education would be more likely to believe that learning

science means listening to the teacher, memorizing, looking, doing, observing, and thinking. If the young children drew scientific learning symbols (magnifying glass, objects, specimens, and inspection boxes) in their conceptions of learning science, they tended to express learning science as listening to the teacher, looking, and observing. However, the results did not reveal though what kind of learning symbols advanced scientific activities (measurement, comparison, prediction and thinking) can be cultivated. The data may explain that the more learning symbols that are presented, the more learning activities are involved. Finally, the lower level conceptions of learning science may provide the foundation of higher level conceptions of learning science.

Three different conceptions of learning science among Taiwanese young children

Due to the large number of children who participated in this study, an attempt was made to look for patterns in their conceptions of learning science.

By using two-phase cluster analysis, there were three different patterns in the conceptions of learning science defined by these children: Traditional (N=126), Operational (N=227), and Mixed (N=46). The children in the traditional conceptions of learning science cluster hold conceptions of learning science as listening to the teacher, memorizing, looking, reading and discussing, which all belong to general learning activities (GLA) and involve the use of general learning symbols (GLS) such

as technology tools, books and pictures. The children in the operational learning science cluster hold the conceptions of learning science as doing, observing, and recording, which are general scientific activities and their learning symbols are

scientific learning symbols (e.g., magnifying glass, objects, specimens, and inspection boxes). The children in the mixed cluster presented the highest frequency of

conceptions of learning science as measurement, comparison, prediction, and thinking

(i.e., advanced scientific activities). Their learning symbols are an average of both general learning symbols and scientific learning symbols. According to the study’s

hierarchical structure (Table 4.7), the children in the mixed cluster presented the highest/constructive conceptions of learning science compared with the other two clusters. These young children expressed the highest frequency of advanced scientific activities compared with the other groups and they used various approaches to

learning science.