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How Children
Learn
But there is a strong hunch that the early learning, or
lack of it, is crucial; and where the early [earning has
been missed there is an equally strong hunch that
what was missed early cannot tee faked or bypassed.
- David Hawkins, DaedaZus, 1983
For more than 50 years, cognitive
scientists have been observing how children approach and solve
problems. Their work has resulted in an impressive belly of re-
search about the learning process. Building on and modifying the
foundation laid by Jean Piaget in the 1920s through the 1960s,~
cognitive scientists have been able to draw some general conclu-
sions about what is needed for effective learning to take place.
Cognitive science is a complex field. It is not our intention to
explore all aspects of the field or to give a complete history of it.
Our goal is to show how the findings of cognitive scientists support
inquiry-centered science (`lucation at the elementary level. We
will focus on two principles that have grown out of cognitive sci
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ence and have important implications for effective science teach-
ing and learning.
1. As part of the learning process, children develop theories
about the world and how it works. We now know that children con
struct understanding and develop theories about the world on the
basis of their experience. Lauren Resnick describes the process as
follows: "Learners try to link new information to what they already
know in order to interpret the new material in terms of established
schemata."2 The implication of this for educators is that it is impor-
tant to begin building children's experiential base in the primary
grades by providing research-basecI, inquiry-centered experiences.
2. The development of the human brain follows a predictable
path. The developing biological structures in the brain determine
the complexity of thinking possible at a given age. Educators must
be aware of stages of growth and be prepared to teach what is de-
velopmentally appropriate for children in each grade throughout
elementary school.
Incorporating these two basic concepts of cognitive science
into an elementary science program can lead to the development
of more effective learning experiences. In the following sections,
we will explore some of the implications of these concepts.
The Role of Inquiry-Centered Experiences
in Elementary Science
Educators have long clebatecI the relationship between hands-on
learning and book learning in the classroom. In the 1960s, some
clisciples of cognitive psychologist Jean Piaget were advocates of
pure "(liscovery" learning; taken to the extreme, an advocate of
this school of thought might suggest that the most effective way for
children to learn about buoyancy would be to give them a basin of
water and a variety of floating and sinking objects and have them
learn what they can from these materials. Left to their own crevices,
some children may discover that some of the objects float while
others sink. The teacher would then be requested to help the-chil-
dren make sense of their findings.
Because experience has shown that most children need some
guidance in order to learn, by the 1970s, many educators believed
that a more realistic way to organize the classroom is through a
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How Children
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combination of instruction and hands-on experiences.3 These ed-
ucators acknowledged that hands-on experiences generate excite-
ment and enthusiasm for children and provide them with valuable
learning experiences. At the same time, the educators had come
to see that it is impossible to learn everything this way; some
things, such as the names of the planets and their position in the
solar system or the concept of life cycles, need to be introcluced by
the teacher. The challenge for teachers becomes deciding how to
integrate didactic instruction and inquiry-centered experiences.
In the past, many teachers have tendec! to rely on books and
pictures to teach science concepts. When possible, some have used
hands-on experiences to reinforce that learning. The problem
with this approach is that students may have no real-life experi-
ences that relate to this information. Children learn best when
they can link new information to something they aIreacly know.
Therefore, it is often most effective to introduce a new concept by
providing children with inquiry-centered experiences. By doing
so, educators provide students with a firmer foundation on which
to attach the information they will receive later on from other
sources. Lawrence Lowery summarizes these ideas: "Books are im-
portant. We can learn from them. But books can only do this if our
experiential foundation is well prepared. To learn geometry, we
must have experience handling geometric forms and comparing
them for similarities and clifferences. To learn about electricity, we
must explore relationships among batteries, wires, and bulbs."4
Furthermore, inquiry-centerec3 experiences generate one of
the most essential ingredients of learning curiosity. lane Healy
writes, "As well-intentioned parents and teachers, we all sometimes
end up taking charge of learning by trying to 'stuff Ethe child]
rather than arranging things so that the youngster's curiosity im-
pels the process. Children need stimulation and intellectual chal-
lenges, but they must be actively involved in their learning, not re-
sponding passively."5
Lowery believes that curiosity serves an even larger function.
He describes it as a "trigger" that helps build crucial connections
in the brain. These connections enable children to synthesize spe-
cific pieces of information, such as observations of color, form,
and texture of an object, into the larger concept of one object with
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all these attributes. According to Lowery, the ability to synthesize
is the essence of intelligence, and intelligence is the product of the
quality and quantity of connections in the brain. He believes that
educators would do well to capitalize on curiosity in the classroom
because it sparks the formation of these connections.
The Implications of Cognitive Research
Chilclren have a strong, innate desire to make sense of the worId-
anci for good reason. With an array of sensory information flood-
ing into the brain, coupled with growing motor skills and cognitive
abilities, it is imperative for even the very young child to organize
the ciata.
The way children begin to structure information in their
minds depends on a variety of factors, including their individual ex-
periences, their temperament and personality, and their culture. As
these factors come together, children develop unique and enduring
theories about the world and how it works. For example, a
preschooler may observe that many living things, such as people,
dogs, cats, and birds, have the ability to move on their own. On this
basis, he or she may assume that one characteristic of living things is
the ability to move on their own. This notion, while partially correct,
discounts plants-a whole other world of living things. Yet to young
children, this theory is satisfying, because it organizes a portion of
their experience in a way that makes some sense.
Researchers have explained this "theory-making" ability in
children in different ways. Howard Gardner has called such ideas
part of the "unschooled mind."6 Resnick uses the term "naive the-
ories" and maintains that children use such theories to explain
real-world events before they have had any formal instruction.7
Gardner and Resnick agree that even after starting school, chil-
ciren continue to hold on tightly to their early ideas and theories.
For example, consider Deb O'Brien's fourth-grade class in
Massachusetts.8 In developing a unit on heat for her class, O'Brien
began by asking students for their ideas about heat. To her sur-
prise, she discovered that after nine long winters during which
they had been told repeatedly to put on their sweaters when they
got cold, the students were convinced that the sweaters themselves
produced heat. This was their "naive theory." O'Brien decided to
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How Children
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give the students a chance to find out for themselves whether
sweaters actually generate heat. She challenged her students to de-
sign an experiment to demonstrate "sweater heat." The students
put thermometers in their sweaters to measure their temperature.
Their hypothesis was that the temperature would rise, indicating
that the sweaters were indeed! "warm."
O'Brien assumed that after observing a stable sweater tem-
perature, the students wouIc! realize their misunderstanding, and
the class would move on. But she was mistaken. Although the tem-
perature of the sweaters stayed consistently at 68 degrees Fahren-
heit, the students did not accept this evidence immediately. One
student, Katie, wrote in her journal: "Hot anti cold are sometimes
strange. Maybe Ethe thermometer] clidn't work because it was
used to room temperature."
The students held to their beliefs through several trials. It was
only after they had done everything they could think of from
keeping the thermometers in the sweaters for long periods of
time, to moving the sweaters to another location, to wrapping the
sweaters in sleeping bags that some children were willing to con-
sicler other icleas about heat. In fact, Katie was one of the first to
recognize that heat does not come from her sweater but from the
sun and her own body.
This example is important because it illustrates how tightly
children hoIcl on to their theories and how difficult it is for them
to relinquish them, even in the face of conflicting evidence.
Nonetheless, O'Brien was able to help some children replace one
set of ideas with more accurate information. She clid so by follow-
ing a clearly cleaned process. First, she allowed time for the chil-
ctren to express their naive theories by discussing what they
thought about heat at the beginning of the unit. Second, she used
that information to design the major part of the unit having the
students devise experiments to test their theories. Third, she let
the students use their own firsthand experiences as a starting point
for reconsidering their old ideas and constructing new knowledge.
Fourth, over the long term, she encouraged the students to apply
that information to new situations. For example, next winter, when
the children put on their sweaters, they will know that the heat
they fee] comes not from the sweaters but from their own bodies.
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Many educators en c! cognitive scientists believe that this four-
step process is at the heart of learning. The process is based on a
theory of learning called constructivism. Constructivism promotes
an important goal of science education in-depth unclerstanding
of a subject, often called conceptual understanding. As Susan
Sprague explains, "The constructivist model of learning contends
that each student must build his or her understancling. In such a
process, understanding can never be completed. Each student
must work through his or her path toward (leeper and deeper un-
derstanding and skilis."9
The process used by O'Brien has been refined and developed
into a learning Cycle that can be incorporated into the science cur-
riculum. The learning cycle typically includes four phases.
I. Focus: Students describe and clarify their ideas about a
topic. This is often done through a class discussion, where students
share what they know about the topic en cl what they would like to
learn more about. For the teacher, this is a good time to develop
an understanding of students' current knowledge and possible
misconceptions and to consider how to incorporate this informa-
tion into the planned lessons. This is also a time to spark excite-
ment and curiosity and to encourage chilclren to consider pursu-
ing their own questions.
2. Explore: Students engage in hands-on, in-depth explo-
rations of science phenomena. During this phase, it is important
for students to have adequate time to complete their work and to
perform repeated trials if necessary. Students often work in small
groups during this phase. They also have the opportunity to dis-
cuss ideas with their classmates, which is a valuable part of the
learning process.
3. Reflect: Students organize their ciata, share their icleas,
and analyze and defend their results. During this phase, students
are asked to communicate their icleas, which often helps them
consolidate their learning. For teachers, this is a time to guide stu-
clents as they work to synthesize their thinking en cl interpret their
results.
4. Apply: Students are offered opportunities to use what they
have learned in new contexts en cl in real-life situations.
As teachers begin implementing the learning cycle in their
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How Children
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In phased of the [earning cycle, students engagein hands-on, in-d~th
explorations. Here, second-grad~rs work together to investigate soil.
classrooms, they may notice that their students seem uncomfort-
able or reluctant to acknowledge that their naive theories were
wrong. These reactions are the result of the internal conflict many
students feel as they struggle to give up one set of theories for an-
other. For many students, confronting their previous misconcep-
tions and mollifying them represents a difficult intellectual chal-
lenge.~° Therefore, it is important that teachers be aware of their
students' struggle and be tolerant of this process and the frustra
. . .
ton it may produce.
Ensuring That the Curriculum Is
Developmentally Appropriate
While the learning cycle provides a framework for a pedagogical
approach, educators must still decide what content to include in
the science program. To do so, they must understand children's
intellectual development. Piaget's work with children resulted in a
theory about intellectual growth that is based on the premise that
all children pass through the same stages, in approximately the
same order, as they develop. Although many researchers have
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questioned some of Piaget's ideas and postulated that he underes-
timated children's cognitive abilities, his theories still provide basic
guidelines for educators about the kind of information children
can understand as they move through elementary school.
The essence of the model described below, developed by
Lowery and based on Piaget's work, is that we can maximize
learning by presenting science concepts to children in a way that
will be meaningful at each developmental level or stage. The
model is based on the human need to organize the information
received from the senses in logical, coherent systems. For young
children, these systems may be as simple as sorting objects by
color or shape. The ability to sort and recognize patterns is par-
ticularly important, because children must master these skills be-
fore they can learn to read.
Children learn at different rates, however, and not all chil
dren achieve these milestones at the same time. In general, every
class in a typical elementary school spans at least a full grade of
~ V ^~^ ~ ~] t_A~ ~ _ ~ ~
cognitive developmental levels. The basic stages of cognitive
growth, however, may be summarized as follows:
· Through the primary grades, children typically group objects
on the basis of one attribute, such as color. When discussing
plants, primary school students will be able to sort them by
color or size, but they probably cannot perform both steps at
the same time. In fact, it is a major cognitive leap when chil-
dren, at about fourth grade, are able to organize objects and
ideas on the basis of more than one characteristic at the same
time. The significance of this information for educators is
that young children are best at learning singular and linear
ideas and cannot be expected to deal with more than one
variable of a scientific investigation at a time. For example,
when observing weather, primary school students can study
variables such as temperature, wind, and precipitation sepa-
rately; it is not appropriate to expect them to understand the
relationships among these variables. By the upper elemen-
tary grades, however, students will be able to consider such
phenomena as how wind influences the perceived tempera-
ture (the "wind-chill" factor) .
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Toward the end of elementary school, students start to make in-
ferences. To some researchers, this marks the beginning of deduc-
tive reasoning. At this stage, students also realize that different
plants or different animals can be classified into subordinate cate-
gories. For example, they understand that alD crocodiles are reptiles
but not all reptiles are crocodiles. At this stage of development, stu-
dents are ready to design controlled experiments and to discover
relationships among variables. When investigating the frequency
of pendulum swings (number of swings in a minute) during a
module on time, for example, sixth grade students can experiment
by changing variables, such as the length of the string or the mass
of the pendulum bob, and then determining whether one or both
of these variables affect the frequency of the penclulum swings.
From this point on, students' thinking processes continue to be-
come more and more complex. At the onset of adolescence, stu-
dents not only can classic objects by multiple attributes, they can
also experiment with different organizational strategies. For ex-
ample, they can decide how they went to organize a collection of
plants. They may choose to organize by color, size, shape, height,
or leaf shape. They become more adept at manipulating these
characteristics, which means that their scientific experiments
can become increasingly more sophisticated. By age 16, students
can understand highly complex organizational schemes, such as
the periodic chart of elements and the structure of DNA.
If these developmental steps are not reflected in science in-
structional materials, there will be a mismatch between what chil-
dren are capable of doing and what they are being asked to do. For
example, it is inappropriate to expect a nine-year-old to understand
the abstract concept of acceleration, yet some fourth-grade science
programs include this concept. When this kind of mismatch hat}
pens over and over again, children do not learn as much as they
could about science. Equally important, they do not enjoy science.
For some children, this leads to feelings of failure and the devel-
opment of negative attitudes toward science. If we can modify the
curriculum to accommodate different stages of cognitive growth,
we will take a big step toward solving such problems.
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Inquiry-centered science provides an experiential base that children
can relate to information they are acquiring through other sources.
Because an experiential base is crucial for learning, it is appropriate
to place hands-on learning first, before other kinds of learning take
place.
Children begin forming theories about the world long before they
have accurate factual information, and they hold on tightly to these
early ideas and theories. For this reason, educators need to be
aware that it can take children a long time and many different en-
counters with a new concept to achieve conceptual understanding.
To facilitate conceptual understanding on the part of students, the
teacher needs to assume a new role in the classroom. He or she
needs to create meaningful learning experiences that enable chil-
dren to construct their understanding and deepen their knowledge
of a subject.
The way to maximize learning at each stage of growth is to present
science concepts that are appropriate to the child's developmental
level.
The learning cycle Focus, Explore, Reflect, Apply has been ap-
plied in thousands of science classrooms. It is an effective way to
implement the findings of cognitive scientists.
For Further Reading
Brooks, J. G., and M. G. Brooks. 1993. In Search of Understanding: The Case for Con-
structivist Classrooms. Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Cur-
riculum Development.
Bybee, R. W., and l. D. McInerney, eds. 1995. Redesigning the Science Curriculum.
Colorado Springs: BSCS.
Carey, S. 1985. Conceptual Change in Childhood. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Champagne, A. B., and L. E. Hornig. 1987. "Practical Applications of Theories
About Learning." In This Year in School Science 1987: The Report of the National
Forum for School Science, A. B. Champagne and L. E. Hornig, eds. Washing-
ton, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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How Children
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Duckworth, E. 1987. "The Having of Wonderful Ideas" and Other Essays on Teaching
and Learning. New York: Teachers College Press.
Gardner, H. 1991. The Unschooled Mind. New York: BasicBooks.
Hawkins, D. 1983. "Nature Closely Observed." Daedalus, Journal of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences Spring: 65-89.
Healy, l. M. 1990. Endangered Minds: Why Our Children Don't Think. New York:
Simon & Schuster.
Langford, P. 1989. Children's Thinking and Learning in the Elementary School. Lan-
caster, Penn.: Technomic Publishing Company.
McGilly, K, ed. 1994. Classroom Lessons: Integrating Cognitive Theory and Classroom
Practice. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
National Research Council. 1996. National Science Education Standards. Washing-
ton, D.C.: National Academy Press.
31
Representative terms from entire chapter:
learning cycle
