**Author details**

54 Current Topics in Children's Learning and Cognition

plants and aspects of butterfly transformation.

provided to them in a top-down fashion.

isolated facts, science learning can be dull and unmotivating.

**4. Coda** 

soil, etc. to explore plant growth. At the end of the period, children's understanding was assessed in semi-structured interviews to infer a child's individual concept map. For example, children were asked to sort and organize a set of pictures, they were encouraged to talk about what they know about plants and butterflies, and they were asked about their understandings of the final class concept map (e.g., 'what do the pictures tell you about plants?"). Results document that a large majority of both 3- and 4-year-olds could make higher-order propositions, and they could recall terms and concepts relevant to parts of

Taken together, these results show that young children can benefit from quite sophisticated adult support in order to generate science-relevant knowledge. That is to say, children's natural curiosity can be harnessed to help them explore their surroundings in scientifically appropriate ways. Adult support can range from merely providing children with a context for explorations to engaging them in guided discussions about their explorations, to helping them document their findings and organize their thoughts. As part of this process, young children are likely to learn the cultural norms of what is considered science, what counts as a worthwhile phenomenon, how it should be explored and evaluated, and what kind of knowledge construal would be acceptable (i.e., what can be ignored and what must be included). Open questions pertain to the relative benefit of allowing children to develop their own representations of what they observe versus working with representations

Science is a rather difficult subject to teach, for several reasons. First, relevant science concepts are often far less salient than superficial aspects of an observation. In fact superficial features lead to mistaken beliefs that resist change. Second, science explorations require a level of systematicity that is difficult for young children to attain. Young children get easily distracted, failing to isolate relevant variables or to note their effect. Third, agreed upon scientific knowledge is incomplete – at least to some extent: it includes necessary simplifications to capture general rules and usable models. As such, there are choices to be made in terms of what to consider a valid science understanding. And finally, given that science understanding depends on the acquisition of a novel nomenclature and seemingly

Nevertheless, young children are equipped to learn about scientific concepts early on, as cognitive-development research shows. Most importantly, they can organize individual experiences into over-arching patterns early on (cf., Thagard, 2000) – a process that forms the basic building block of the abstract reasoning necessary in science learning. Building upon these abilities, a variety of methods and pedagogical tools have shown to support early science learning (e.g., Worth and Grollman, 2003; Chalufour and Worth, 2003, 2004, 2005). Summarizing across the available findings, the following aspects appear to play a crucial role. First, science learning is aided when children engage with scientifically literate adults who understand how to use scientifically valid representations and who anticipate Heidi Kloos, Heather Baker and David Pfeiffer *Department of Psychology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati OH, USA* 

Eleanor Luken and Victoria Carr *Early Childhood Education, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati OH, USA* 

Rhonda Brown *Educational Studies, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati OH, USA* 
