**1. Introduction**

44 Current Topics in Children's Learning and Cognition

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Yan, Z., & Fischer, K. W. (2007). Pattern emergence and pattern transition in microdevelopmental variation: Evidence of complex dynamics of developmental Teacher: "Now, kids, this is a book about dinosaurs. Are dinosaurs alive today?"

Preschooler 1: "Yeah, at the zoo."

Preschooler 2: "I saw one on TV."

Teacher: "The ones at the zoo are just pretend dinosaurs, aren't they? (Children nod). Does anyone know what the word 'extinct' means?"

Preschooler 3: "I farted ..."

Teacher: "Say 'Excuse me.'"

Preschooler 3 continues: "... in my house."

Teacher: "Let's keep thinking about dinosaurs...."

30 minutes later, Teacher: "Okay, listen up. I want you to think about what you've learned today. Can anyone tell me something they learned about dinosaurs?"

Several Preschoolers: "They're mean."

Teacher: "They're mean? Okay. Does anyone remember what the word 'extinct' means?"

Preschooler 4: "Farted."

(Pfeiffer, 2012)

After Piaget's seminal claims on children's slow emergence of adult-like thought, research in cognitive development has skyrocketed to reveal ever-so-amazing competencies in younger and younger children. These competencies pertain to understanding cause-effect relations, physical truisms, or mathematical operations, to name just a few (e.g., see Bremner & Fogel,

2004, for a summary). Many of these findings have had the effect of changing how children are taught, for example by pushing more complex curricula early on, building upon children's already existing understanding, and supporting children's abstract reasoning skills (e.g., Brenneman, Stevenson-Boyd & Frede, 2009; Eshach & Fried, 2005). In the current chapter we review the research findings of these efforts, focusing explicitly on early science learning.

Preschoolers Learning Science: Myth or Reality? 47

about young children's learning. For example, we describe research on how to support young children's reasoning about abstract concepts, how to replace their mistaken beliefs with more appropriate ones, how to engage them in scientific discourse and explorations, and how to scaffold their attempt to organize isolated pieces of knowledge into coherent

A central part of science is a shared understanding of concepts and facts, for example from the domain of physical sciences, life sciences, or earth and space sciences. Research in cognitive development has documented that even young children know something about these science domains. For example, young children know that the behavior of objects is affected by their physical properties (cf., Kotovsky & Baillargeon, 1998; Schilling & Clifton, 1998); they know that the identity of living things is determined internally (Simons & Keil, 1995; Springer, 1995); and they understand the effect of gravity (e.g., Vosniadou, 1994). Of course, sometimes their beliefs are mistaken; they hold misconceptions. For example, children believe that heavy stuff sinks fast (e.g., Kloos & Somerville, 2001; Penner & Klahr, 1996), that the sun is alive, but not plants (Venville, 2004), or that the earth is disc-shaped (e.g., Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992). To what extent can early science instruction build upon

children's existing knowledge to convey new facts and change mistaken beliefs?

*Conveying Something New.* Science facts differ in the degree to which they rely on concrete versus abstract pieces of information. That is to say, science facts vary in whether relevant pieces of information are readily perceivable – or whether they need to be extracted from irrelevant information. That a spider has eight legs requires a relatively low level of abstraction, because the fact's relevant pieces of information are readily accessible in a single event. By contrast, the idea that caterpillars turn into butterflies is more abstract: caterpillars and butterflies need to be conceptually connected, while differences between the two need to be ignored (e.g., shape, behavior). Similarly, the idea that water can turn into ice is less abstract than the idea that materials consist of particles that are invisible to the naked eye. The latter requires the learner to ignore salient features of an object (e.g., the shape or size of a material), and instead note underlying patterns of how materials

Can young children learn low-abstraction science facts? This question is relatively trivial, as one might guess from every-day experiences with children (e.g., Cumming, 2003). For example, preschoolers can learn with little effort the names of new species, the names of the planets, and even the terms associated with material properties and chemical change (e.g., Fleer & Hardy, 1993). However, educators sometimes worry that children's learning of facts is no more than passive rote memorization, far from reflecting 'truly understanding' the facts. At the crux of this concern is that young children might not be able to go beyond mere facts to interconnect them under a common concept. Even though there is evidence of spontaneous abstractions in young children (e.g., Hickling & Gelman 1995; Hickling &

networks of interrelated facts.

interact and change.

**2. Can preschoolers learn about scientific facts?** 

The area of science learning, while only a small part within the field of children's learning, has several features that warrant interest for the cognitive-development community. First science concepts are abstract, transcending a concrete context that commonly embeds everyday concepts. As such, science learning relates to the emergence of abstract thought, knowledge transfer and symbol manipulation. Second, scientific concept formation is a specific case of everyday concept formation, thus shedding light on the dynamics of collapsing large amounts of information into systematic beliefs (cf., Havu-Nuutinen, 2005). Third, a focus on early learning is likely to uncover the spontaneous working of the mind, processes yet unaffected by formal instruction or by standardized assessment. An understanding of preschoolers' science learning therefore transcends the field of early childhood education and sheds light on the spontaneous development of abstract thought in young children.

Note first that early science learning is a rather unorganized terrain. Unlike the areas of reading or math, this area still grapples with questions of what constitutes success in science learning, how learning should progress, and how to assess its milestones. There are no generally agreed-upon 'letters' that form the alphabet of science, and there are no central 'operations' in science that constitute the base upon which to build. Indeed, research studies differ greatly in how 'science' is defined in the first place, for example whether science concepts need to be abstract, relevant to every-day experience, or interconnected with other concepts. Similarly, assessment tools differ greatly in whether they measure the presence of a particular concept, the way it is applied, or its semantic network. As a result, there are no generally accepted instructional tools (cf., Kirchner, Sweller & Clark, 2006), and there are no generally accepted assessments that could capture milestones of science learning across curricula (for reviews see Brenneman, 2011; Scott-Little, Lesko, Martella, & Milburn, 2007). The current chapter is a first step towards filling this gap.

For our purposes, science is defined to incorporate two aspects: scientific facts and concepts, and the processes by which science knowledge is generated. These two aspects – knowledge of science concepts and knowledge of how the science concepts were derived – are of course closely linked (cf. Schauble, 1990). We nevertheless treat them as separate for the purpose of organizing the research findings on early science learning. Note also that this review is by no means exhaustive. The literature on young children's science learning has exploded in the last decade, being published in numerous educational and cognitive-development journals, as well as in journals devoted to this topic entirely (e.g., *Science and Children; Research in Science Education*). Here we present a cross-section of pertinent research, as a means of finding a common thread and setting the stage for a more integrated discussion about young children's learning. For example, we describe research on how to support young children's reasoning about abstract concepts, how to replace their mistaken beliefs with more appropriate ones, how to engage them in scientific discourse and explorations, and how to scaffold their attempt to organize isolated pieces of knowledge into coherent networks of interrelated facts.
