出版社：ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education
摘要：There are ongoing discussions about the best way to teach science to young children during the preschool and early elementary school years. What practice is most likely to contribute to children's development and learning while cultivating exploration, questioning skills, and revision of thinking to accommodate new ideas in science? The Head Start on Science and Communication (HSSC) Program is based on collaborative research from the fields of science education and language development. Program objectives have been aligned with the curriculum and are based on the national science standards for young children. The HSSC Program evolved over four years of research and implementation at schools in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Washington, DC. The initial phase of the program included input from parents, teachers, and teaching assistants to help develop lessons and shape the inquiry-based strategies for young children learning about life science, earth science, and physical science. The second phase of the program incorporated curriculum materials and investigative experiments to promote inquiry-based, hands-on science as a vehicle for promoting young children's language development. Children learned to match, discriminate, categorize, sequence, and associate information as they worked with peers to understand science concepts, relate facts, and solve scientific problems. As a result of participating in the HSSC Program, teachers employed collaborative learning strategies, engaging in small-group problem-solving teams with verbal interactions among teachers and students. Outcomes also included positive changes in teachers' questioning strategies. Teachers became proficient in asking more open-ended questions at increasing levels of difficulty instead of basic factual and yes-no questions. Preliminary data from a study of 85 first-grade students who engaged in a series of 12 science experiments indicated that prior to the program, they answered an average of 58% of the factual-type questions correctly and 15% of the application-type questions correctly. After learning about topics such as earth surfaces, minerals, changing colors, seeds, and plants, these children answered the factual-type questions with 96% accuracy and the application-type questions with 92% accuracy, indicating a significant gain in knowledge beyond the p < .05 level for both types of questions. Students improved their knowledge of science concepts along with their ability to answer questions requiring higher-level cognitive skills. Teachers noted students' improved knowledge of science and enhanced language development.
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