A49CL / Cognition across the Lifespan

Coursework: What does Kuhn mean when she talks about

'Scientific Thinking'? With reference to metacognitive
development, present some ideas for how teachers might
encourage 'scientific thinking' in the classroom.

HERIOT WATT UNIVERSITY

ALP: English School of Business, Belgrade
November, 2011.

Vladimir Mijakovac, Student ID: H00120540

BA in Management and Psychology

In order to understand the concept of scientific thinking, one should ask himself/herself
what it means to think scientifically. Kuhn defines scientific thinking as the combination
of theory and evidence. In her research Kuhn wanted to answer the question if scientific
thinking can be applied outside the scope of science. The answer to this question is yes,
as Kuhn characterizes the scientific thinking as human activity engaged in most people.
Scientific thinking is more of a social nature rather than individual thinking process.
Also scientific thinking can be defined as knowledge seeking. It is said that the scientific
thinking is something people DO, not something they HAVE.
This leads to scientific understanding which is important for childrens developmental
understanding. This is important since children make decisions based on their reasoning
and their theories, which are mostly incomplete or incorrect. In other words, children
think with their theories rather than about them. The modern view of scientific thinking
as theory evidence coordination was introduced by Piaget and Inhelder (1958). To seek
for knowledge is to admit that ones knowledge is incomplete or insufficient and that there
is always something new to learn. There is new evidence that the theory is subject to
revision. This can lead to two outcomes compatibility or discrepancy. The first one is
compatible with existing theories with no new results while the second has slight
discrepancy between theory and evidence. It is necessary to mention that with the
discrepancy the outcome of revision remains open. In other words theory may or may not
be revised which leaves the room for confusion what is exactly meant by theory
evidence coordination.
The first conflict in theory and evidence in young children appears at the age of four
when children start developing theories of their own. This is the first sign that children
start to think about their thinking. They are becoming aware that what they know does
not automatically mean that everyone think as them. During this period they also become
more aware of situations where two realities are possible and not knowing which is true.
To prove these claims series of tests have been performed by many scientists, one of
which was Kuhns experiment conducted with her colleague Pearsall (2000). The study
was on 4 to 6 year olds, who were given the series of pictures on which were shown two
runners competing in a race. Some photos are showing who will win. By showing this to
the 4 year olds shows the difficulty they have to justify the answer to the question How
do you know? and Why do you think so? This becomes less confusing as children
grow up. By the age of 6 years they tend to make fewer mistakes, while adults make no
mistakes. By advancing from preschool years to early school years children are faced
with difficulty of categorizing new things such as categorizing classmates favorite
activities and representing their findings. If children are first asked to make their theory
for certain things and than asked to compare that theory to information presented, than
that creates even greater difficulties for children. In Kuhns work appears the work of
other researchers who examined how children think. One such work was done by Lehrer
and Schauble.

Lehrer and Schauble (2000) introduced children from kinder garden to 5th grade to
examine set of paintings. Their task was to sort the paintings according to their believe
what the artists grade was. Send task was to arrange these paintings according to
categories. Substantial development was noticed during primary school years. Klahr
(2000) noticed that only few studies of scientific thinking completes the entire cycle
through phases: inquiry, analysis, inference and argument.
Other studies show how these strategies fit within the context and how they influence one
another. One such study was with pre-adolescent boys investigation of single area in this
particular case the earthquake. The problem was presented as a computer simulation with
five possible causal effects. The causal effects chosen were type of bedrock, speed of S
waves which did not have any impact of the result, water quality, radon gas levels and
snake activity which have simple effects. In the first, inquiry, phase investigations begin
with 10 year old child Brad. The primary objective for him was to get the good outcome.
Instead of focusing on different outcomes.
At this age children are only experimenting to see what happens with no interest in
shaping their investigation. The inquiry faze is important because at this point goals are
set and questions about activity asked to shape this faze. The second, analysis, phase has
to be accessed, processed and represented as evidence in order to reach the third phase,
inference. The strategies here are struggling to coordinate between theory and evidence.
On the other hand another childe, 11 year old Tom, has a more advanced level of
investigation. Although advanced than Brad, Tom has two limiting factors of the
effectiveness of his theory. First is that he believes that he can find effects of all features
combined. Second is that his theory in his mind is not distinctive from evidence. After his
first given results he was ready to include multiple variables as causal outcome. Tom is
quite satisfied with his theory because they, from his perspective, were empirically
verified. In reality this was not the case. In second attempt Tom chose to do things
differently, totally opposite from his previous theory. Tom performed some alterations to
see what result he will get. From his activity it can be shown that if data is not
represented distinctively from theory, scientific analysis will be limited. Skilled scientific
thinking always combines well coordinated theory and evidence which are clearly
distinguished. This experiment shows that scientific thinking is not age related, it is more
of individual nature of children tested. In light of previously found results another
experiment was conducted with Mark, also 11 year old child, who performs better than
Tom in representing the data separately from theory, but as Tom he is also focused on one
co-occurrence of variable level of outcome. The performance of both Tom and Mark is
based on co-occurrence mental model. With mental model both false exclusion and false
inclusion are consistent. Kuhn et al. 2000, observed an association between the goal of
identifying effects and use of controlled comparison as an analysis strategy. This theory is
based on maturity mental model of causality in which multiple individual variables
influence the outcome. The model of causality which tests Toms and Marks
performance, limits adoption of either goals or strategies.
Mark and Toms performance can be compared to that of 12 year old Robbie. Robbies
level of awareness is increased as he realizes the importance of certain factors that are

involved in the test of the earthquake. This is important since he will be able to defend his
arguments in the debate of claims abut evidence and alternatives. The progression from
10 year old Brad with complete absence of goals to the 12 year old Robbie with complete
awareness of analysis strategies does not imply that this is related with the age of children
but it is more related to the inter individual variability. Intra-individual variability, as
important as inter-individual variability, found to be the norm in microgenetic studies.
The idea of these tests is to see how children are managing tasks with several variables
involved. How they understand the complexity of their research and to see how they are
thinking. Stating that the individuals have available range of strategies of different level
of advancement and effectiveness. Meta level understanding is a crucial part of scientific
thinking. This process, like performance, shows improvement over time. Peer
collaboration can be valuable in its form and effects.
As can be seen from examples, scientific thinking rests on the understanding of
metacognitive development and the way children are thinking. It has been noticed that
metacognitive development begins evolving during early school years. That is the period
when children start doing things in more automated way, also start to focus on particular
bits of information. Their filtering mechanism becomes more active so at that period they
start selecting what they want to store into their memory. Simply said, they start to think
about their thinking. They become more aware of how they are going to solve a problem
and also what they have to do to get the answer right. They begin to understand what is
demanded from the task and by doing so they may focus their attention on that particular
task. And by doing this they can organize their information so that they can retrieve it
easier later. Teachers, do not have the luxury to follow only one childe, but have the
whole classroom. It is essential that children are guided towards scientific thinking,
because by just giving them research material will not make them develop more
scientifically. By knowing all this, teachers can inspire children to think scientifically by
encouraging them to do research, to see what the result will be if they alter some
variables. The quality of this teaching and learning is a bit complicated part, since
teachers have to effectively use the information as childrens response to task. Bearing
this in mind teachers have to make a concept of what kind of questions are worth asking
and why.

References
Kuhn, D. (2002), Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Cognitive Development. Oxford:
2002 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd., U.Goswami (ed), Chapter 17, page 371-393.
Kuhn, D. (2002), Lehrer&Schauble (2000), Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Cognitive
Development. Oxford: : 2002 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd., U.Goswami (ed). Chapter
17, page 377.
Kuhn D., and Pearsall, S. (2000). Developmental origins of scientific thinking. Journal
of Cognition and Development, 1, 113-129