Encountering Evolution: Children's Meaning-Making Processes in Collaborative Interactions

The study investigates the opinion forming process of pre-school children in relation to the scientific topic of evolution. The author investigates how different resources, tasks and interaction affect children’s opinion forming. The aim of the study is to provide insight into how kindergarten teachers can work with science, and in particular the theory of evolution, together with kindergarten children. 

The result shows that there is a relationship between the activities’ context and use of materials and the children’s opinion forming. In the first activity, which was less teacher-led, the children built on their own experiences and used the materials as meaningful resources. They argued their ideas, which were not always scientifically ‘correct’, and discussed them with each other. In the other two activities, which were more teacher-led, there was more interaction between children and adults. Here, the children were told that there was already ‘a correct answer’ and therefore they argued less. The study also shows that materials are important in children’s opinion forming in that they help children talk about abstract scientific phenomena, such as evolution.

In order to investigate the children’s opinion forming processes, three different activities were designed and carried out with pre-school children. The first activity, a group discussion on why species are different, was conducted without teaching about evolution. In the next two activities, reading aloud and modelling animals in clay, the children heard scientific explanations about evolution. In all activities, the children had access to materials that could be used as resources in the opinion forming process, such as a world map, photographs and toy animals. A total of 67 children aged six participated in the study, and the activities were recorded by video camera. Both verbal and non-verbal communication were transcribed and analysed. 

Frejd, J. (2019). "Encountering Evolution: Children's Meaning-Making Processes in Collaborative Interactions". Akademisk avhandling. Linköping Universitet.