Children’s understanding of representations of basic chemistry after participating in an early childhood drama pedagogical activity

Authors

• Annika Åkerblom University of Gothenburg, Sweden
• Niklas Pramling University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Keywords:

chemistry, early childhood education, playfully-formatted activity, representation

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to generate insight into how young children in early childhood science education understand representation. Taking many forms: gestural, material and verbal (Gilbert, 2005), representations are critical to science education, already with young children. The empirical data for our analysis consist of interviews conducted with 6-year-old children after having participated in a playfully-formatted activity (van Oers, 2014) in basic chemistry held at a culture centre for children. The interviews are analyzed as social practice, clarifying how the children respond to the conceptual and communicative challenges they face. The results show that there are important differences in how the children show that they understand the forms of representations used in the activity. What these differences are and why they are critical to developing representational insight and basic scientific understanding, and therefore what educational implications our findings have, are discussed.