儿童科学概念的认知发展

综述了作者在儿童科学概念认知领域的研究，其中包括儿童的朴素生物学、朴素物理学认知及其与心理理论发展关系的研究。作者研究了儿童在生命科学领域的自发概念，包括对生长、衰老、疾病和死亡等生命现象的认知，探查儿童对日常生活中物理学概念（如力等）的朴素认知，力图发现儿童早期认知中的潜力，同时探明他们相应的错误概念，并采用教育干预实验，促进儿童科学概念的转化。还探查影响儿童科学概念发展的因素，包括外部教育条件以及个体认知能力（如心理理论发展水平，推理能力等）。研究发现，儿童在接受正规的科学教育前就对人类重要的科学领域形成了自己的“朴素理论”，他们用这种理论来解释现实世界的现象。作者主张儿童的科学教育（包括健康教育）应该以儿童的“朴素理论”为基础，从而真正做到因材施教

The Development of Children's Science Concept

The paper reviewed our study on children’s understanding of science concepts, including children’s naïve biology, naïve physics and their relation with their theory of mind, meaning to explore the relation of children’s understanding in the three core knowledge domains. We explored children’s understanding of growth, aging, illness/health and death. We also investigated children’s naïve physics, intending to find out children’s cognitive potential and to enhance their naïve conception changing to scientific understanding. Factors that may influence children’s understanding were also investigated. It may shed some light on science education