Intelligent Knowledge as the Aim of Science Education

What does it mean to understand a scientific concept or principle?

One condition is that one must be able to describe it and to elucidate it by examples. Regarding the understanding of the “golden rule of mechanics”, for instance, according to which at a simple machine like the lever one has to add in terms of distance what one has saved in terms of force (and vice versa), one should be able to describe this physical principle as well as to elucidate it by different examples like a nutcracker or a door handle. A further condition is that one should be able to explain the concept or principle by other scientific concepts and principles. In the case of the “golden rule of mechanics”, this means that one should be able to explain on the basis of the mechanical concept of work - which is defined as the product of force and distance - why in order to keep the amount of mechanical work constant the distance has to be increased if the force is decreased (and vice versa). Furthermore, one should be in a condition to use that knowledge flexibly and to apply it to superficially different cases like the pulley, the hydraulic press and the ramp.

The crucial precondition for transferring knowledge to new situations consists in recognizing the relevant similarities between the initial learning situation and a new situation. However, human cognition is highly domain specific so that a spontaneous knowledge transfer between different content areas rarely happens. Hence, knowledge transfer does not occur because the similarities between the learning situation and the new situation remain unrecognized. For this reason, the aim of education at school is to foster the construction of intelligent knowledge which enables the transfer of knowledge like, e.g., reasoning and problem-solving strategies to new situations.
To reach this aim, the reorganization of conceptual knowledge is most important. In particular, students’ conceptual knowledge has to be reorganized in a way that it is not represented according to superficial criteria, but instead according to abstract criteria which are relevant for the flexible application of knowledge to new situations. This means, for instance, that children have to learn that animals should not be classified according to their living environments, but rather according to their ways of reproduction. Otherwise they would not be able to understand why whales and bats actually have more in common than whales and fish, and, consequently, they would not be able to transfer their knowledge about mammals from whales to bats. Similarly, a person who is aware that sound and light are waves, is in a much better position for transferring her knowledge about the Doppler-effect from sound to light than another person who just focuses on superficial differences between sound and light.

Why should science education start early?

In the past two decades, longitudinal studies have revealed strong domain-specific effects on learning outcomes. According to these studies, prior knowledge in an area is the best predictor for future achievement and competencies in a specific domain. This has, for instance, been extensively shown in the Munich Longitudinal Study LOGIC for mathematics (Stern, 1999; 2009b) and for literacy (Schneider et al., 2009). Results of long-term intervention studies go in a similar direction: Early programs on phonological awareness (Schneider et al., 2000) and on basic mathematical skills (Hannulla & Lethinen, 2005) have a significant positive effect on later achievement. In addition, longitudinal studies on the effects of early science education revealed that the quality of the curriculum and classroom practice is decisive for the construction of intelligent knowledge (Strand-Cary & Klahr, 2008). 

Why should children as young as seven years of age learn about basic scientific concepts and explanations? Research on learning and instruction has shown that the main barrier to understanding scientific theories is not what the students lack, but what the students have, namely, alternative conceptual frameworks for understanding the phenomena covered by the theories teachers are trying to make intelligible to them. Since these conceptual frameworks often work well for children, teachers face the problem of trying to change these theories and concepts.

Science education is a process of conceptual change by which students’ initial concepts are transformed into and replaced by adequate scientific concepts (Carey & Smith, 1993; Carey, 2000). This conceptual change requires time and instructional support in order to be effective. For example, the study of Hardy and her colleagues on the effects of instructional support on elementary school students’ understanding of ‘Floating and Sinking’ shows that conceptual advances with regard to the reduction of misconceptions and the adoption and construction of scientific explanations need to be supported by a high degree of instruction (Hardy et al., 2006). According to this study, students’ conceptual understanding can be optimized by instructional support provided through the sequencing of instructional content and the frequency of cognitively structuring statements by the teacher. Therefore, science education has to start early in order to establish conceptual understanding and to replace all relevant misconceptions in a sustainable way.

In addition to replacing students’ misconceptions at an early stage of their intellectual development, starting science education early has the further advantage of preventing students to acquire new misconceptions. Hence, the construction of inadequate concepts and explanations will be prevented right from the start. In addition, participation in learning environments of challenging science content will likely support the development of students’ scientific reasoning skills such as their experimental skills, their use of empirical data to support theorizing, and their ability to reason about patterns of covariation. Thus, directing young children’s attention toward basic scientific concepts and explanations lays the foundation for their later understanding at a more formal level.