Experimental appraisal of personal beliefs in science: constraints on performance in the 9 to 14 age group

Recent curricula initiatives have promoted experimentation as a means by which relatively young children can appraise their personal beliefs and thereby modify these beliefs towards received scientific ideas. However, key psychological theories signal problems, and the enterprise is not in any event securely grounded in empirical research.

As a consequence, the study reported here aimed to provide comprehensive information about children's abilities to use experimentation to appraise their beliefs, while allowing full exploration of theorized constraints.

The study involved 24 children at each of three age levels within the 9 to 14 range.

The children were first interviewed to establish their beliefs about influences on outcome in four educationally significant topic areas: flotation, pressure, motion and shadows. Subsequently, they were asked to conduct investigations to determine whether selected beliefs were correct.

The results showed that, regardless of age or topic, very few children appreciated that to explore whether some variable is influencing outcome it is necessary to manipulate that variable experimentally and that variable only. There was a strong tendency to manipulate other variables, a tendency attributed to the intrusion of everyday reasoning practices into the experimental context. Once extraneous variables had been introduced, the children experienced great difficulties with subsequent stages in the experimental process, e.g., predicting, observing and drawing conclusions.

It is concluded that experimentation as a means of appraising beliefs is not straightforward in the 9 to 14 age group, and that the pattern of difficulties has psychological significance given the background theories. Nevertheless, while not straightforward, experimental appraisal remains possible given appropriate teacher support, and proposals are made as to the form which the support should take.