Knowing and Language use: 6-year-old Children Explaining Physical Phenomena and the Linguistic Means through Which They Do So

The purpose of the present study is to investigate how 6-year-old children in interviews explain physical phenomena (concerning gravity) and their use of language. How children understand the physical world has been a much... [ view full abstract ]

The purpose of the present study is to investigate how 6-year-old children in interviews explain physical phenomena (concerning gravity) and their use of language. How children understand the physical world has been a much debated interest in educational psychology since the pioneering work of Jean Piaget (e.g., 1926/1960). Piaget’s response to the challenge of gaining access to children´s understanding was the invention of the clinical method (1960). In the present study we contribute to the two strands of this long-lived research tradition, that is, we investigate how children understand physical phenomena while at the same time analyzing the meta-issue of how we in research produce insights into this process.

In the interviews we conduct our analysis on, the interviewer challenges the children to explain what from a scientific point of view would be conceptualized in terms of gravity, both as an abstract feature and as lived experience. The interviewer also uses the strategy of shifting between asking the children about physical phenomena and asking them about the language they use to speak about these phenomena. Conceptualized in Vygotskian terms (1999), the interview serves not only as a means of mapping what understanding the children have already developed, but also to some extent see their development in the making, that is, to provide a zone of proximal development.

The analysis focuses the relationship between children’s understanding of something spoken about – in this case gravity – and their understanding of the language with which they speak about this phenomenon. The result is presented as cases, exemplifying different understanding, followed by a summation of the metaphors and mental-state terms used. Finally, we review our findings and discuss their implications for our understanding of how children making sense and as implications for science for young children.