Biological Thought: A Cross-Cultural View

生物学思想：跨文化观点

基本信息

批准号：
7035921
负责人：
SANDRA R WAXMAN
金额：
$ 27.23万
依托单位：
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
财政年份：
2002
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2002-04-01 至 2008-03-31
项目状态：
已结题

项目摘要

This proposal addresses fundamental issues in the evolution of biological knowledge and reasoning, across cultures and across development. Researchers have long recognized that children are not tabulae rosae. Instead, they bring with them theories and concepts of the world. When these differ radically from those of adults, children's existing theories can be obstacles to learning. Years of research have suggested that the very concepts that adults hold as central (e.g., alive, animal), may be represented in an altogether different fashion in children. Unfortunately, this prior research has focused almost exclusively on middle-class, urban, technologically-advanced populations. This narrow empirical base makes it impossible to determine a) whether the theories held by these children are universal, b) how these early theories are shaped by culture and input conditions, c) how to best characterize the mechanisms underlying developmental change. The goal of this proposal is to redress this limitation by identifying core biological concepts and reasoning in young children from different cultural groups and to trace their developmental trajectories into adulthood. Populations include Chicago (suburban; urban), Wisconsin (rural majority culture; rural native American (Menominee); Mexico (Yukatek Maya; Ladino). dramatically expands the database on concept development and provides new understanding of normative theories by analyzing the various developmental motivations and patterns. Each population participates in 4 series of experiments, each aimed at a different aspect of knowledge within the biological domain. Experimental tasks include: (1) name generation, (2) reasoning tasks, (3) parent-child speech dyads, and (4) ethnographic description of classroom and other instructional content. These developmental, cross-cultural experiments will help us ascertain which biological concepts (if any) are universal, and determine how these are shaped by the culture in which an individual is immersed. Ensuing knowledge of particular cultural conceptions about the biological world and how it works may be critical in understanding the educational possibilities for learning about biology - the new cornerstone of any science curriculum in the twenty-first century - and for maintaining environmental health.

该提案解决了跨文化和跨发展的生物知识和推理演变的基本问题。研究人员早就认识到儿童不是红白石。相反，他们带来了世界的理论和概念。当这些理论与成人的理论截然不同时，儿童现有的理论可能会成为学习的障碍。多年的研究表明，成年人所持有的核心概念（例如，活着的、动物的）在儿童中可能会以完全不同的方式表现出来。不幸的是，之前的研究几乎完全集中在中产阶级、城市、技术先进的人群上。这种狭窄的经验基础使得无法确定a）这些孩子所持有的理论是否具有普遍性，b）这些早期理论如何受到文化和输入条件的影响，c）如何最好地描述发展变化背后的机制。该提案的目标是通过识别来自不同文化群体的幼儿的核心生物学概念和推理并追踪他们成年后的发展轨迹来纠正这一局限性。人口包括芝加哥（郊区；城市）、威斯康星州（农村多数文化；美国农村原住民（Menominee）；墨西哥（Yukatek Maya；拉迪诺）。极大地扩展了概念发展的数据库，并通过分析各种发展动机提供了对规范理论的新理解每个群体参与 4 个系列的实验，每个实验针对生物领域知识的不同方面，包括：（1）名称生成，（2）推理任务，（3）亲子言语二元组，以及（4）课堂和其他教学内容的人种学描述这些发展性的跨文化实验将帮助我们确定哪些生物学概念（如果有）是普遍的，并确定这些概念是如何被塑造的。个人所沉浸的文化对生物世界及其运作方式的特定文化概念的了解可能对于理解学习生物学的教育可能性至关重要 - 这是二十一世纪任何科学课程的新基石 -以及为了维护环境健康。