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.

该提议解决了生物知识和推理，跨文化和跨发展的基本问题。研究人员长期以来已经认识到儿童不是塔布拉·罗西（Tabulae Rosae）。相反，他们带来了世界的理论和概念。当这些与成年人的差异根本不同时，儿童的现有理论可能是学习的障碍。多年的研究表明，成年人作为中心人（例如活着的动物）所具有的概念可能以完全不同的方式代表。不幸的是，这项先前的研究几乎完全集中在中产阶级，城市，技术领先的人群上。这个狭窄的经验基础使得无法确定a）这些孩子所拥有的理论是否普遍存在，b）这些早期理论是如何通过培养和投入条件塑造的，c）如何最好地表征发育变化的机制。该提案的目的是通过确定来自不同文化群体的幼儿的核心生物学概念和推理来纠正这一局限性，并将其发展轨迹追溯到成年。人口包括芝加哥（郊区；城市），威斯康星州（农村多数文化；美洲原住民（Menominee）；墨西哥（Yukatek Maya; Ladino）。大大扩展概念数据的数据库，并通过分析各种知识的人群参与4系列的实验，从而提供对规范理论的新理解。任务包括：（1）姓名生成，（2）推理任务，（3）父母的语音二元组，（4）教室和其他教学内容的民族志描述。学习生物学的教育可能性 - 生物学 - 二十一世纪任何科学课程的新基石 - 以及维持环境健康。