How does a switch work? The relation between adult mechanistic language and children's learning

No guts, no glory: underestimating the benefits of providing children with mechanistic details

“…The benefits of mechanistic exposure may also extend beyond the realm of adjudicating information sources. By helping learners focus on the most causally relevant patterns in a domain, mechanistic exposure could empower relearning of the same content or generalize to learning in the same high-level subject area 29 . This in turn could aid learners in grouping entities that share key causal patterns, even if they differ superficially 32 , 33 .…”

“…In another set of studies 29 , four- and five-year-olds attempted to turn on a fan by manipulating a simple circuit, while a parent or experimenter provided mechanistic or nonmechanistic answers to their questions. Children who received mechanistic information were not only more likely to activate the fan, but also to succeed on a second task involving a novel circuit.…”

“How will you construct a pathway system?”: Microanalysis of teacher-child scientific conversations

“…In response to children's explanatory questions, parents scaffold science learning by providing causal explanations, helping children to test predictions, carry out experiments, and activate their prior knowledge. These dyadic exchanges support children in revising their beliefs about the world around them (Callanan et al, 2020;Crowley, Callanan, Jipson et al, 2001, Crowley, Callanan, Tenenbaum et al, 2001Frazier et al, 2016;Gutwill & Allen, 2010;Haden, 2010;Haden et al, 2014;Jant et al, 2014;Kurkul et al, 2021;Leech et al, 2020;Mills et al, 2017). For example, Fender and Crowley (2007) found that when children (aged 3-8) heard explanations from parents during a science activity, they were more likely to acquire a conceptual as opposed to a procedural understanding of the task in contrast to children who did not hear explanations.…”

“…Further, research demonstrates that even three-year-olds ask their parents causal questions (Bova & Arcidiacono, 2013;Callanan & Oakes, 1992) and regardless of socioeconomic status (SES), preschoolers from families identifying as mid-and low-SES seem to direct a similar proportion of factbased and causal questions to parents (Kurkul & Corriveau, 2018) and teachers (Kurkul et al, 2022). Although children's fact-based questions can often be answered with a one-word response, children's causal questions require more sophisticated explanations from parents, teachers, and other learning partners, which in turn, have the potential to foster children's early knowledge acquisition (Benjamin et al, 2010;Callanan et al, 1995;Jipson et al, 2016;Kurkul et al, 2021;Lombrozo et al, 2018).…”

“…Similarly, Willard et al (2019) found that when parents were told to provide explanations to their children (aged 4-6) when interacting at a gears exhibit, children spent more time investigating with and talking about gears compared to parents who were only told to explore with their child. In recent work, and Kurkul et al (2021) found that when parents provided explanations that included more mechanistic talk (highlighted cause and effect), their preschoolers (aged 4-5) were more successful at transferring the scientific knowledge to a novel STEM task. Taken together, these findings highlight how such conversations serve as a powerful mechanism for children's early science learning.…”