What the Pendulum Can Tell Educators about Children’s Scientific Reasoning

Abstract

Inhelder and Piaget (1958) studied schoolchildren's understanding of a simple pendulum as a means of investigating the development of the control of variables scheme and the ceteris paribus principle central to scientific experimentation. The time-consuming nature of the individual interview technique used by Inhelder has led to the development of a whole range of group test techniques aimed at testing the empirical validity and increasing the practical utility of Piaget's work. The Rasch measurement techniques utilized in this study reveal that the Piagetian Reasoning Task III -Pendulum and the méthode clinique interview reveal the same underlying ability. Of particular interest to classroom teachers is the evidence that some individuals produced rather disparate performances across the two testing situations. The implications of the commonalities and individual differences in performance for interpreting children's scientific understanding are discussed.

Pendulum Motion: A Case Study in How History and Philosophy Can Contribute to Science Education

“…The sophistication of pendulum activities and their relation with other areas and topics in science can be enhanced with progression through school; obvious connections with mathematics, technology and engineering can be made, and even connections with chemistry (De Berg 2006). The full range of process skills (data collection and representation, hypothesis generation), methodological skills (generating hypotheses, evaluating these against evidence, theory testing and so on) and model construction can all be cultivated using pendulum classes (Kwon et al 2006;Stafford 2004;Zachos 2004). 26 The 320pp draft is available free from the National Academies Press website; it is titled A Framework for K-12 Science Education.…”

The Effect of Switching the Order of Experimental Teaching in the Study of Simple Gravity Pendulum – A Study with Junior High-school Learners

“…In this category, it is the Newtonian conceptual framework that prevails, and students' perceptions refer to the period or frequency dependency of the simple gravity pendulum, the width of hovering, the weight of the bob, its length and their combinations [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. The second category refers to themethodology used by researchers to examine the accuracy of the mathematical model regarding its ability to simulate and adequately describe the observed natural behaviour of the pendulum [9,10], [4], [11,12]. It seems that students' misconceptions about the pendulum are significantly affected by their perceptions as regards their ability to recognise the variables and the checking of conditions [4].…”