Young children's near and far transfer of the basic theory of natural selection: An analogical storybook intervention

Abstract

Misconceptions about adaptation by natural selection are widespread among adults and likely stem, in part, from cognitive biases and intuitive theories observable in early childhood. Current educational guidelines that recommend delaying comprehensive instruction on the topic of adaptation until adolescence, therefore, raise concerns because children's scientifically inaccurate theories about species may be left unchallenged for many years, allowing them to entrench and become difficult to overcome. In consequence, this investigation sought to explore whether classrooms of kindergartners and second graders could acquire a basic but comprehensive understanding of adaptation from an intervention constructed around two picture storybooks that mechanistically explain natural selection. Learning was assessed in near and far transfer contexts both immediately and a month later. Kindergartners and second graders demonstrated substantial learning of biological information; however, second graders showed pronounced abilities to near and far generalize, immediately and over time. Results suggest that causally cohesive interventions with an emphasis on mechanistic explanation facilitate children's classroom learning of complex counterintuitive scientific ideas.

Children’s Encounters with Natural Selection During an Interactive Read Aloud

“…Previous work (Emmons et al 2017;Emmons et al 2016;Kelemen et al 2014) has shown that children as young as 5 years of age are able to form a basic understanding of evolution after listening to the storybook How the piloses evolved skinny noses (Kelemen and The Child Cognition Lab 2017). However, these studies have been conducted in highly scripted settings, where children have been read to and interviewed one-on-one.…”

“…As described, there is a large body of empirical work (e.g. Emmons et al 2016;Emmons et al 2017;Kelemen et al 2014) that aims to use the book How the piloses evolved skinny noses (Kelemen and The Child Cognition Lab, 2017) as a scripted invention for learning evolution. This paper intend to shed light on the complex meaning-making processes occurring during interactive read aloud of science themes books.…”

“…Children's questions and comments were embraced, and encouraged during the reading. This approach differed from Emmons et al (2017), Emmons et al (2016) and Kelemen et al (2014), where no dialogic or interactive strategies were applied. The reading took approximately 10 min.…”

“…The results from Kelemen et al (2014) and Emmons et al (2016) show that children as young as 5 years old gained a simplified understanding of evolution. Emmons et al (2017) have also examined the storybook's impact on 6-year-old and 8-yearold children's ability to perform a "far-reaching transfer" of their knowledge of evolution. The study built on the same methodological design as Kelemen et al (2014) and Emmons et al (2016).…”

“…Children in both age groups generalised knowledge to a new species adaptation of a foraging trait. The older children were able to transfer their knowledge of natural selection to both foraging and camouflage adaptation (Emmons et al 2017).…”