Author Description

This book is about the way in which children learn science and the notions about science that they bring to the classroom. The authors reveal that all children develop ideas about science and concepts about how the world works before they come to school. This is simply a child's way of dealing with his environment. So often science teaching takes no account of this built in knowledge, but dismisses it as incorrect. Here the authors suggest that a teacher's more productive strategy is to accept that children have certain concepts, and then to build on those as a stepping stone towards more sophisticated and "correct" learning. They propose convincingly that science is seen as a difficult subject largely because the teacher traditionally expends so much effort on combating a child's existing knowledge. A central concern of the book is with teaching students age 10 15, though the issues are relevant to all age levels.