Elementary Children's Judgments of the Epistemic Status of Sources of Justification

Date

2011-05-01

Author

Sandoval, William A.
Cam, Aylin

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

276
views

0
downloads

This study investigated children's judgments of the epistemic status of justifications for causal claims. Twenty-six children (14 boys, 12 girls) between the ages of 8 and 10 were asked to help two story characters choose the "best reason" for believing a claim. The reasons included appeals to an authority, to a plausible causal mechanism, or to data. Authority and plausible mechanism justifications always supported the claim and were paired with data that either covaried in support of the claim or did not covary and so were ambiguous with respect to the claim. Most children appeared to have a loose ordering of the epistemic status of justifications with data being preferred, plausible mechanisms appealing and preferred to ambiguous data, and appeals to authority least preferable. The children's primary reason for preferring any justification was its credibility. The credibility of data, to these children, seemed to rest on its firsthand nature. We suggest that this preference for data is productive and that instructional attention can usefully be focused on the attributes of measurement and experimentation that make data credible. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 95:383-408, 2011

Subject Keywords

History and Philosophy of Science, Education

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/65035

Journal

SCIENCE EDUCATION

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.20426

Collections

Department of Secondary Science and Mathematics Education, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Elementary Students' Scientific Epistemological Beliefs in Relation to Socio-Economic Status and Gender Ozkal, Kudret; Tekkaya, Ceren; Sungur, Semra; Çakıroğlu, Jale; Çakıroğlu, Erdinç (Informa UK Limited, 2011-03-01) This study investigated students’ scientific epistemological beliefs in relation to socio-economic status (SES) and gender. Data were obtained from 1,152 eight grade Turkish elementary school students using Scientific Epistemological Beliefs instrument. Canonical correlation analysis indicated that students with a working mother and educated parents as well as greater number of books at home together with a separate study room are more likely to have tentative views and less likely to have fixed views about...
Elementary Students’ Scientific Epistemological Beliefs in Relation to Socio-Economic Status and Gender Özkal, Kudret; Öztekin, Ceren; Sungur, Semra; Çakıroğlu, Jale; Çakıroğlu, Erdinç (2010-01-01) This study investigated students' scientific epistemological beliefs in relation to socio-economic status (SES) and gender. Data were obtained from 1,152 eight grade Turkish elementary school students using Scientific Epistemological Beliefs instrument. Canonical correlation analysis indicated that students with a working mother and educated parents as well as greater number of books at home together with a separate study room are more likely to have tentative views and less likely to have fixed views about...
Appropriateness of a cognitive approach to Donald Davidson's meaning theory Ağoğlu, Eser; Sayan, Erdinç; Department of Philosophy (2008) The purpose of this study is to discuss the appropriateness of a cognitive approach to Donald Davidson's meaning theory. Davidson makes the bold proposal that a truth theory, modified for a natural language, may be treated as a meaning theory for that language. According to Davidson, a meaning theory is an empirical theory. Radical Interpretation is at the center of such an empirical inquiry which places restrictions on the truth theory to make it suitable as a meaning theory without appeal to semantic noti...
An inquiry on Wittgenstein's conception of meaning Erşahin, Direnç; Turan, Şeref Halil; Department of Philosophy (2007) This study aims at investigating Wittgenstein’s conception of meaning. In this sense, philosopher’s early and later periods will be examined. Key notions of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, picture theory of meaning, language-game, rule following, Private Language Argument and his assertion that ‘meaning is use’ will be analyzed. Out of this analysis, Wittgenstein’s answer to the following basic question will be sought: How is meaning derived in a language? The outcome of this query will be comparativ...
On the possibility of wittgensteinian language of ethics Oktar, Sibel; Turan, Şeref Halil; Department of Philosophy (2008) In this study, the standpoint that discourse on ethics is impossible is examined. As Ludwig Wittgenstein is the first philosopher who explicitly said that ethics is inexpressible, the main concentration is on Wittgenstein’s conception of ethics. Analytic philosophy’s questions regarding ethics are about the meaning of the expressions of value rather than conduct. It is generally recognized that the distinction between these questions and the emphasis on the definition of value judgements starts with G.E. Mo...

Citation Formats

W. A. Sandoval and A. Cam, “Elementary Children’s Judgments of the Epistemic Status of Sources of Justification,” SCIENCE EDUCATION, pp. 383–408, 2011, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/65035.