Warm welcome to Learning, Culture and Interventions (http://www.helsinki.fi/leci) (LECI) expert group research seminar on Friday 28th of September, from 10:00 to 12:00, at Siltavuorenpenger 5A, (Minerva building, room K108) where Postdoctoral Researcher Jenni Vartiainen (Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki) will give a talk on “Pre-school children’s multimodal communicative resources in socially shared science inquiry”.
Abstract:
Grounded in the sociocultural perspective on science education, this presentation discusses a qualitative case study on young children’s use of multimodal communicative resources in the context of socially shared scientific inquiry. Altogether 31 preschool children (aged 5-6 years old) participated in the study. The children worked in small groups on science inquiry tasks which included investigations into color formation, water cycle, solubility, air resistance and gas formation. Children engaged in guided inquiries which consisted of three phases: motivating, experimenting and communicating about results. Video and observation data were gathered in a Finnish preschool context over a 6-week period. The analysis focused on multimodal communicative resources depicted from children’s interactions in the process of scientific inquiry. The results show how children’s use of multimodal communicative resources supported their socially-shared science inquiry processes in terms of gathering the data, sharing their observations and inferences, reasoning, and explanation generation. However, how to enhance children’s critical thinking and ability to challenge each other’s sense-making deserves careful pedagogical attention. Altogether, the study shows how opportunities for multimodal communication can enhance diverse young children’s participation in scientific inquiry already early on.
Everyone interested is very welcome to join the seminar!