Abstract
Young children are sometimes considered “little scientists” due to their natural curiosity, exploratory play, and precocious abilities to learn new information. Developmental research has shown that this is more than a metaphor and young children have indeed nascent abilities to think scientifically. Preschoolers can differentiate confounded from unconfounded evidence, they design conclusive experiments, or use informative evidence to refute false causal claims. In the last decades, scholars, educators, and policymakers around the world highlighted many benefits of fostering scientific thinking from early on, such as facilitating later scientific thinking skills, increasing children’s motivation for and interest in science, or developing scientifically literate citizens. Relatedly, the number of investigations on fostering science learning in preschool classrooms has been increasing in recent years. The current chapter aims to provide state-of-the-art knowledge on the development and education of scientific thinking in the preschool years. Empirical findings from both developmental and learning sciences were discussed in the light of similarities and differences among different populations, with a specific focus on Turkish children.
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Köksal, Ö. (2022). Scientific Thinking in Young Children: Development, Culture, and Education. In: Şen, H.H., Selin (Retired), H. (eds) Childhood in Turkey: Educational, Sociological, and Psychological Perspectives. Science Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Science, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08208-5_16
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