Is book reading always best? Children learn and transfer complex scientific explanations from books or animations

Evolution: Education and Outreach

Research

Deborah Kelemen¹  Sarah A. Brown¹  Emma Pitt²  Samuel Ronfard³ 

[1] Boston University, Boston, USA;Boston University, Boston, USA;Northeastern University, Boston, USA;University of Toronto, 3359 Mississauga Road, CCT Building, Room 4059, Mississauga, L5L 1C6, Toronto, ON, Canada;

关键词: Explanation;    Conceptual change;    Science learning;    Evolution;    Video;    Animation;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12052-023-00189-3

 received in 2023-02-09, accepted in 2023-05-25,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundStorybooks are an effective tool for teaching complex scientific mechanisms to young children when presented in child-friendly, joint-attentional contexts like read-aloud sessions. However, static storybooks are limited in their ability to convey change across time and, relative to animated storybooks, are harder to disseminate to a wide audience. This study examined second graders’ abilities to learn the deeply counterintuitive concepts of adaptation and speciation from multi-day interventions centered around two storybooks about natural selection that were either read-aloud (static) or watched on a screen (animated). The storybook sequence was progressive and first explained—in counter-essentialist and non-teleological terms—how the relative distribution of a terrestrial mammal’s trait changed over time due to behavioral shifts in their primary food resource (adaptation, book 1). It then explained how–after a sub-population of this species became geographically isolated–they evolved into an entirely different aquatic species over many generations via selection on multiple foraging-relevant traits (speciation, book 2). The animated and static versions of the storybooks used the same text and illustrations, but while the animations lacked joint-attentional context, they more dynamically depicted successive reproductive generations. Storybook and animation presentations were interspersed with five parallel talk-aloud assessment interviews over three days.ResultsFindings revealed substantial learning from the read-aloud static storybook sequence. They also revealed substantial learning from the animation condition with patterns suggesting that the dynamic representations of change over time particularly scaffolded acquisition of the deeply counterintuitive idea that a species can evolve into an entirely different category of species by natural selection.ConclusionsThe results provide much-needed optimism in a context of increasing demands for scalable solutions to promote effective learning: animated storybooks are just as good (and may even be better) than static storybooks.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s) 2023

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