Preschool Children’s Reasoning about Sound from an Inferential-Representational Approach

• Main Authors: Leticia Gallegos-Cázares, Fernando Flores-Camacho, Elena Calderón-Canales
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-04-01
• Series: Education Sciences
• Subjects: preschool; representations; science education; epistemology
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/11/4/180

The purpose of this article is to present an analysis to identify the reasoning processes and representations that preschool students develop about sound based on the inferential-representational approach. Participants were 18 preschool students between the ages of four and five attending three rural schools located in the Sierra Norte of Puebla, Mexico. Data were obtained through a 14 question semi-structured interview. From children’s answers to the formulated questions, an inferential analysis method was applied to identify intentionality, representation elements, sign-material expressions, representations, inferences, and coordination rules in students’ constructions. The results show that children build a basic set of epistemic tools to give meaning to their interpretations and can use them as surrogate reasoning to make inferences. This research constitutes the first approximation toward the understanding of preschool children’s reasoning forms with an inferential-representational approach and constitutes a new approach that puts forward new referents to analyze students of different ages. We consider that the described results and analysis have implications on science education at this educational level.