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Activity Number: 202
Type: Contributed
Date/Time: Monday, August 10, 2015 : 10:30 AM to 11:15 AM
Sponsor: Section for Statistical Programmers and Analysts
Abstract #317876
Title: Classification on Children's Notion of Sources of Science Knowledge
Author(s): Guoguo Zheng* and April Galyardt and Maggie Renken and Ilya Goldin
Companies: University of Georgia and The University of Georgia and Georgia State University and Pearson
Keywords: Classification ; Source of knowledge ; Naïve theories
Abstract:

Scientists gather knowledge from many different sources, e.g., experimentation, observation, reasoning, or accumulation over time. Developmental psychologists believe that children's ability to identify these sources of knowledge (SoK) is an important predictor of their later science learning. Goldin, Renken, Galyardt, & Litkowski (2014) show that from 2nd to 8th grade, children do not improve in identifying SoK. However, students have a hidden rationale for their responses. A logistic regression analysis reveals that while students are more likely to label sentences as observation or experimentation than other SoK, there is an interaction at the sentence-level. This is evidence that students possess naïve theories about what constitutes good scientific knowledge. We use classification methods, including decision trees, in order to explore children's pre-existing notions about SoK.


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