Exploring the development of children’s chemical understanding
Authors:   , Christodoulakis Nikolaos 
Published: February 2025

This thesis seeks to enhance our comprehension of how children develop an understanding of chemistry i.e., emerging chemistry. More specifically the aim of the study was to explore children’s conceptualization of basic chemical concepts, such as smallness and explore how metacognitive frameworks contribute in this process. Research conducted earlier has highlighted the crucial role of visual experiences in helping children grasp the abstract concept of matter. This project was designed to provide the visual experience of the subatomic nature of matter, to explore how this experience develops and how it is transferred between different contexts.

Learning subject-specific content is a process that goes beyond just the academic aspect; it also encompasses emotional and individual elements, which are important for scientific growth. Vygotsky attempted to address individual aspects of development with the use of the concept of perezhivanie, describing a socially constructed filter through which experiences are refracted. The filter is seen as greatly influenced by both positive and negative emotions, which in turn impacts our interpretations of the world, including scientific events. Suggesting that emotionally positive experiences of science could, change the filter itself and therefore also how an individual will come to interprets future scientific experiences. A process that could have an effect not only on school science but also on the lifelong learning process.

A study was initiated with the purpose to analyse how contemporary research conceptualizes the notion of perezhivanie with an emphasis on its use in research. Results show that the use of this concept varies and ranges between social, sociocultural and individualistic approaches, not yet having reached a point of general consensus regarding its characteristics and as an analytical tool. The meta-analysis also suggests that preschool teachers could also benefit from training in self-reflecting processes, which would also contribute to young children’s self-awareness.

Given that chemistry emergence is a young field, more overarching aspects of chemistry emergence, such as matter, smallness and other chemical phenomena have not yet been explored. For this reason, emergence is analysed through a combination of Vygotsky's theories of early development and Vosniadou's framework theory, a theory which expands conceptual understanding by incorporating ontological and epistemological dimensions. Within framework theory development is viewed as a transition between intuitive concepts towards counterintuitive concepts and intermediate synthetic models. This development is closely linked to changes in ontology and epistemology. The potential of framework theory as an analytical tool for studying emergence was initially investigated by conducting a meta-analysis of scientific education research papers. Results show that framework theory can be used as an analytical tool for studying emergence and is a way to move beyond the fragmentation caused by the many different theoretical perspectives used in the field of science education. Especially important is highlighting the significance of epistemic and ontological aspects of reasoning in children’s scientific emergence something that is not only important for evaluating emerging chemistry but also for emerging natural science in general.

A longitudinal, study following 25 children over one academic year, was implemented, all the sessions were video-recorded using visual- ethnography. Results show that children initially adopt an intuitive understanding regarding smallness, centralized around visibly accessible smallness. This reflects on an early epistemic reasoning, in which causative relationships are limited on visibly accessible data. It also reflects the existence of an early ontological structure of knowledge, in which children use everyday objects as prototypes for understanding matter in general. Results also showed that many children can grasp counter-intuitive concepts regarding smallness, approximating the idea that matter is made of really small sub-microscopic elements. This realization is connected with epistemic changes, such as being able to hold multiple representations of a process, as well as ontological, mainly the ability to construct a new ontological sub-field specifically about microscopic phenomena, based on their own explanatory principles. These results indicate that chemical concepts are not outside the scope of preschoolers range of understanding.