Scientific discourse in Early Childhood Education in the context of the Ecological School Garden

Abstract

According to the necessity to develop scientific literacy from early ages, the aim of this work is to explore scientific discourse of 5 years-old children at circle time during a didactic sequence related to their ecological school garden. To get those achievements, an emergent-cathegories system has been stablished by the analysis of transcriptions obtained from four circle time registrations, being this system agreed by experts. Results show that 5 years-old children contributed with data and information to the discourse (in a 31,6% of the cases), they supply knowledge schemata (in a 39,8% of the cases), they offer arguments on the shared schemata (in a 24% of the cases) and, in a less measure, they build initial explaning models (in a 4,6% of the cases). In relation to knowledge schemata that are built in this context, they are about the necessary elements in the garden (light, earth, water, soil or depth), and they allow to visualize and to infere the initial explaining models handled by the children at that age. In conclusion, results show evidences respect to the capacity of developing scientific competence from early years as well as the suitability of the use of ecological school garden as a context to promote cognitive-linguistic skills which influence on scientific knowledge construction.