The effect of adult intervention in the development of science process skills

Contrary to the commonly held belief that preschool children are not prepared to understand certain scientific phenomena, studies have shown at least an incipient command of science process skills (SPS) whenever children are provided with various opportunities and contexts for learning. Specifically, the degree of adult intervention may strongly determine learning outcomes, especially if this role consists of guiding exploration with productive questions that help the children focus their attention on the phenomena of interest. This research was aimed at assessing the impact of different styles of adult intervention on the learning of and engagement with science tasks, in the context of a proposal intended to develop SPS among young children. Forty-two children aged 4-6 were subdivided in three groups and participated in various science proposals under different styles of adult intervention: children-led, adult-led or scaffolded exploration. While the adult-led group attained the most detailed learning of concepts, the scaffolded exploration group improved their basic SPS more. The children-led intervention had the poorest results. The type of questions proved crucial, with productive questions which prompt the children to focus their attention or find a solution leading to much more accurate and complete answers.