Tenenbaum, HR;
Van Herwegen, J;
(2023)
Young children’s science learning from a touchscreen app.
International Journal of Early Years Education
10.1080/09669760.2023.2259422.
(In press).
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Abstract
Many technological applications (apps) purport to help children learn academic material. Building on research in developmental and educational psychology, we developed and tested an app to teach biological and physical science content to preschool children. There were 21 children in the control condition (Mage = 50.30 months, SD = 8.61) and 21 children in the intervention condition (Mage = 53.21 months old, SD = 6.36). Children were given pre- assessments and post-assessments of their understanding of living things, inheritance, buoyancy, and balance. Half were assigned to play the app for 3 weeks or to a control condition that only completed the assessments. Based on ANCOVA and ANOVA models, children in the app condition increased in their understanding of living things and buoyancy on a near-transfer task from pre-test to post-test assessment, whereas the children in the control condition did not increase their understanding. The findings suggest that drill and tests apps focusing on science content that take account of folk theories of science can support children’s science learning.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Young children’s science learning from a touchscreen app |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/09669760.2023.2259422 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/09669760.2023.2259422 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Preschoolers; technological application; theories of biology; theories of physics; home learning |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Psychology and Human Development |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10178183 |
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