SEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS' INFORMAL THEORIES OF BEETLES
HIRATA, Akio
Department of Science education, Tokyo Gakugei University,
Nukuikitamachi 4-1-1, Koganei-shi, Tokyo 184, Japan
The purpose of this study is to give some theoretical explanation about
secondary school students' informal cognition of beetles. The author had
carried out psychological experiment on the seventh grade Japanese
lower secondary school students by the presentation of two color
photographs of a certain unknown beetle (which was not naturally to be
known by them). By the analysis of subjects' protocol, some informal
theories of beetles were detected, and then the cognitive model which
can explain their inferring of the sex and the classification of unknown
beetle has been proposed.