Barns meningsskapande i ett projekt om biologisk mångfald och ekologiChildren’s meaning making in biodiversity and ecology

Abstract

Biodiversity loss is becoming an increasingly alarming issue that has significance in the discussion about young children’s learning in science. This article, based on a pragmatic perspective, analyses a group of children and teachers when exploring animals in a preschool project concerning biodiversity. It examines the ways in which children create meaning of the content, the order in which the content emerges, and what impact teachers have on how the process develops. Initially, the results reveal that the organisms’ appearances and movements received morphological and physiological explanations. Further, the knowledge was gained profoundly in a manner which has similarities with ecological and evolutionary ways of explaining biological phenomena. The teachers’ utterances were few, but significant, by raising productive questions in close relation to what the children anticipated they embraced a listening approach.