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Using Theory of Mind to Promote Conceptual Change in Science

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Abstract

We argue that learning science requires children to move from perceptually based representations to more abstract conceptual representations and to understand that appearance may sometimes deceive us and that the same phenomenon in the world can have more than one representation when seen from different perspectives. We also argue that the beginnings of such an epistemological perspective can be found in young children’s ability to think about the difference between their beliefs and the beliefs of others in the social domain, i.e., their Theory of Mind. We present the results of two empirical studies that show significant correlations between children’s growing Theory of Mind, developing epistemological thinking, and science learning, and suggest that Theory of Mind tasks can be used to promote conceptual change in science.

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Notes

  1. Theory of Mind is the field of psychology that investigates how children’s abilities to attribute mental states to themselves and to others develop (Astington et al. 1988; Flavell 2004; Sodian and Kristen 2010).

  2. Some recent research implies that even 15-month-old infants may be sensitive to understanding of false beliefs (Baillargeon et al. 2010). However, there is an on-going debate about whether these findings can be explained by lower-level heuristics or they indicate that children of this age really possess a ToM (Sodian and Kristen 2010).

  3. Children were categorized in three levels of epistemic thinking as defined by Kuhn et al. (2000): Absolutist (“only one opinion is right”), Multiplist (“both may have some rightness”) and Evaluatist (“one could be more right”).

  4. See for example Chinn and Malhotra (2001, 2002), Duschl et al. (2007), Passmore et al. (2009), Raghaven et al. (1998), Stewart et al. (2005).

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  1. Cogntive Science Lab, Department of Philosophy and History of Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, University Town, A. Ilisia, 15771, Athens, Greece

    Natassa Kyriakopoulou & Stella Vosniadou

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  1. Natassa Kyriakopoulou
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  2. Stella Vosniadou
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Correspondence to Natassa Kyriakopoulou.

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Kyriakopoulou, N., Vosniadou, S. Using Theory of Mind to Promote Conceptual Change in Science. Sci & Educ 23, 1447–1462 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-013-9663-9

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