A Study on the Child's Development about the Abilities of the Observation -on the Observation of a Leaf of a Hydrangea-

Abstract

As the newly revised Science Coures of Study published by the Japanese Ministry of Education in 1977 emphasizes, the observation is one of the most important process skills in the science education. Although it has been said that most science classrooms start from the observation of objects and end at the observation of them, one has not understood to what extent Children in a elementary school had aquired the abilities to observe things around them and how they aquired these abilities through the science activities. The auther inteded to investigate these basic problerus by the analyses and the interpretations of the observing records written by the Children from third grade to six grade, when they were asked by the auther to observe a leaf of a Hydrangea. The findings of this investigation are as follows. 1) The Child's abilities about the observation develop, not continually from grade to grade, but discontinually in three steps, that is, from the lower grade step (1st and 2nd grades) to the inter mediate grade step (3rd and 3th grades) and the upper grade step (5th and 6th grade). 2) Moreover there can be seen three periods in each step. They are a fixing period, an absorbing period and an activity jumping period. 3) In thd upper grade step, the child's observation develops markedly from qualitative to quantitative one.