A STUDY ON THE INQUIRY ABOUT THE FIRST QUESTION OF "WONDERING QUESTIONS IN DAILY LIFE" OF CHILDREN AT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Abstract

It is important that the teacher have a considerable holding upon the interest and/or the concern which his children have. However, the teacher cannot sometimes take a long time to inquire of his children about their interests. The authors presume that the first question of "the wondering questions in daily life," the children have stand for the whole of their questions ( their interest and/or concerns). (1) The authors have examined the possibility of grasping the interest and/or concerns of the beginners at elementary school by writing for ten minutes. The authors have explained the continuation of wondering consciousness between the beginners at elementary school and the senior pupils at kindergarten by individual interview. The authors have inquired about the wondering consciousness of twenty-eight hundred and fifty-three children attending the three elementary schools which are located on the farms at the border in Toyama city. And then, the authors have classified those data in four spheres (natural phenomena, living things, daily life and articles) by the Shichizo Hori method, and compared the result with those of Hori and the others, and discussed. The decrease of wondering consciousness of children in Nature sphere (Natural field) was remarkable, from the year 1940 to the year 1970. The authors attend to the importance of the first question the children have. The authors examine the relation between the percentages of the whole questions appearing in each sphere and the percentages of the importance of the questions appearing at first in each sphere, and find a good relation between both percentages, except in the case of beginners.