A Longitudinal Research on Schoolchildren's Learning in the Units of Plants : With Paying Attention to Children's Interrelating of the Learned Contents in the Units

Abstract

The purpose of this longitudinal research was to clarify whether learners could maintain their learning effects of plants through three units of science learnt by the fifth grader and sixth grader in elementary school and to examine whether the learners could link new knowledge to old knowledge by themselves without teacher's support. The investigation about change in each understanding of germination, flower, and photosynthesis was made on the same 33 school children through pretest, posttest and delayed test. As a result, 1) As a whole tendency, high learning effect by teaching was slightly obtained but it was lost with the passage of time. 2) "Recovery" in the flower tests before and after the class of photosynthesis was assumed to be a sigh of children's own linking. The very few leaners showed the recovery. They tended to show high level of understanding of flower, photosynthesis. These results suggested that the learners tend to learn unit's contents without interrelating by themselves and that their understanding could be promoted by teacher's help for interrelating.