The Mental Construct of Intellectual Awareness in Children's Comprehension of Nature in the Department of Life Environmental Study : A Case Study of the Second Grade Children's Excursion, "Let's Go Catch Crayfish"

Abstract

The goal of this paper lies in clarifying how a mental construct is formed in the minds of the children in the Department of Life Environmental Study when they become intellectually aware of and begin comprehending nature. For the study, we examined the case of a children's excursion, relying on three papers as a framework, "Logical Operation" by Kamii C. and Devries R., "Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)" by Vygotsky, and "Structure of Knowledge" by White. We discovered that a web of children's intellectual awareness about natural phenomenon is formed through informal concepts (life concepts), going beyond their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).