2013 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages 441-450
In discourses of science classes in which children collaborate to solve problems, children express a multitude of thoughts through their comments and questions, promoting their constructions of scientific concepts. In this study, we analyzed the function and the process of students' construction of connoisseurship that functions in children's activities above. Elementary school science classes were the subject of this study. In conclusion, our analysis revealed the following: 1. Students' scientific connoisseurship is constructed as a consensus among colleagues via the process of collaborative learning. Assessments by teachers that then connect children's thoughts to scientific concepts become good models for the children, who construct scientific concepts and enhance their overall scientific connoisseurship. 2. Children appropriated images, metaphors, the results of experiments and so on, as socially distributed cognitions. 3. Children enhanced their scientific connoisseurship through self-evaluation and mutual evaluation in the discourses.
