2024 Volume 65 Issue 1 Pages 133-146
Elementary school science is oriented toward a problem-solving style of learning, and in the first phase of this learning, children form representations as they interact with objects. In this case, it is thought that activities are generated by children’s perceptions of affordances of the objective, and representations are formed in response to the activities. In this study, we focused on the process in which children perceive the affordances of the objective and the activity is motivated, utilizing the study of the “properties of magnets” in the third grade of elementary school, and aimed to clarify the actual process by which representations are formed in problem solving. We focused on the model of formation and transformation of representations through activities in problem solving proposed by Suzuki et al. (2022). Furthermore, in order to assess how children perceive affordances, we extended the model in terms of distributed cognition. The results of the case study analysis showed that children’s affordance perceptions were classified into four patterns, and that the representations formed differed according to the affordances perceived. All four patterns were attributed to the perceived permissible activities, which ware made possible by the pupils’ attenuation toward the objective.
