Can pre-school children learn to do science?
Jenny Rohn,
The Guardian,
Apr 05, 2017
Of course the answer to the question in the headline is 'yes'. If you've ever tested the water with a toe before diving in, you've done science. But what, exactly, is science? This article is a bit weaker on this front. True, it's not just measurement and units of measurement and it's not just description. But science isn't just about asking questions, either, not even if they're 'why' questions. And children aren't "naturally prone to being good scientists," as the author avers. Science is, at core, about method - it's a process of looking and discovering, trying things out, seeing what happens, and reasoning about that in a more or less systematic way. This is a process that takes skill and development; it needs to be learned.
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