Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to examine the models of the earth and the day/night cycle formed by American-Indian children. Twenty-six Lakota/Dakota children in the first, third, and fifth grades were interviewed about the shape of the earth and the causes of the day/night cycle. The results indicated that the children used a small range of relatively well-defined models of the earth and the day/night cycle similar to those constructed by Euro-American children as well as by Indian, Greek and Samoan children investigated in previous studies. All these models are similar in that they agree with the presuppositions of a framework theory of physics that appear to constrain them. The Lakota/Dakota children, however showed a preference for a particular synthetic model of the earth, the hollow sphere, which comes closest to the description of the shape of the earth provided in Lakota mythology. In addition, the younger Lakota/Dakota children used some animistic-psychological explanations of the day/night cycle that were absent in our previous samples. We may therefore conclude that while the process of knowledge acquisition in astronomy follows a similar path in all children regardless of cultural variables, cultural cosmology influences both the specific models constructed as well as the modes of explanation provided for astronomical phenomena.
Résumé
L’objectif du travail est l’étude des modèles conceptuels d’enfants amérindiens relatifs à la terre et au cycle jour/nuit. Vingt six enfants du Lakota/Dakota de première, troisième et cinquième années ont été interrogés à propos de la forme de la terre et des causes du cycle jour/nuit. Les résultats montrent que les enfants utilisent une faible éventail de modèles relativement bien définis semblables à ceux construits aussi bien par les enfants euro-américains, indiens, que grecs ou samoans ayant fait l’object d’études antérieures. Tous ces modèles présentent la similarité d’être en accord avec les présupposés d’un cadre théorique de la physique dont ils dépendent. Les enfants Lakota/Dakota montrent cependant une préférence pour un modèle synthétique particulier de la terre, la sphère-creuse, qui correspond étroitement à la description de la forme de la terre fournie par la mythologie du Lakota. En plus, les jeunes enfants Lakota/Dakota utilisent des explications animistes/psychologiques du cycle jour/nuit qui étaient absentes dans nos échantillons antérieurs. On peut donc conclure que le processus d’acquisition des connaissances en astronomie suit un parcours similaire chez tous les enfants indépendamment de variables culturelles. Mais la cosmologie héritée de la culture a cependant une influence à la fois sur la spécificité de modèles construits et les modes d’explication fournis sur les phenomènes astronomiques.
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The research reported in this paper was supported in part from a grant from the Spencer Foundation entitled “Lakota/Dakota Children’s Knowledge Acquisition in Astronomy” (No. 202-4525-160) and in part from a grant from the United States National Science Foundation, BNS-85-10254. This research was completed while the first author was at the University of South Dakota. The views expressed in this paper do not represent the views of these agencies and are soleby the responsibility of the authors.
An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF03172808.
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Diakidoy, IA., Vosniadou, S. & Hawks, J.D. Conceptual change in astronomy: Models of the earth and of the day/night cycle in American-Indian children. Eur J Psychol Educ 12, 159–184 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03173083
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03173083