ALIS · Associating Literature and the Imaginary with Science: Early Years Education

Associating Literature and the Imaginary with Science: Early Years Education

Since the turn of the millennium, French and British primary school curricula have been moving towards a cultural perspective of education involving the articulation of science and literature. This process has been defined by the emergence of a veritable “scientific literacy”. The issue at the heart of such an approach is the development of a pedagogical perspective on science that grasps the modes of elaboration of the subject both from the point of view of its practices and the language used to describe them, and that articulates the reading and writing of texts with the work of scientific understanding. It supposes that primary teachers know how to lead a fertile convergence between science and literature in class with young children. But, most often literature teaching is based on fictional storybooks while science teaching is based on informational children books. In order to develop a real integrative approach of science and literature, it is necessary to find out narrative fictional children books that could be used in science teaching and to study to what extent their reading in science classroom could be relevant for the young children science learning. The ALIS project supports the idea that children’s literature can be used as an instructional tool in science because it can provide a relevant context as well as introduce the scientific question for encouraging inquiry with young children. Not only have children a sort of predisposition for stories but also, the narrative structure is an effective teaching tool because it places concepts in acceptable, easily assimilable and memorable form. Stories which give shape and meaning to the world, help children to identify relationship between the real world and their own personal world. In addition, the fiction which functions as a metaphorical reference to the real world also contributes to develop an interpretation of the possible worlds by contrasting with real world. It is important for society to prepare pupils as future citizen to critically grasp the heterogeneity of documents dealing with scientific topics. Whether these include, stories, testimonies, fictions, scientific reviews or documents that mix different forms of texts, the future citizens need to know how to identify the boundaries between the real and the imagined of these documents. Furthermore, it is important to expand and to articulate various ways in science education in order to make scientific culture accessible to the greatest possible number of young children and to allow them as future citizens to continue autonomously developing their scientific acculturation. Exploiting the imaginative dimension of science, the power of metaphors, the children’ abilities to the narrative, are the way to engage more people in science culture. The overall objectives of ALIS project are to understand firstly to what extent the reading of fictional storybooks can participate in the development of a scientific culture and secondly the role of imagination and narrative in young children’s science thinking. This project aims: - to define a category of fictional storybooks that could be helpful in primary and preschool science teaching and to analyse their scientific and epistemological potentialities. - to analyse the functions of fictional narrative in young children’ s science thinking (3-11 years old), - to provide teachers (from preschool and primary school) with the means (didactic situations) to develop integrated science teaching, linking science and literature.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union