Sustaining Scientific Discourse In 4- And 5-Year-Old Classrooms: Analysis Of Teachers' And Students' Interventions And Emerging Knowledge About The School Ecological Garden

This work studies the shared discourse in Early Childhood Education classrooms as part of the scientific literacy process. The interventions of teachers and children aged 4 and 5 are analysed in the shared discourse and knowledge schemas that emerge during assemblies around the school ecological garden. The interventions have been transcribed and analysed with an emergent system of categories agreed among experts. The results indicate that the teaching intervention in 4 and 5 year old is mainly oriented towards information request and acceptance by repetition. A higher frequency is observed in 5 years of approval by reworking and challenging. Regarding children's participation, both 4 and 5 year old repeat, elaborate and restructure the information given, although in 5 year olds simple repetition is less frequent. Furthermore, looking at the conceptual progress, a total of 30 and 56 knowledge schemas linked to initial models of the life cycle of plants and the children's idea of a vegetable garden were identified for the 4 and 5 year old classrooms, respectively. Finally, it can be concluded that the organic garden is a suitable context for promoting scientific discourse at an early age.