The effect of explaining another's actions on children's implicit theories of balance

Children and adults often hold naive intuitive theories about how the physical world around them works, and their misconceptions can be difficult to change. Self-explanations have been found to be effective in producing better understanding of science (Chi, de Leeuw, Chiu, & LaVancher, 1994), and explaining another person's reasoning can also bring about cognitive change (Siegler, 1995). This study deals with one domain of physics-balance-and investigates the effects of 2 interventions on children who had either a procedure for balancing but could not explain it or had a naive theory. We pretested 140 children, ages 5 to 9 years, to assess their ability on a balance beam task and their knowledge about the principles of balance. These children were classified according to levels of representation derived from Karmiloff-Smith's (1992) Representational Redescription model. In this sample, 104 children could not explain the principles of balance or possessed a naive theory that all things had to balance in the center. These children were allocated to I of 2 intervention conditions. Approximately half of the children watched the experimenter model the correct solution to the balance task; the rest observed the model and were also encouraged to produce verbal explanations of what they saw. At posttest, a significantly higher number of children from the latter condition had improved their understanding of balance. The positive effects of interpersonal explanation are discussed in relation to Karmiloff-Smith's model of children's development, and the implications for teaching are highlighted.