Abstracts - Earli

their students. The teachers provided accounts of transformation in their students’ engagement inlearning activities. Teachers were found to be developing a new language for describing studentdiversity – a language not based on nominal categories with their implied set of stable traits – butrather based on descriptions of shared practices and different repertoires that students wereadopting as members of a particular classroom community.D829 August 2007 11:00 - 12:20Room: PP8Poster SessionPoster sessionChair:Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta, University of Örebro, SwedenConceptual and situational factors in children’s understanding of the earthKarin Ehrlen, Stockholm University, Department of Education, SwedenThe aim was to link different contexts in a learning situation by describing children’sunderstanding of the earth in relation to conceptual frameworks, situation and culture. Semistructuredinterviews were accomplished with fifty-eight children, mainly between six and eightyears old, in the presence of visual representations of the earth. Group 1 was interviewed with aglobe, group 2 with a satellite photo of the earth, group 3 with one globe and three picturesshowing different aspects of the earth, and group 4 was interviewed while they were producingtheir own drawings of the earth. In spite of the information given in the different visualrepresentations of the earth, many children expressed conceptions of the earth that deviated fromthe culturally accepted concept. Also some children, who themselves drew pictures of the earth inline with conventional ways of depicting the earth, expressed alternative conceptions. Thedifficulties the children encountered are described from a conceptual point of view asdifferentiating between the astronomical conceptual framework of the earth and the common senseframework of the earth nearby, from a physical point of view as relating different perspectivesfrom where the earth can be seen, and from a cultural point of view as interpreting different modesof depiction. Additionally, the children’s understanding of the relevance of different explanationsin the situation was considered. The interaction between the conceptual and cultural factors inchildren’s understanding of the earth entailed that an alternative interpretations of mode ofdepiction in a representation could support an alternative conception of the earth. Practicalrelevance of the study is that cultural knowledge, for example knowledge of the conventions fordepicting in a particular subject area, should be recognized as part of a science curriculum.– 229 –