Abstracts - Earli

structuring than strategy compared to high-rated students. Implications for these findings withrespect to effective scaffolding are discussed with regard to teacher training.Scaffolding learning by the use of visual representations: Domain-specific and domain-generaleffects on scientific reasoningIlonca Hardy, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, GermanyElsbeth Stern, Institute for Behavioral Sciences, SwitzerlandThe construct of scaffolding has been helpful in conceptualizing ways in which learningenvironments may be structured to allow students’ active cognitive engagement in constructivistlearning environments. The two key elements of instructional support concern 1) the structuring oftasks to allow students to remain focused on important aspects and 2) the support of students’reflection on their insights within a larger context of scientific reasoning. We suggest that, visualrepresentations such as graphs and diagrams as well as manipulable representations can servethese two functions especially well: They help learners to direct their attention to relevant aspectsof a task by providing certain affordances related to the scientific representation of quantities andrelationships, and they provide ways in which scientific sense-making in terms of solutionprocedures and strategic thinking can be experienced. We will report the results of a sequence ofstudies within the domains of science and mathematics learning in which students were able todevelop conceptual insights with the help of visual representations. We were interested not only incontrasting the specific effects of different visual representations such as a density matrix and abalance beam on conceptual understanding in elementary school, we also investigated long-termeffects of representational activities on scientific reasoning such as students’ ability to interpretgraphs. Our results demonstrate that students not only show considerable domain-specificconceptual advances through the use of visual representations, they also develop domain-generalreasoning abilities such as proportional understanding and "visual literacy."Scaffolding and analogical reasoning in young children: A microgenetic studyErika Tunteler, Leiden University, NetherlandsWilma Resing, Leiden University, NetherlandsThis presentation focuses on scaffolding analogical reasoning in children in a microgeneticcontext. The study to be presented investigated changes over time in young children’s analogicalreasoning induced by self-scaffolding, referring to the interaction between the child and theproblem environment without any explicit help from others. This was compared with changesimposed by a reciprocal-scaffolding procedure. The notion of this procedure was to promptchildren with hints according to their own needs to explain the way they thought that theexperimenter had found the correct solution to an analogical item. A 5-sessions microgeneticprocedure was used, 36 6-year-old children divided over 2 conditions participated. A follow-upsession was administered after several months. Geometric analogy tasks were used, and analogicalreasoning was measured by a combination of both children’s overt solutions to the problems andtheir verbal explanations for their solutions. The data were analyzed at both the group level and theindividual level. The findings will be presented during the conference. In general, considerableinter- and intra-individual variability in the use of analogical strategies was found in bothconditions. Self-scaffolding caused a gradual improvement in analogical reasoning in some, butnot all children. Yet, reciprocal-scaffolding caused an improvement above and beyond that of selfscaffolding,inducing in some children a gradual change, while in others it caused a more rapidchange in analogical performance.– 498 –