Australasian Journal of Early Childhood

analysis of discourse the children were found to engageas conversational partners, scientific investigators anddynamic co-constructors of explanations. These resultsdemonstrate that young children can successfullyengage in scientific explanation and inquiry.The approach taken in this research was to explorehow a forensic science unit of work was implementedin a preschool classroom to provide opportunities forthe children to engage in knowledge building and thescientific inquiry processes of generating questionsand predictions, observing and recording data, usingequipment, using observations as evidence, andrepresenting and communicating findings.Forensic scienceForensic science has a high profile. CSI, Silent Witnessand Cold Case are not only common words today,but also television series watched by thousands ofpeople each week around the world. While murder,blood, body parts and maggots are highly attractiveto children, early childhood teachers consider themas inappropriate images and ideas to be using in theirclassrooms. If the traditional images associated withforensic science cannot be used with younger children,how and why should this topic be taught?Forensic science describes the application of scientificmethods and knowledge to legal problems (Siegel,2009). A fundamental principle of forensic sciencehas been popularly summarised by the phrase ‘everycontact leaves a trace’. This phrase has been termedLocard’s Exchange Principle for the forensic scientistEdmond Locard, who was a pioneer in the area oftrace evidence (Siegel, 2009). Every time objects comeinto contact with each other there is an exchange ofinformation. This information could be fingerprints,hairs, fibres, soil or blood. For example, when youngchildren eat icecream and then place their dirty handson a clean surface, information is left behind in thechild’s fingerprints. Alternatively, if a white, long-hairedcat sits on the lap of a person wearing dark-colouredpants, the information left behind is the cat’s whitehairs. In the same way dust, hairs, glass fragments andeven pollen present at a crime scene can be found onthe clothing or shoes of a criminal. It may be transferredbetween the criminal and a victim or object and canestablish links between objects and/or people and acrime scene. The information left behind becomesevidence for the forensic scientist. This trace evidencehas also been called the ‘silent witness’, thus givingname to the popular television series.Forensic science has been taught in secondary schoolfor the past five to 10 years, with an emphasis onmolecular science, chemistry and biology. Forensicscience has also been taught in upper primary schoolover the past five years as an introduction to the scientificmethod, including the principles of forensic science,fingerprint analysis, basic paper chromatography, andcrime scene investigation (Howitt, Lewis & Waugh,2009). In contrast, forensic science does not appearto have been used as a vehicle to teach at the earlychildhood level.Context of studyThe forensic science resources implemented in thepreschool classroom in this research were developedas part of the Collaborative Science Project conductedbetween 2008 and 2010 at Curtin University in Perth,Western Australia, with funding from the AustralianLearning and Teaching Council. The CollaborativeScience Project took a cross-discipline approach tobetter preparing pre-service early childhood teachersto teach science. Collaboration between scienceacademics, teacher-educators and pre-serviceteachers was used to develop five science modulesand implement them in an early childhood ScienceEducation unit. The information presented in eachmodule aimed to provide a broad range of possibleideas and activities that could be used with three- toeight-year-old children. The modules were designedto be adaptive and flexible, rather than a set teachingprogram, so teachers could use them in a manner thatsuited their particular students and context (Howittet al., 2009). The five modules were subsequentlydeveloped into a book, Planting the seeds of science(Howitt & Blake, 2010).The pre-service teachers then had the opportunityto trial and evaluate these modules in the earlychildhood classroom during their practicum. Thus, theCollaborative Science Project aimed to increase preserviceteachers’ science content knowledge along withtheir confidence and competence towards teachingscience, as well to develop a new early childhoodscience resource. For a more detailed description of thecollaboration between the scientists, teacher-educatorsand pre-service teachers, refer to Howitt et al. (2009).In this study the first author, Christine, was the scienceteacher-educator; the second author, Simon, was theanalytical chemist specialising in forensic science; andthe third author, Emily, was the pre-service teacherwho implemented forensic science in her preschoolpracticum classroom.The five modules were implemented in a 12-weekScience Education unit during the third year of a fouryearBachelor of Education (Early Childhood Education)degree during Semester 2, 2008 at an Australianuniversity. The weekly three-hour workshops consistedof a mini-lecture followed by a range of hands-onactivities. The science learning experiences presentedwithin the workshops were characterised by activeparticipation, placement within an authentic earlyVo l u m e 3 6 N u m b e r 3 S e p t e m b e r 2 011 47