This studt aimed to measure the primary school children's performance level in balance tasks and to analyse the types of rules they apply to the solution of the task, Theoretically, the analysis was based on Siegler's rule-assessment approach which em...
This studt aimed to measure the primary school children's performance level in balance tasks and to analyse the types of rules they apply to the solution of the task, Theoretically, the analysis was based on Siegler's rule-assessment approach which emphasizes the importance of knoweledge base in the efficiency of learning and instruction.
Subjects of this study were 64 primary school children from 2nd to 5th grade. equally divided into four groups. Tasks used in this study were 24 balance tasks, 4 in each of 6 types of the task including balance, weight, distance, conflict-weight, conflict-distance and conflict-baalnce task.
The following conclusions were obtained from the result and discussion :
First, a significant difference in performance level is revealed only bewteen the 2nd and 3rd, 4th, 5th grades, which means no progress between 3rd and 5th grades. Therefore, appropriate educational regards is necessary to promote the task solution ability of children beyond the 3rd grade.
Second, the level of children's balance task solution is different by the type of task. Thus, it is required to reexamine the adequacy of the types of task presented in the text and to varify the task type to promote children's ability to solve balance task.
Third, according to Siegler's rule criterion, the 2nd grade children chiefly rely on rule Ⅰ, whereas 3rd 4th, and 5th grade children on rule Ⅱ and Ⅲ. Therefore, it seems evident that the rules required to solve the tasks in the text and those represented in children's knowledge base are not coincided.
Fourth, the major sources of children's error revealed in their explanation are found to be both too heavy a reliance an the encoding of weight and failure in systematic intergration of weight and distance. It is suggested that two factors be emphasized in teaching balance problem.