"A Head Start on Science" emphasizes encouraging a sense of wonder within young children through their use of the science processes.  There are three ways of looking at the meaning of process. An emphasis on process usually implies a corresponding de-emphasis on specific science factual "content".  But, don't get the wrong impression!  Science content is still there - children learn about their everyday world by examining and exploring such things as snails, plants, rocks and shadows.  But, the emphasis is not on spoon-feeding them specific information about these objects and phenomena.  Rather, they are encouraged to expand their perceptions of the world by learning how better to observe such things as silkworms changing into moths, how to compare the smells of various foods, how to classify leaves collected on a walk, and how to communicate what they have learned.

     A second meaning of process centers upon the idea that how children learn science should resemble what scientists do - the processes they carry out in their scientific activities.  Scientists do observe, and classify, and infer, and carry out experiments, and communicate their findings.  How have they become able to do these things?   Presumably, they learned to do them, over a period of many years, by practicing them.  We believe that just as the people of science have learned to gain information in these ways, the elementary forms of what they do can begin to be learned by very young children. This does not mean that every person will some day become a scientist.  Instead, it says that truly understanding science depends upon being able to look upon and deal with the world in the ways that the scientist does.

     A third meaning of process introduces the idea of human intellectual development.  From this point of view, processes are in a broad sense "ways of processing information."  Such processing grows more complex as the individual develops from early childhood on. The intellectual skills that are developed allow a child to get much more information from a simple observation than before these skills are developed. Therefore, a child observing a snail will see much more than just a slow-moving object in the grass. She will notice the sticky trail the snail leaves, will compare the snail to other slow-moving objects, 'will observe what the snail eats, and will begin to ask questions about and comment on the snail's environment and other things that interest her.

     There are four processes that we feel are developmentally appropriate to very young children: observing, communicating, comparing and organizing or classifying.  They include the following elements:
 
         Observing 
              o    Seeing
              o    Hearing
              o    Feeling
              o    Tasting
              o    Smelling

         Communicating
              o    Oral
              o    Written
              o    Pictorial

          Comparing
              o    Sensory comparisons
              o    Linear, weight, capacity and quantity
                    comparisons

         Organizing or Classifying
              o    Grouping
              o    Sequencing
              o    Data gathering

Adapted from: Science--A Process Approach,
Commission on Science Education,  American
Association for the Advancement of Science
 
                            © 1998   All rights reserved.
                                 "A HEAD START ON SCIENCE" DEMONSTRATION PROJECT
                                California State University, Long Beach, Department of Science Education
 

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