Constructing Science

Deena Skolnick Weisberg and David M. Sobel

Acknowledgments ix
I The Foundations of Scientific Thinking
1 How Do We Develop the Capacity to Think Scientifically? 3
2 The Evolution of Rational Constructivism 21
3 Beyond Rational Constructivism 61
II Bridging Causal Reasoning to Scientific Thinking
5 A New Blicket Detector Task 125
6 Contextualization in Causal Reasoning and Scientific Thinking 135
7 Causal Reasoning and the Development of Metacognitive Thinking: Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Investigations 153
III Children's Explicit Definitions of Abstract Concepts
8 Children's Definitions of "Science" 177
9 Children's Definitions of "Learning" and "Teaching" 219
10 Children's Definitions of "Pretending" 239
IV Conclusion
11 What Does It Mean to Engage in Scientific Thinking? 271
Notes 289
References 307
Index 359