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Introduction
Knowledge and cognition are subject of considera-tion since the ancient times. Plato’s consideraconsidera-tion can be quoted as an example. He defined knowledge as true, justified belief (Witwicki, 2002). A paradigm that pre-vails in modern pedagogy and education is constructiv-ism. Despite constructivism is said to be the theory of knowledge and cognition, and so the theory of learning,
Why does villagers’ giraffe feed on grass and citizens’ cats do
not drink water?
The impact of students’ living environment on the development of their knowledge
about the farm animals and pets: the analysis of drawings and questionnaires of
primary school students
Natalia Bartoszek, Eliza Rybska
Summary:
The aim of this investigation was to show the connection be-tween the living environment of children and the develop-ment of their personal knowledge of the farm animals and pets. The group of 93 students, 1-3 grade, was asked to draw one of two pictures: pets or farm animals. Another group of 69 students, 4-6 grade, filled in the questionnaire that was set to examine students’ knowledge of these animals. Examined students were brought up in urban areas (the city of Poznań) or rural areas (municipality of Gołańcz, Greater Poland Voivodeship). Questionnaires and drawings were put under the qualitative and quantitative analysis. The results show the differences in personal knowledge of the children from urban
and rural areas: the answers of the rural area students were more concrete, with more practical attitude towards the farm animals and pets. The urban area children paid more atten-tion to aesthetic and emoatten-tional aspects. The survey shows also that there is possibly connection between how often students meet some specific animals in real life and the number of cor-rect information they can give about these animals. The ad-ditional aspect of this study is to show the possibility of using the drawing analysis as a diagnostic tool of students’ environ-ment knowledge.
Key words: knowledge, personal knowledge, living environment,
pets, farm animals received: 25.11.2015; accepted: 18.02.2016; published: 1.04.2016
it is often related to the basis of teaching theory (Micha-lak, 2011). Even though three creators of constructiv-ism – J. Piaget, L. S. Vygotsky and J. Bruner – had never been working together, they contributed a lot to the de-velopment of this theory.
According to constructivism, knowledge gained by personal activity becomes personal knowledge, sig-nificant and stable (Rosalska and Zamorska, 2002, 85). With reference to Vygotsky’s theory of concept forma-tion, each student has an extensive knowledge gained in the initial contact with loved ones, society, nature and the mass media. Students create their knowledge indi-vidually, and the same process of learning and teach-ing depends on the knowledge and perceptions of the child (Śniadek, 1997, 43-46). According to Klus-Stańska (2000) a term “knowledge” can and should be under-stood as – social construct identified with science and individual mental construct at the same time. Hence, “to know something” would mean, according to Klus-Stańska, “to experience”, “to be taught”, “to have infor-mation”, as well as “to understand”. Many authors have already described their vision of knowledge types, but from the didactical point of view a special attention is paid to common or personal knowledge. The simplest definition of common knowledge (common-sense knowledge) is the knowledge that we use in everyday life (Szydłowski, 1991). This type of knowledge might be sometimes identified with personal experience of a per-son, and a child in particular, who is then called “a re-searcher from the street” (Majcher and Suska-Wróbel, 2005). The common-sense knowledge is considered as fundamental in life, durable and the most common, and yet, by it weakly structured and unscientific character, sometimes erroneous, which may reduce the effective-ness of teaching (Szydłowski, 1991). Although errors in common-sense knowledge (personal knowledge) are widespread, by the mean of their repeatability among
dr Eliza Rybska: Faculty Laboratory of Teaching and
Environmental Protection, Faculty of Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
Natalia Bartoszek: Faculty Laboratory of Teaching and
Environmental Protection, Faculty of Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
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students, the teachers might spot a chance of their ef-fective elimination. If there are mistakes made by most of the students, “one (a teacher) can seek for a universal ways of remedying the situation, of common strategies that will work for large groups of students, and perhaps for the entire school. (...) A teacher may direct the learn-ing process in a way that will help to remove the sources of the formation or fixing errors or effectively elimi-nate the existing misconceptions in students’ minds” (Szydłowski, 1991). In this context, personal knowledge would be composed of one’s mental constructs, result-ing from individual experience. It does not allow to ac-curately reflect the reality, and shows only its interpre-tation, or a specific transformation of reality through existing personal information resources. Klus-Stańska and Nowicka claim that personal construct that exists in everyone’s mind (and can be understood as a personal knowledge) is created individually, through somebody’s own experience, by the process of negotiating mean-ings with others or mentally adopted public knowledge (Klus-Stańska and Nowicka, 2005, 127). From such perspective it seems to be crucial for every teacher to acquire the ability to diagnose a personal knowledge of students (especially the “gaps” and misconceptions that are present in such mental constructs). Among the goals that are posed in front of a teacher there are the diagnosis of students’ skills, evaluation of the results of students’ work and diagnosis of the students’ family en-vironment. Another goal is to seek for an explanation and the circumstances of not only students’ behaviour, but also of the effects of the educational process (Palka, 2011). Analysis of the responses given by students, in-cluding errors that they commited, is not only an im-portant didactical tool, but primarily such analysis pro-vides a valuable information about the student himself, about his knowledge, and about unexpected outcomes of the educational process – about the process of
stu-dents’ personal knowledge construction (Dąbrowski, 2011). Among the diagnostic tools in pedagogy, there are some quite commonly used ones such as: a diagnos-tic survey, the method of case studies, and also tech-niques such as observation, interview, survey question-naires, and projective techniques (Skałbania, 2011). For the purposes of didactical diagnosis, the most frequent-ly used tools are – in addition to the testing of school achievements – individual interviews, surveys, ques-tionnaires, and observations (see for example Mintzes et al., 2005; Treagust, 2012). In recent years, one might observe an increasingly popularity of methods that are based on the usage of drawing (Barraza, 1999; Reiss and Tunniciffe, 2001; Ehrlén, 2009).
The richness of the students’ environment is especially important while talking about acquiring scientific knowl-edge. Although some authors would state that a child can acquire knowledge about the nature without having a direct association with the object of interest (Godley, 2008), there is an unquestionable difference between such knowledge and expertise that comes from personal expe-rience of nature. The association with nature may result in an increase in the pro-environmental awareness of students, and shaping positive attitudes in relation to the natural environment (Urey et al., 2009). Children from rural areas should therefore be more aware of relationships occurring in the surrounding world of living organisms than their peers from the city. To verify the above sup-position, research was conducted, and the preliminary results are discussed later in this article.
As students’ provenance is not a crucial issue, which can influence formation of knowledge in minds of young leaners, we hypothesised that their daily envi-ronment as a whole may have significant relationship. Authors of many publication claim that not only envi-ronment of living have influence on effects of learning, but also the behaviour of student (Abbas and Othman,
2011; Ürey et al., 2009; Oloumi et al., 2011; Mirrahimi, 2011). According to Abbas and Othman (2011), chil-dren which attend to kindergarten outside the city were more often arguing, less friendly, and unwilling to co-operation with other kids. Oloumi et al. (2011) noticed, however, that outdoor classes in natural environment develop abilities of communication, team working, and self-discipline. In wide range of research regarding an influence of the localisation of the school on teaching, Randhawa and Michayluk (1975) claimed significant differences in equipment and ambience between class-room in the rural and urban area, in a wide margin for the second one. Influence of the environment on con-structing of personal knowledge and character of the child might be different, but it still plays an important role during development of the human.
Science and science education are cultural prod-uct and at the same time part of the cultural heritage (Osborne and Dillon, 2008). Maddoc (1981) wrote that science and science education create part of the culture of the society and because of didactic elements of edu-cation, both (science and science education) should be also considered in social perspective. Science and envi-ronmental education are very important and fascinat-ing, since they let us explain surrounding world and interpret it. Furthermore, development of science and discovered resolutions make science usable to solving many problems of modern societies (Osborne and Dil-lon, 2008). Of course, science has limitations. As it is widely known, Einstein said: “Our whole science, com-paring to reality, is primitive and childish – but it is still the most precious thing which we own”.
The goal of this work was to diagnose knowledge of the children about farmed animals and pets, and to investigate whether the environment of living of the student (urban or rural) had an influence on their personal knowledge about those animals. A leading hypothesis of the work
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was as follows: a living environment of the students have influence on their personal knowledge about farm ani-mals and pets.
Material and methods
MaterialThe investigation was conducted during the first half of 2013 on the group of 162 elementary school students, boys and girls. Some students (86) were brought up in the rural area and others (76) in the urban area. Eleven students declared to be brought up on a farm. Exam-ined students attended schools in Poznań or Gołańcz (municipality of Gołańcz, Greater Poland Voivodeship).
Students were divided into two groups: 1-3 grades students, investigated in the first stage of study (93 stu-dents: 51 from Gołańcz and 42 from Poznań) and 4-6 grade students, investigated in the second stage (69 stu-dents: 35 from Gołańcz and 34 from Poznań).
All the students have been working on their own, in the classroom, in the presence of teacher. The selection of students from two radically different environments (a large city and small villages) was intentional and nec-essary to create a contrast to investigate the real impact of the environment on students’ personal knowledge. However the sample was not representative and was not selected in the way which enables to draw a certain conclusion. This paper should be considered only as an illustration of usage of a tool and data analysis, and as a contribution to the more complex study. The subject seems to be worth of the further interest of the research-ers and deeper analysis.
Methods
Collected results (drawings and filled in question-naires) were put under the qualitative and quantitative
analysis (Babbie, 2009). The quantitative analysis is used mostly to investigate figures. It allows to use the bigger experimental group and to draw the conclu-sions on the basis of the statistical analysis. The main tools in that kind of analysis are closed questions and the influence of the researcher is minor. The qualitative analysis, in spite of the quantitative analysis, leans on the interpretation and comparing the answers of the in-terviewees. The questions are mostly open and the an-swers are given as a written text, drawing, or recorded as a sound track. Because the qualitative analysis is very time consuming, the experimental group is small. The influence of the researcher is noticeably bigger than in case of the quantitative analysis. In this research two methods have been used: drawings analysis (qualitative and quantitative) and questionnaires analysis (qualita-tive and quantita(qualita-tive). The drawings have been used in lower grades, mostly due to the fact that younger chil-dren use drawings in their school activities more often than older students. Drawing analysis is used to inves-tigate the common-sense knowledge and mistakes or misconceptions that occurs in a personal knowledge, not only in students’ (Sözen and Bolat, 2011) but also in adults’ personal knowledge (Broadbent et al., 2004). In this research drawing analysis was used to inves-tigate the common-sense/personal knowledge of 1-3 grade students. To examine students’ knowledge of the farm animals and pets, students have been divided in two groups. First group (21 urban area students and 33 rural area students) was asked the question: “Draw the farm animals and everything that links with them”, and second group (21 urban area students and 18 rural area students) was asked: “Draw pets and everything that links with them”. Collected answers were put under the quantitative and qualitative analysis. This allowed to determine which animals were the most popular and what other objects were included in students’ answers.
To examine the statistical significance of the differences between analysed drawings, Fisher’s exact test has been used (http://www.langsrud.com/stat/fisher.htm).
To conduct the additional research on 4-6 grades students, the questionnaire was used. A questionnaire is a form close to school tests, a method often used to diagnose students’ knowledge even on the early stag-es of education. The experimental group was not big enough to state the results as representative. Never-theless, all the results seem to be very interesting and can be treated as an additional source of information of students’ personal knowledge and misconceptions. The questioner examined the general knowledge about the farm animals (question 2) and the χ2 test was used
to check the statistical significance of the results. Other answers were analysed using Fisher’s exact test (http:// www.langsrud.com/stat/fisher.htm).
To analyse the answers to open questions, creation of categories was needed (Babbie, 2009). Demographic data made it possible to determine how many interview-ees were brought up on a farm.
Results
The analysis of 1-3 grade students’ drawings
Table 1 compares the frequencies of different pets on both groups of 1-3 grades students. The most pop-ular animal in both groups is a cat (72% of drawings in total), followed by fishes (61%), dog (57%), and birds (44%). Some of animals were presented only by students from one group. Urban area children presented as pets: rabbit, mouse, spider, snake, lizard and stick insect. None of rural area children mentioned these animals. In the opposite, none of urban area children mentioned hedgehog, Guinean pig, turtle, butterfly or kangaroo as pets whereas students from the rural areas did. The statistically significant differences concerned the
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egories less in number. The most noticeable difference concerned rabbit which was presented as a pet by the rural area children.
In case of the question concerning the farm animals (Table 2) the most common answer was a pig (79% of drawings in total) followed by sheep (64%) and horse (56%). Table 2 shows the comparison of frequency of different farm animals presence in 1-3 grade students’ drawings in both groups.
The statistically significant differences can be seen in case of hen, cow, and cat. These animals were present-ed more often by the urban area children. Animals like duck or rabbit were chosen more often by the rural area children and it is also statistically significant difference.
In spite of the animals, there were also another ob-jects on students’ works which show the associations of students with the topic. The frequency of these in both
groups show Tables 3a and 3b. Children from the urban areas more often presented pets indoors and children from the rural areas put the greater emphasis on the animal’s food. These differences are statistically sig-nificant. More statistically significant differences can be found on the drawings of farm animals. Rural area children presented only animals’ offspring. Urban areas children mentioned farm buildings, food and
behav-Animal
Drawings being answer to question: Draw pets
and everything that links with them
Children from the rural areas
Children from the
urban areas In total
Number of animals per drawing % Number of animals per drawing % Number of animals per drawing % Cat 21 64 18 86 39 72 Fishes 19 58 14 67 33 61 Dog 17 52 14 67 31 57 Bird 10 30 14 67 24 44 Hamster 7 21 5 24 12 22 Rabbit * 0 0 9 43 9 17 Guinean pig* 3 9 0 0 3 6 Hedgehog * 2 6 0 0 2 4 Mouse * 0 0 2 10 2 4 Spider * 0 0 2 10 2 4 Snake * 0 0 2 10 2 4 Turtle * 2 6 0 0 2 4 Lizard 0 0 1 5 1 2 Kangoroo 1 3 0 0 1 2 Butterfly 1 3 0 0 1 2 Table 1. Comparison of frequency of different pets presence in 1-3 grade students’ drawings
Asterisk means that the result was statistically significant (p<0.05).
Table 2. Comparison of frequency of different farm animals presence in 1-3 grade students’ drawings
Asterisk means that the result was statistically significant (p<0.05).
Animal
Drawings being answer to question: Draw the farm animals
and everything that links with them
Children from the rural areas
Children from the
urban areas In total
Number of animals per drawing % Number of animals per drawing % Number of animals per drawing % Pig 14 78 17 81 31 79 Sheep 13 72 12 57 25 64 Horse 12 67 10 48 22 56 Hen * 8 44 13 62 21 54 Cow * 6 33 12 57 18 46 Dog 8 44 9 43 17 44 Cat * 4 22 10 48 14 36 Duck * 9 50 3 14 12 31 Rabbit * 8 44 0 0 8 21 Donkey * 2 11 0 0 2 5 Pheasant 1 6 0 0 1 3 Turkey 1 6 0 0 1 3 Stork 0 0 1 5 1 3 Goose 0 0 1 5 1 3
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iours of animals (like a mud bath of a pig or swimming duck). The examples of analysed drawings can be found on figures 1-4.
Table 3a. The associations with pets in 1-3 grade students’ drawings
Asterisk means that the result was statistically significant (p<0.05).
Association
Children from the rural areas
Children from the
urban areas In total
The number of answers % The number of answers % The number of answers % Aquarium/terrarium/cage 19 58 17 81 36 67
Animals presented indoors * 5 15 13 62 18 33
Food for animals * 12 36 5 24 17 31
Human surrounded by
animals* 0 0 4 19 4 7
Offspring 1 3 2 10 3 6
Toys for animals/grooming
accesories 2 6 0 0 2 4
Chained dog * 2 6 0 0 2 4
Veterinarian 1 3 0 0 1 2
Faeces 0 0 1 5 1 2
Table 3b. The associations with the farm animals in 1-3 grade students’ drawings
Asterisk means that the result was statistically significant (p<0.05).
Association
Children from the rural areas
Children from the
urban areas In total
The number of answers % The number of answers % The number of answers % Farm buildings * 0 0 11 52 11 28
A pig taking a mud bath * 0 0 6 29 6 15
Food for animals * 0 0 5 24 5 13
Offspring * 5 28 1 5 6 15 Swimming ducks * 0 0 3 14 3 8 Chained dog* 0 0 2 10 2 5 Sounds of animals 0 0 1 5 1 3 Animal tagging 0 0 1 5 1 3 Horse riding 0 0 1 5 1 3
Fig. 1. An example of the urban area student’s answer to question: Draw pets
and everything that links with them
Fig. 2. An example of the rural area student’s answer to question: Draw pets and everything that links with them
Fig. 3. An example of the urban area student’s answer to question: Draw the farm animals and everything that links
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swers in both groups, using the χ2 test. The results are
as follows:
• for the first sentence („Choose the best answer: If there is no cock (…)”), and fourth („Choose the best answer: We call the baby pigs piglets. And their parents (…)”), the difference was statistically significant (p1= 0.004; p4=0.032). More correct ans-wers were given by the rural area children.
• for the second sentence („Choose the best answer: In order to start giving a milk, a cow has to (…)”), third („Choose the best answer: Little ducklings soon after their hatch (…)), and fifth („Choose the best answer: A she-cat sometimes brings her kit-tens mice alive. She does it because (…)), the dif-ference had no statistical significance (p2=0.70;
p3=0.70; p5=0.75).
Tables 5a and 5b present the answers to the ques-tion 3: How often do you see the animals given below in
real life? Mark (X). Which of these animals you can give the most information about? Students from both groups
Fig. 4. An example of the rural area student’s answer to question: Draw the farm animals and everything that links
with them
The analysis of 4-6 grade students’ questionnaires
Table 4 shows the number of student’s answer to the first question: What kind of farm animals do you know?
Write their names (the animals given 3 or less times
were skipped). The most popular farm animal was pig (34 answers in the rural area group and 32 answers in the urban area group) however, this difference has no statistical significance. On the contrary, statistically significant differences concerned only sheep which was mentioned more often by the rural area children and goose mentioned more often by the urban area group. There were also very unexpected answers like grebe (1 answer, student from the rural area) or parrot (1 answer, student from the urban area). Students mentioned from 3 to 13 species, but mode for both groups is 5.
In question 2 students were asked to choose the best ending for the five sentences. The question examined the common sense knowledge of the farm animals. For each of five sentences, we compared the number of
an-Table. 4. The number of student’s answer to question: What
kind of farm animals do you know?
Asterisk means that the result was statistically significant (p<0.05).
Animal Children from the rural areas
Children from the urban areas The number of answers in total Pig 34 32 66 Cow 35 28 63 Hen 31 32 63 Horse 18 23 41 Dog 14 17 31 Cat 11 15 26 Duck 13 11 24 Sheep * 21 13 34 Goat 13 11 24 Goose * 6 11 17 Rabbit 5 5 10
Table. 5a. Distribution of answers to question:
How often do you see the animals given below in real life?
Animal
Children from the rural areas (the number of answers)
Children from the urban areas (the number of answers) never once several times often never once several times often
Horse 0 2 20 13 0 0 21 13
Cat 0 0 1 34 0 0 0 34
Giraffe 14 18 3 0 4 9 20 0
Table. 5b. Distribution of answers to question: Which of these animals you can give
the most information about?
The number means also the number of the correct information given by students about each animal. Asterisk means that the result was statistically significant (p<0.05).
Animal Children from the rural areas Children from the urban areas
About horse 6 8
About cat * 26 15
About giraffe * 1 5
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(urban and rural) declared that an animal they see the most often is a cat. Cat was also the animal students could give the most information about.
Table 6a presents the examples of pets given by the students. The most common answer was dog, followed by cat and hamster. The differences are not statistically significant. Answers given not so often like fishes (cho-sen by the rural area children) and rabbit (cho(cho-sen by the urban area children) had a statistically significant dif-ferences.
Students’ answers, taken together, form a character-istics of pets. Answers were categorized and presented below (Table 6b). Both groups mentioned two character-istics as the most important: pets are the animals kept at home and are not afraid of human. Only difference in the given answers was the opportunity of playing with pets, mentioned more often by the urban area children.
The last question concerned the animals that stu-dents breed and why. The most stustu-dents declared breed-ing dog, cat, and fishes. 18 students answered that they breed no animals (Table 7a).
The most popular reason for breeding animals in both groups was the affection toward the animal. The differences were not statistically significant. The urban area students mentioned the adhesion of pets to their master, ease in taking care of them, and the character of an animal. In these cases the differences between the two groups were statistically significant.
The analysis of drawings and questionnaires allowed to find the examples of the alternative concepts existed in the personal knowledge of the students. The answers given below contain some gaps and understatements:
• Do you breed any animals? No, but I have a dog and fishes. But I don’t know if I breed them. (rural area
student)
• Giraffe: it has a long neck, it is under protection, it lives in ZOO. (rural area student)
Table 6a. The most common examples of pets according to 4-6 grade students
Asterisk means that the result was statistically signifi-cant (p<0.05). Animal Children from the rural areas (the number of answers) Children from the urban areas (the number of answers) The number of answers in total Dog 21 19 40 Cat 22 17 39 Hamster 9 8 17 Fishes * 7 4 11 Guinean pig 5 4 9 Rabbit * 2 4 6
Table 6b. A characteristics of pets according to 4-6 grade students
Asterisk means that the result was statistically significant (p<0.05).
Characteristic Children from the rural areas (the number of answers) Children from the urban areas (the number of answers)
Are kept at home 6 5
Are tamed, do not afraid of human 5 6
They are friends of human 4 5
You can play with them * 2 6
They are attached to their master 4 4
You have to take care of them, feed them 4 4
They are of small sizes 4 3
They have more well-kept appearance 4 3
They behave in some specific way 4 1
They are cept in cages 2 2
They are calm, harmless 3 1
Table 7a. The most common answers to question: What kind of animals do you breed?
Asterisk means that the result was statistically signifi-cant (p<0.05).
Animal
Children from the rural areas (the number of
answers)
Children from the urban areas
(the number of answers) Dog 18 13 Cat 9 6 Fishes 7 8 Rabbit * 5 3 Hamster * 1 3 Turtle 1 2 None 10 8
Table 7b. The most common answers to question: Why do you breed that
specific animal? With an example of an animal that is bred for each category
Asterisk means that the result was statistically significant (p<0.05).
Reason Children from the rural areas (the number of answers) Children from the urban areas (the number of answers) Student’s affection (because I like/love these
animals) (dog, cat, rabbit, hamster, fishes) 11 9
It grows attached to its master (dog, cat) * 2 6
Easy to take care of (fishes, cat) * 2 5
Because it is nice/cute (cat, dog, rabbit, canary,
parrot) 4 4
You can play with it (dog, cat, rabbit, hamster) 3 3
Due to its character (dog, cat) * 0 5
It was a gift I got (dog, fishes, hamster,
Guin-ean pig, turtle) 3 2
I found it and took in (dog, hamster) 1 1
It can reproduce (rabbit) 2 0
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• A giraffe eats grass and leaves from the trees. (rural
area student)
• A cat has four limbs, it has moustaches to feel scents.
(rural area student)
• Cats: little and cute animals. After kittens are born, mother and father look after them. (rural area
stu-dent)
• When the cat is little, it has big eyes and muzzle, and when it grows, they stay the same size. (rural
area student)
• A cat usually drinks milk, because it doesn’t like wa-ter. (urban area student)
• A horse has to eat a lot of grass and hay to give milk.
(urban area student)
• Horses were bred mostly because there were no trac-tors. (urban area student)
• Cats don’t like catching mice too much, but someti-mes they have to. They like doing nothing and just walking around. (urban area student)
• A cat walks around the backyard, sleeps and doesn’t know what to do. It meows all the time, because it never eats its fill. (urban area student)
• There are different breeds of horses e.g. chestnut.
(urban area student)
The analysis of students’ drawings revealed only two obvious mistakes (one that repeated 4 times on different drawings). Students presented a bird with a beak and an additional mouth or just with a mouth and no beak at all. Another example of the mistake was a drawing of a rabbit in a standing position that can be often ob-served in the cartoons. All of these answers were given by the urban area group.
The mistakes on students drawings:
• (a-e) students presented a bird with a beak and a mouth or with a mouth only;
• (e) rabbit in a standing position that can be often observed in the cartoons.
a
b
c
d
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Discussion
Despite the fact that those research were conducted on the small group and cannot be recognised as repre-sentative, it diagnose important differences in percep-tion of pets and livestock, between students from two different environments. Available in Polish dictionaries definition of pets and livestock are:
• livestock are the animals cultivated in farm for commodity production or tractive force,
• pets are animals traditionally living with humans in their houses or other similar accommodation, maintained by owner for companionship.
Analysis of results did not show obvious differences in knowledge of the students about pets. Either in draw-ings or questionnaires in both areas, the most com-monly mentioned pet was cat and dog (Table 1 and 6a). Children from urban area more often mention a rabbit as a pet than children form rural area. In both students groups the most mentioned characteristic issue of pets was a fact of keeping them at home. Besides, children from urban area presented pets on the drawings show-ing the interior of the house (Table 3a) or mentioned the fact of possibility to play with a pet (Table 6b). In this research, rabbit is important, because depending on the living environment and question’s formula, children from rural area claim that rabbit is a pet or a livestock. Similar situation concerned a cat in the group of chil-dren from urban area: they claimed that cat could be a pet (Tables 1 and 6a) or a livestock (Tables 2 and 4). Indicating a cat as a livestock is beyond the definition of such organism.
During analysis of information showed by respond-ents about livestock, it is possible to notice differences between children from different environments. Draw-ings of the children from rural environment were more severe, poorer in number of association, mostly showed
particular animal, often with a caption of this animal. Interestingly, none of the children noticed and drew the farm buildings (Table 3b), and only mentioned as-sociation which was expressed by students was ability of animals to have an offspring. Children from urban area draw animals with whole infrastructure, with farmsteads, pastures and other buildings, but on their drawings often misconceptions about animals were observed. Differences in conceptions about those ani-mals between children from urban and rural areas ap-pear not only in their personal knowledge and existing in it misconceptions. The most often mentioned farm animal was pig (Tables 2 and 4). Children from rural environment mentioned more farm animals (Table 4). Information expressed by them was more scientifically accurate than information from children living in ur-ban environment (on the basis of analysis of second task from questionnaire).
Distinctly, difference in perception about what role particular animal play in children environment is ob-served. Cat, which in the village is designed to catch mice, in the city was somehow downgraded to role of the pet. Strommen (1995) mentioned that during re-search of primary school students living in forest and urban environment noticed significant correlation be-tween knowledge about forest animals and environ-ment of living. Presented results show that children liv-ing in forest and havliv-ing possibility of direct interaction have a greater knowledge about those animals and have better understanding of processes and phenomena of the nature. Similar results were presented Tunnicliffe and Reiss (1999) who claimed that basic knowledge of children about animals is gained from family and di-rect observation. Tarłowski (2006) mentioned also an influence of direct contact with nature (especially in environment of living – urban and rural) and biological knowledge of the parents can have impact on general
understanding and conception of four-year-old chil-dren about human, other mammals, and insects.
In presented research, it is revealed that relation between how often they observe particular animal and students’ information about those animals. Both groups declared that the most frequently observed ani-mal is a cat (Tables 5a and 5b) and there was the most information regarding cat. On the other hand, children from urban area more often observed giraffe than their colleagues from villages, and mentioned more informa-tion about this animal. In this case difference was sta-tistically significant (Table 5b). However, Godley (2008) claimed that children can gain biological knowledge without direct interaction with nature. There is a dif-ference between knowledge and knowledge, which is a result of proximate experiencing of the nature. Ürey (2009) argued that close experience with the nature can result in higher environmental awareness of the stu-dents.
In analysed groups the most often grown animal were dog, cat, and fishes. Nevertheless, children from rural area more often mentioned rabbit than the other group (Table 7a). Other distinction, depending on living environment of the students, were observed during the analysis of the motives of raising pets (Table 7b). Some responses were presented with the same frequency – at-tachment to owner or aesthetic issues, but students from the rural area mentioned such aspects as rearing animal for food or financial benefit or possibility of their re-production and expanding the farm and length of the animal life. Less important for them was a possibility of attachment, ease of cultivation, and character of the animal or possibility of playing with a pet, which was important issue for students from urban area.
Misconceptions were more often observed in older groups, which had more difficult task and responses were more complex. Village children more often had
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ceptions about giraffes (e.g. the animal most often eat the grass or owning the neck which is “heavily exposed to fracture”) which, as mentioned earlier, might be caused by infrequent observation of this animal. There appeared also misconceptions about animals which was well-known to them. For example, student from urban area answered: “Horse, to give milk, had to eat a lot of grass and hay” or one of the village students mentioned: “Cat (…) has the whiskers to feel the smell”1. Sometimes
misconceptions may result from common perception of the cat (stereotype or the symbol). Kopaliński (2007), as a symbols connected with cat, mentioned: delight in comfort and luxury, laziness, freedom, and independ-ence. This stereotypes can be connected with answers of the students, e.g. “Cats don’t like to catch the mice, but sometimes they had to. They like to do nothing or walking” or “Cat is wandering around in backyard whole day in may, it sleeps and don’t know what to do with itself. It is constantly meowing and is always hun-gry”. Misconceptions or alternative conceptions appear independently from gender, in each age group, social classes, or cultural circles (Prokop et al., 2008). In eve-ryday matters they are useful, helping with the orienta-tion in the world, to understand it on individual way. On the other hand, these kind of conceptions are very resistant to change. Sources of such conceptions might be an other person which pass it (e.g. parent or teacher) or incorrectly understood ideas. Misconceptions and alternative conceptions might appear in minds as an experience in the naive explaining complexed issues or explaining abstract concepts to a person who has no ex-perience with them (Yip, 1998). For example, how cor-rectly explain someone, who never saw a winter, what is snow? Aleksandra Maj (2011), during describing her Italian experience in flexible planning of educational 1 Whiskers, commonly known as a moustache, are cats sensory
or-gans.
process and conducting progettazione strategy, men-tiones that in this case every errors, misconceptions, and alternative conceptions are treated as a resource. Authors of this publication also points out important role of preliminary diagnosis of conceptions conducted by teacher in planning educational process.
None of the animals, which were mentioned in questionnaires as pets, were invertebrates. Better rep-resented group than birds and individual reptiles (like snake or turtle) and fishes (as a group of animals) were mammals. Few answers about invertebrates appeared in drawing of the students from class 1-3. General tenden-cy to omit the animals other than vertebrates is similar as in research of Prokop and co-workers (2008), who even pointed out the phenomenon of ignorance of in-vertebrates in a group of investigated children.
Children from different environments focus on dif-ferent elements of the world which surrounds them. It may have influence on shaping knowledge in their minds and making mistakes in the future. Majcher and Suska-Wróbel (2005) mention that “on the richness of nature experiences influence local and family environ-ment”. Although, according to their research, children from urban area had more experience with the nature than children from the rural area; in this case, we can talk more about qualitative differences than gained ex-perience. Analysis of the interviews conducted during research described in this paper lets the authors support (although not fully confirm, beacuse of methodologi-cal reasons mentioned above) earlier hypothesis that environment of living of the students has influence on personal knowledge of the student about farm ani-mals and pets. Furthermore, common-sense knowledge about farm animals is richer in group of village stu-dents. However, because of the number of the students investigated, these data are still preliminary and require further analyses to be confirmed with respect to the
influence of environment of living on common-sense knowledge of the students.
Premises
1. The results encourage to continue the research on the influence of environment of living on personal knowledge of the students (better knowledge of the rural area students about the livestock). A role of direct experiencing of the nature (including rear-ing animals in the house and takrear-ing care of pets or rearing and taking care of animals in biologi-cal laboratory) is also important to construct the knowledge and shape the attitudes of students. 2. Personal knowledge of students may often contain
misconceptions, which not always are possible to verify even by direct experiences with the nature. The recommendation for teachers (especially for the first years of primary school) is to diagnose pre-liminary knowledge and plan the classes to replace misconceptions with correct scientific knowledge. 3. Drawings are interesting tool to diagnose students’
conceptions about animals. It might be a source of information for a teacher how their pupils perceive the nature.
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