Interaction of Physical and Narrative Experiencing of Heat Transfer Phenomena by Kindergarten Children

Abstract We investigate the interaction of physical and narrative forms of experiencing in the construction of concepts by young children in their early encounters with thermal phenomena. 24 children, aged between 4.6 and 6.6 years, were involved in both types of experience: first the physical one, consisting in heating of water by immersion of hot stones, then the narrative one, the listening of an illustrated story told by the teacher. We will present the outcomes of a qualitative investigation aimed at observing the conceptual development of the children by analysing their language in individual interviews performed before and after the intervention. The results in the post-test show that the children improved in their ability to describe the thermal phenomena they observed and developed a better understanding of the processes involved compared to the pre-test.