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Γνωστική και Επιστημονική Σκέψη
Ερευνητικό έργο από το Πανεπιστήμιο του Cambridge
«Προκαλούμε εγκάρδια παιδιά, εφήβους και ενήλικες να συμμετάσχουν!»
Details For Recruiting Children Participants
Research Overview
As we all know, childhood is the most important stage of human cognitive growth and development. And executive function plays a crucial role in this developmental stage. Executive function is a set of cognitive skills that are associated with controlling and monitoring behaviour. It includes three core cognitive abilities – working memory (short-term memory and the ability to use those memories), cognitive flexibility (the ability to switch between different tasks), and inhibition (the ability to suppress or ignore distractions). A great number of studies have shown that these cognitive skills are critical to children's academic performance and overall development. The effect of executive function on children's mathematics and science learning abilities has received much attention in both domestic and foreign studies.
Take mathematics, a subject we have been exposed to since primary school, as an example. With the emphasis on mathematics education in China, mathematics learning ability of Chinese students has gradually become stronger. In 2018, the Results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showed that China's math performance ranked first among 79 countries. What we don't know, however, is the cognitive abilities behind such excellence in mathematics.
Therefore, our study aims to uncover the relationship between children's executive function and subjects such as mathematics and science. We will focus on the comparison of the cognitive development of children aged 8-9 and 11-12, in order to better understand the role of cognitive ability in mathematics and science learning during the development. Therefore, it is of great significance to provide educators with suggestions on curriculum design for children to better adapt to mathematics and science learning.
Participant Age Range
8-9 years old (correspond to Grade 3 in China)
11-12 years old (correspond to Grade 6 in China)
Two age groups in primary school
What Will Taking Part Involve?
This research requires the cooperation of the child, the parents, and the teacher.
What The Children (Participants) Need To Do
The child cooperates with a researcher in the classroom to complete a series of short tasks on a laptop. These tasks mainly assess:
1. Executive functions: seven mini-games of executive functions, including the Fish Flanker Task, the Football Task, the Figure Memory Task, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, the Figure Matching Task, the Category-Switching Task, and the Local-Global Task.
2. Arithmetic knowledge: three arithmetic games.
3. General cognitive ability: a game of finding patterns in graphics.
4. Science knowledge: three mini-games of scientific phenomena (Biology Challenge, Number Sorting Challenge, and Science Statement Challenge).
5. Complete a questionnaire ("About Your Home").
6. Complete a questionnaire ("About Your School").
These experiments will be done in separate sessions, and the cumulative time of each session will not exceed half an hour.
What The Parents Need To Do
Complete a demographic questionnaire.
Complete a questionnaire ("About Your Home").
What The Teachers Need To Do
Complete a questionnaire ("How the child is learning at school")
Incentives For Participation
For the children participating in the study, we will give out a small gift and issue a certificate of gratitude with the University Faculty of Education logo and the signature of our supervisor, Prof Michelle Ellefson, on it. The parents and the teachers also have opportunities to be invited to our online educational workshops.
We will also provide medal souvenirs to the schools participating the project to thank their contribution to the research.
If you are interested in this research and would like to know further information, please send an email to mail to: ScienceThinking@educ.cam.ac.uk
Details For Recruiting Adolescent Participants
Research Overview
The aim of this study is to promote our knowledge on how a set of cognitive skills can enhance adolescent students’ abilities in science learning. There has been an extensive investigation about the role of cognitive ability in academic competence, however there is limited research concerning its role in science learning process. Based on previous research, we understand that some cognitive procedures might contribute to the suppression of naïve science misconceptions (e.g. children might think an earth is flat because it looks flat. These concepts will still exist even after they learnt correct science knowledge) among adolescents, but we do not have a clear picture of some other cognitive components that might make contributions as well. In addition, there is no current research focuses on examining the link between cognition, understanding science concepts (naive science concept), the understanding of physics concepts, and the physics/math problem solving skills. The investigation in this direction will have a promising real-life application such as science discipline learning and science pedagogy development.
Participant Age Range
Adolescents from China and Greece
Adolescents aged from 15 to 17 years old
What The Participants Need To Do
On computers or PCs:
Complete a questionnaire about your personal information (5 minutes).
Complete a series of cognitive games (1 hour).
On-site:
Complete a math knowledge task (1 hours).
Complete a physics knowledge task (1.5 hour).
Incentives For Participation
By participating in this study, you will receive a certificate of participation with the logo of Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, the professor's signature, and a small souvenir. At the same time, we will invite the students and graduates from prestigious universities (Tsinghua University, Peking University, Zhejiang University, Fudan University, Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences) to hold free sessions for learning experiences sharing (teachers and parents are also welcome to participate).
If you are interested in this study and want to know more about it, please send an email to: ScienceThinking@educ.cam.ac.uk
Details For Recruiting Adult Participants
Research Overview
Executive function is a very important cognitive ability that is closely related to our self-control and self-regulatory behavior. Executive function consists of three main abilities—working memory (the ability to memorise and utilise short-term memories), cognitive flexibility (the ability to switch between tasks), and inhibition (the ability to avoid distractions). At present, although there are many studies on the relationship between executive function and learning, there are few studies on its relationship with scientific learning. In particular, cross-cultural studies in this field are still waiting for further exploration.
Therefore, our study aims to further explore the relationship between executive function and science learning. We will focus on adults aged 18-30, whose executive function is already mature. We will further explore the relationship between executive function and scientific learning, as well as this link when cultural context is taken into account. Therefore, it provides better suggestions on curriculum design for psychology and education researchers, which is essential to the field of education and psychology.
Participant Age Range
Adults from China, UK and Greece
Adults aged from 18-35 years old
What The Participants Need To Do
On computers or PCs:
Complete a questionnaire about your personal information (5 minutes).
Complete a series of cognitive games (1 hour).
Incentives For Participation
You can earn an Amazon voucher by participating in this study. Vouchers will be issued to you after the data checking by researchers,
If you are interested in this study and want to know more about it, please send an email to: ScienceThinking@educ.cam.ac.uk