Children's approaches to the concept of volume

The research reported is an attempt to explore 11-year-old children's approaches to the concept of volume. Six tasks have been devised to identify any commonalities in children's responses. Results suggest that children hold and use different conceptions in their effort to explain and compare aspects of volume. However, these conceptions fall in certain categories which are met in almost all the tasks: volume is the space occupied, the capacity, related to the material substance, related to the geometrical properties, related to the weight and indefinable. Children's comparing actions (justifications and strategies) have also been analyzed and characterized as tautological, phenomenological, experimental, or as referred to the properties of the object. Common patterns in children's conceptions and justifications across the different tasks showed a variety of possible approaches to volume which will probably be met in other contexts and are presented in the form of a systemic network. As our study indicates, the concept of volume is related to a number of factors like the shape and geometrical properties, the nature of the matter, the mass and the weight, the hollowness, and the openness of the object. This complexity is not appreciated in teaching where the concept of volume is approached in a fragmented way and without paying attention to the referent. It is suggested that appropriate integrated activities could facilitate children to construct and unify a plurality of ideas in order to form a “mature concept” of volume. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.