Children's Tacit and Explicit Understandings of Dinosaurs.

The purpose of this cross-age study was to investigate elementary students' (N=120) tacit and explicit understandings of dinosaurs. Detailed analysis of audiotaped interviews of children's performance during a Piagetian-type clinical interview suggests that children's conceptual understandings of dinosaurs are first developed at a tacit level from their experiences with models, pictures, movies, and concrete representations of ancient life, all of which are part of the milieu of childhood. Even though young children have difficulty verbalizing their conceptual understandings of ancient fauna, they are able to classify representations of fauna as being Mesozoic or non-Mesozoic species with high degrees of accuracy. As children mature and/or have more experiences with dinosaur-related concepts, they are able to verbalize more geologic time-related explanations of ancient life. Findings from this study tend to support Polyani's Theory of Tacit Knowledge in that children's conceptual understandings are built first at a tacit level and later develop at an explicit level. (Author)