Abstract

How many of you reading this now have seen children pausing, sitting back, sighing, waving their arms around and generally appearing to be stuck for words? Have you stopped to ask yourself what this means? What are children trying to tell us when they can’t find the words that they need? Children’s gestures are valuable in informing teaching practice and how we go about assessing children’s work in science. The importance of children’s errors, misconceptions and
preconceptions in science education has become well established through a wide body of research conducted since the 1970s (for example see Vosniadou, 2008, for a recent review). In the UK, the highly influential Children’s Learning
In Science (CLIS, 1987) and Science Processes and Concept Exploration (SPACE, 1989–1998) projects reminded us not only that children’s ideas often differ from those of scientists or what is taught in school, but that these can strongly influence the direction of future learning.