Helping children visiting zoos construct understanding about animals
SUE DALE TUNNICLIFFE
formerly Head of Education, Zoological Society of London
Constructing meaning about the world is a social activity (Bruner 1990: 56) and occurrs during a visit to a zoo to look at animal specimens -for children do not embark upon such activities alone. Children acquire information about animals from their earliest years both through their spontaneous observations and what they are taught and thus construct their personal understanding (Bloom 1990; Gilbert, Osborne, & Frensham, 1982) and the zoo visits can consolidate and extend this early learning A llocating a name to a concept, in this case a type of animal, is the last of four stages in the acquisition of a concept (Nelson (1974). Naming animals is a central activity of visitors to zoo (Rosenfeld 1980), learning the names of animals is a key part in learning about biodiversity. In helping children to learn names adults point out the object and name it, and, unless the indicate that it is not the case, adults name whole objects, not parts (Ninio 1980) .
If zoos, and children’s zoos in particular, are to help children learn about animals, it is essential to focus the design of the zoo in such a way that it enhances learning and is not a fantasy designed for adults by adults or a place designed to elicit affective parental comments through looking at baby animal swith distinctive anthropomorphic features of round heads and big eyes, as many children’s zoos of the past have been (Tunnicliffe 1995). In order to achieve this objective it is essential to know in some detail the topics about which the visitors talk when looking at animals.
A research project in England collected and transcribed the conversations of elementary schools children and their accompanying adults to find out what it was they talked about. The conversations were analysed using a systemic network (Bliss Monk and Ogborn 1983) that was specifically designed for the work (Tunnicliffe 1994).
An essential part of planning the educational tasks is to know the general topics about which the children, and their accompanying adults, will comment without prompting. If these topics are taken as the staring point, the further planned educational tasks can be built around them. The following data is based on 459 conversations of school groups at London Zoo, similar resulst were obtained in the USA and England for family or schools groups.
Table 1 shows the data. That for direct animal observations other than naming shown in Table 1- Body aprts and Behaviour- fall into broad categories which are shown in Tables 2, 3, 4 and 5, together with some examples of conversation about the particular aspect.
First of all children look at specific attributes of animals- parts of the body and behaviour.
There are four categories of body parts: 1. the front end(head and sense organs);2. the dimensions of the animal- size, shape, colour and body covering and number of animals; 3. the disrupters to the outline tails and legs; 4. unfamiliar organs such as horns, excretory or reproductive organs.
Table 1:
The main categories of topic of comments about live animals amongst primary school groups at London zoo (n=459)
Number and per cent of the conversation units containing at least one mention of the category
n%%*n%%*n%%*n%
Animal focused
body parts 280 61 61
head 5712 20
sense organs30 713
body20 47
reproductive 310
excretory organs 1124
locomotory 39 9 14
tail 21 6 8
size/shape 1383049
body coverings95 21 34
life history (‘baby’) 531219
other 1947
behaviour 3016666
excretory 6 12
movement 130 28 43
food related 54 12 18
sexual 8 2 3
parental 1334
interacting / animals 23 5 8
position in enclosure 17739 59
sleep/awake 28 6 9
other (‘noise’ )521117
names40188 88
popular name2816170
common name7216 18
recognise only 98 21 24
phylum/class name337 8
order/family/genus 1934748
compare with self 235 8
compare inanimate225 6
compare extinct 13 3 3
compare another animal 5913 15
misclassification 3378
% indicates per cent of all comments; %* indicates the percent of all those comments included in the next highest category. Thus the 57 conversation units that include reference to the ‘head’ represent 12% of all 459 conversation units, and 20% of the 280 conversation units that refer to at least one body part.
Table 1 shows that the visitors not only comment about their observations of the animal, they interpret what they see by asking questions and making statements, explaining their observations in terms of previous experiences which r largely anthropomorphic in nature. Visitors express a range of affective comments and also exchange ‘management’ comments often associated with control of the groups an social utterances, most often using each other’s name and acknowledging comments directed at them or calling the attention of an individual to a feature of the exhibit. Looking at other features of the exhibit is an important part of over half of the conversation. It is interesting that direct reference to the labels within the conversations is not a particularly prominent area of comment.
The proportions of the data that belong to these four categories are shown in Table 2.
Table 2 .
Main super ordinate categories of the topics of conversation about body
category (formed from amalgamating data from individual categories of body parts) / no (n=459) / % of total conversations / % of conversations about behaviour (n=280)front end(head and sense organs) / 77 / 17 / 28
Dimensions (body, size, life history and coverings) / 237 / 52 / 85
Unfamiliar parts (excretory and reproductive organs and other) / 32 / 7 / 11
Disrupters to outline (tail and locomotory organs) / 57 / 12 / 20
Table 3
Comments about Body Parts
Category of Comments about Body Parts / Examples of Conversations1.The Head and sense organs / Year4 (9 years) girl at Cotton Topped Tamarins
Girl: They have a small nose and a small mouth.
2.Body Dimensions of the animal e.g. size, shape, numbers / Year 4 boys (9 years) at Cotton Topped Tamarins
Boy:That is a baby that is a baby
Teacher:Why?
Boy:Because they are small.
Year 4 (9 years)children in the Reptile House
Girl: Look at the size of it!
Boy: It could be a small one
3. Unfamiliar and unusual e.g. horns / Year 2 (7 years)children (at chimps).(Much laughter)
Boy: Look at its pink bottom!
4. Disrupters to the outline i.e. appendages or other parts of the body that stick out and often move e.g. tail, legs. / Year 6 children at the elephants
Girl: It’s putting its tongue. I mean its trunk in its mouth!
The four main categories of behaviour are: 1. the location of the animal in the enclosure; 2. feeding related behaviours; 3. movements (including locomotion but excluding specific movements named such as breathing);4. attention attracting behaviour such as urinating, copulating etc..
Table 4
Main super ordinate categories about Behaviour in conversations
category (formed by amalgamating data from individual categories) / no (n=459) / % of total conversations / % of conversations about behaviour (n=301)Position in enclosure / 177 / 39 / 59
Feeding / 54 / 11 / 18
Movements / 130 / 28 / 48
Attention behaviours / 115 / 25 / 38
Table 5
The Categories of Conversation about Behaviours.
Category / Examples of conversation1.Movement / Year 2 ( 6 years)pupil at Zorillas in Moonlight World
Girl: Aren’t they cute! Look at them running round and round and around!
2.Position in the enclosure of the animal in relation to the exhibit. / Year 1( 5 year) children in the Reptile House.
Boy 1: Tortoise!
Boy 2 : Up there!
Boy 1: Up there!
Girl 1: I spotted it. You can see that red thing.
Girl 2: Up there.
Girl 1: You can see that, uhm, red thing, that red thing behind that rock. Where up there can you see that red thing?
3. Feeding / Group of Year 6 (11 years)children looking at elephants:
Girl:Look, its eating a branch.
4. Attractors / Year 6 children at the elephants
Girl: Look the elephant is doing a wee. What a wee! It must have had a lot to drink.
Boy:What is the other one doing?
Girl 2: Treading in the wee!
Girl : It’s covering it up with sand!
Remark at giraffe exhibit[head and neck of specimen bent towards the floor]
Girl: Does it have to be like that ?..Otherwise it will hit his head on the roof
The data in Table 1 shows that naming is the predominant animal focused activity occuring at least once in 88% of conversations. However, the visitors were using an effective everyday naming system, not a scientific one. The everyday one contains the basic terms for the animal, the one that is used most often by people when referring to an animal and the name term that is learnt first by children (Anglin 1971; Cameron 1994) .Moreover, these basic terms are not all at the genus level as found in an indigenous people (Berlin 1978). but are spread across the zoological groups. The scientific names are not used, the terms are used in the vernacular. They can however be allocated to the relevant taxonomic position. The instances of the occurrence of such terms within a whole family transcript t collected at London zoo are shown in table 6. The proportions are similar to those found in other groups but are presented as a illustration of the range of names used by visitors.
The major focus on naming and zoological categories to which names belong are shown in Table 6 Whilst the genus term, e.g. rhinoceros, cobra, giraffe is the largest single taxonomic category into which the name used by the family members can be allocated, other categories are also employed. The visitors use names such as ‘monkey’, although the class terms ‘bird’, ‘fish’ and ‘insect’ are used as a basic terms for those particular groups. In names this group of visitors use the everyday terms. These are at a basic level in terms of general taxonomies (Cameron, 1994) , i.e. a middle level of family/order - cats, monkeys, except for birds, fish, insects where they use the class term as the basic everyday term. In just over 1/4 of conversations the Common name is used e.g. Mountain Lion, Giant Panda. Table 6 shows the spread of names used within one visit to the zooby a family.
Table 6
The name terms used a family during their zoo visit. The names are grouped according to zoological taxonomic group ( n=58 names).
Class / order / family / genus / species17% / 14% / 17% / 35% / 16%
e.g.
birds / echidna / e.g. lizards / e.g. crane / e.g. Red Crowned Crane
Fish / bats / snakes / rhinoceros / Asian lion
Sea anemones / grasshoppers / flies / tiger / Blue Tongued skink
Starfish / crickets / new world monkeys / lions / Indian cobra
Coral* / stick insects / cat / penguins / Golden Lion Tamarin
spiders / cockroaches / locusts / woodpecker / Giant Woodpecker
Millipedes / seals / Mynah bird / Giant Panda
Sea urchins / beetles / viper
cobra
Jellyfish / skunk
chipmunk
monkeys / chimpanzees
catfish
batfish
cobra / Splotched genet
plaice
tarantulas / piranhas / Bird eating spider
hermit crab / giraffe
*(sub class) / zebra
I suggest that children’s zoos use this information to design their interpretative, material and educational packs to start where the children are in their knowledge and help them construct the zoological meaning, i.e. specific name, criterial attributes that are used in taxonomy. Children are not spontaneously interested in the diet of the animal nor its geographical origins contrary to the usual zoo opinion and what is on their labels. Conservation is not an interst in most cases.
Children notice particular aspects of the animal specimens that they observe. Zoos could use this information and base their interpretation and educational programmes on this starting with what the children spontaneously observe and developing this into larger concepts about the features. Their interpretation should begin with the terms with which the visitors are familiar and which they use in the zoo, not those of zoology. Educational opportunities in zoos should begin at the point of interest and understanding of the visitors, in this case children under eleven and their accompanying adults. The educational process in the zoo should help these visitors to construct personal meaning from the concepts the visitors bring to the visi.t, not provide information about which the visitors can not link their own experiences. Education in zoos should be a constructive process for the children and their accompanying adults, not an experience of being preached at by the zoo.
References:
Anglin, J. M. (1977). Word, Object, and Conceptual Development. New York, W.W. Norton.
Berlin, B. (1973). Folk Systematics in Relation to Biological Classification and Nomenclature. Annual review of Ecology and Systematics. 259-271.
Bliss, J., M. Monk, Ogborn J., (1983). Qualitative Analysis for Educational Research.London, Croom Helm.
Bloom, J. (1990). Contexts of Meaning: Young Children’s Understanding of Biological Phenomena. International Journal of Science Education, 12 (5), 549-561.
Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of Meaning.London: HarvardUniversity Press. 56.
Cameron, L. (1994). Organising the World: children’s concepts and categories, and implications for the teaching of English. ELT Journal,48 (1), 28-39.
Gilbert, J., Osborne, R., & Fensham, P. (1982). Children’s Science and the Consequences for Teaching. Science Education, 66(4), 623-633.
Nelson, K. (1974). Concept, Word and Sentence: Interrelations in Acquisition and Development. Psychological Review, 81, 267-285.
Ninio, A. (1980). Ostensive definition in vocabulary teaching. Journal of Child Language,7, 565-573.
Rosenfeld, S. R., (1980). Informal Learning in Zoos: Naturalistic studies on Family groups.Unpublished PhD thesis, Univeristy of California, Berkeley.
Tunnicliffe, S. D. (1994 ). Are Zoo Visitors Interested in Conservation? In K. Boersma , K. Koortland and J. van Trommel (Eds.), 7th International Symposium in World Trends in Science and Technology Education,pp :869-880. Veldhoven, The Netherlands: IOSTE.
Tunnicliffe, S.D.(1995). The New Children’s Zoo at Schonbrunn Tierpark. International Zoo News, 42 (1) no 258: 38-43. ISSN 0020-9155