This study focuses on the development of executive functions in preschool children during a series of science activities. A longitudinal play-based learning intervention was designed and implemented following the design of an educational experiment. Data were collected through visual ethnography in hot situations with adult supervision. Results show how entwined the concepts of inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility are within young children’s development. The development of cognitive flexibility or attention shifting readily occurred when there were fictive characters (such as the king and his royal family), but changing perspective toward a nonfictive environment (i.e., taking other children’s perspectives) was a more difficult and time-consuming process. This process began in an individual perspective and expanded to acknowledging others’ perspectives, then moved toward creating common perspectives or alternative narratives. Results show that science activities can be a bridge for preschool children to transfer their use of executive functions, from fairytales and games toward everyday tasks.

The aim of the study was to explore children’s learning of natural science, and the authors chose a literature review as the means to achieve this aim. As the research into children’s emerging science is fragmented into many different theoretical perspectives and many kinds of studies are included, research results deriving from the field can be difficult to summarize. To resolve this issue, Vosniadou’s framework theory was used as the tool for data analysis. Results show emergence as a dynamic interaction between intuitive and counter-intuitive concepts leading to synthetic and scientific models in combination with developing epistemological and ontological skills. The accumulation of synthetic concepts seems to be the most common result of early formal educational input. Both intuitive and synthetic models are predecessors for scientific concepts and models, and these models as such are very important for emerging science. The conclusions suggest that diverse science experiences should bring about more synthetic models. This subsequently creates a wider basis for further development. Another important factor of emergence is the development of children’s epistemic skills and ontological shifts. Research results suggest that it is important for teachers to support children’s epistemic and ontological skills. Enhancing children’s understanding about causality and ontology is an important step towards developing formal concepts of science.

Perezhivanie is a concept that was originally defined by Vygotsky, but it did not become a part of educational theory until recently. Today the concept has been revived, and it is now used as a way to include emotional aspects into education and educational research. The concept also provides a rationale for describing and forming personalised learning. The present study provides a literature review with the aim of covering the variety in definitions of the concept, as well as the different perspectives that the concept lends to research in general, and to research with focus on early years education in particular. Results show that the concept has been applied within the most common theoretical perspectives in use today (such as social, cultural and subjective perspectives) with an interesting array of outcomes, such as design of educational methods, analysis of different modes of experiencing and development of self-awareness. The use of this concept becomes a shift toward more emotional perspectives of learning and development that may not be altogether positive, as perezhivanie holds the risk of blurring the border between psychotherapy and education, which is something that would provide new challenges for education in general and especially for teacher education.

The objective of this study was to deepen our comprehension of how children develop understanding in the field of science, particularly in chemistry. Using the framework theory as a theoretical lens enabled a focus on emergence as a dynamic change and transition. According to the framework theory, children’s science learning involves a wide range of intuitive and counterintuitive scientific concepts related to ontological and epistemological perspectives. How children transition from everyday to scientific thinking during their early years of education is influenced by ontological and epistemological stances. The objective of this study is to introduce science content—including chemical concepts to preschool children—by utilizing a play-based learning approach in a longitudinal study. The exploration of verbal and non-verbal material, specifically pertaining to chemical content and individual differences, involved implementing educational experiments and real-life or animated zooming-in videos. The results indicated a well-established physical ontological framework utilized for the systematic interpretation of submicroscopic phenomena.

This thesis seeks to enhance our comprehension of how children develop an understanding of chemistry i.e., emerging chemistry. More specifically the aim of the study was to explore children’s conceptualization of basic chemical concepts, such as smallness and explore how metacognitive frameworks contribute in this process. Research conducted earlier has highlighted the crucial role of visual experiences in helping children grasp the abstract concept of matter. This project was designed to provide the visual experience of the subatomic nature of matter, to explore how this experience develops and how it is transferred between different contexts. Learning subject-specific content is a process that goes beyond just the academic aspect; it also encompasses emotional and individual elements, which are important for scientific growth. Vygotsky attempted to address individual aspects of development with the use of the concept of perezhivanie, describing a socially constructed filter through which experiences are refracted. The filter is seen as greatly influenced by both positive and negative emotions, which in turn impacts our interpretations of the world, including scientific events. Suggesting that emotionally positive experiences of science could, change the filter itself and therefore also how an individual will come to interprets future scientific experiences. A process that could have an effect not only on school science but also on the lifelong learning process. A study was initiated with the purpose to analyse how contemporary research conceptualizes the notion of perezhivanie with an emphasis on its use in research. Results show that the use of this concept varies and ranges between social, sociocultural and individualistic approaches, not yet having reached a point of general consensus regarding its characteristics and as an analytical tool. The meta-analysis also suggests that preschool teachers could also benefit from training in self-reflecting processes, which would also contribute to young children’s self-awareness. Given that chemistry emergence is a young field, more overarching aspects of chemistry emergence, such as matter, smallness and other chemical phenomena have not yet been explored. For this reason, emergence is analysed through a combination of Vygotsky's theories of early development and Vosniadou's framework theory, a theory which expands conceptual understanding by incorporating ontological and epistemological dimensions. Within framework theory development is viewed as a transition between intuitive concepts towards counterintuitive concepts and intermediate synthetic models. This development is closely linked to changes in ontology and epistemology. The potential of framework theory as an analytical tool for studying emergence was initially investigated by conducting a meta-analysis of scientific education research papers. Results show that framework theory can be used as an analytical tool for studying emergence and is a way to move beyond the fragmentation caused by the many different theoretical perspectives used in the field of science education. Especially important is highlighting the significance of epistemic and ontological aspects of reasoning in children’s scientific emergence something that is not only important for evaluating emerging chemistry but also for emerging natural science in general. A longitudinal, study following 25 children over one academic year, was implemented, all the sessions were video-recorded using visual- ethnography. Results show that children initially adopt an intuitive understanding regarding smallness, centralized around visibly accessible smallness. This reflects on an early epistemic reasoning, in which causative relationships are limited on visibly accessible data. It also reflects the existence of an early ontological structure of knowledge, in which children use everyday objects as prototypes for understanding matter in general. Results also showed that many children can grasp counter-intuitive concepts regarding smallness, approximating the idea that matter is made of really small sub-microscopic elements. This realization is connected with epistemic changes, such as being able to hold multiple representations of a process, as well as ontological, mainly the ability to construct a new ontological sub-field specifically about microscopic phenomena, based on their own explanatory principles. These results indicate that chemical concepts are not outside the scope of preschoolers range of understanding.