A Comparison between Young Students with and without Special Needs on Their Understanding of Scientific Concepts

This paper examines whether young special needs (SN) students with emotional/behavioral difficulties (age 3–5, n = 14)
reach lower understanding levels than regular students (age 3–5, n = 17) while working on two scientific tasks under a
condition of scaffolding (e.g., follow-up questions depending on students’ levels of understanding). Understanding was measured
microgenetically, per utterance, using a scale related to Skill Theory. Monte Carlo analyses showed that SN students gave more
wrong and (the lowest) Level 1 (single sensorimotor set) answers than regular students and fewer answers on (higher) Level 3
(sensorimotor system). However, no difference was found in their mean understanding level and mean number of answers. Both
groups also had a comparable number of answers on the highest levels (Levels 4 and 5; single representation and representational
mapping). These results do not point to substantial differences in scientific understanding between SN and regular students, as
earlier studies using standardized tests have pointed out, and highlight the important role of scaffolding students’ understanding.
Standardized tests do not seem to indicate the bandwidth of possible scores students show or give an indication of their optimal
scores, whereas a gap exists between student’s task performance under conditions of individual performance and performance
under a condition of support.