Exploring Turkish upper primary level pupils' understanding of digestion

Abstract

This article reports a study of Turkish children's understanding of digestion in Grades 4 and 5 (ages 10–11). Data collection was carried out through the use of an open‐ended questionnaire administered to 283 children in three Turkish primary schools. Follow‐up interviews were conducted with 30 children in Grade 4 and 72 children in Grade 5. The most significant finding was the children's conception of the digestive process as ‘melting of foods’ rather than ‘breaking foods down’. Some other children considered digestion to be a filtering process that is performed by the stomach in order to separate the useful and waste parts of food. These views ‘melting of foods’ and ‘filtering of foods’ have not been mentioned in the literature previously. The study revealed that social influences and everyday language had an important impact on children's learning of the digestive process.

Acknowledgements

This study was part of the author's Doctorate of Education study at the University of Nottingham. I wish to thank my supervisors Dr David Shipstone and Dr Gordon Joyes for their help and support.