Cognitive activation is one of the central quality characteristics of teaching. Studies which analyzed cognitive activation in science instruction and its influence on the achievement and the interest of students, took most of the times place in higher grades. Since scientific thinking can be taught at a very early stage and, in particular,…

We designed two experiments to investigate subsyllabic unit preference in reading Pinyin in Chinese kindergarteners. Pinyin is an alphabetic transcription used in Mainland China to assist children in learning to read Chinese characters. In Pinyin instruction, teachers rely heavily on onset-rime division. Spoken Chinese, however, encourages…