Definitional skills and preferred definition types according to age, gender, educational level and career orientation

2020 IJRSE – Volume 9 Issue 2
Special Issue on Educational Studies and Action Researches

Available Online: 8 July 2020

Author/s:

Dourou, Chrisoula*
Democritus University of Thrace, Greece (chdouro@helit.duth.gr)

Gavriilidou, Zoe
Democritus University of Thrace, Greece (zoegab@otenet.gr)

Markos, Angelos
Democritus University of Thrace, Greece (amarkos@eled.duth.gr)

Abstract:

The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the definitional skills and the preferred definition type of school-age children, university students and adults and to examine the effect of variables such as, age (preschool, elementary, secondary and university), gender, adult educational level and career orientation (humanities vs science). The sample consisted of 322 individuals, who were asked to define 16 words orally. Definitions were scored on a five-point scale along a continuum that reflects the developmental path of the definitions. The results indicated that definitions tend to conform to the conventional rules of the Aristotelian format so that, with increasing age, females outperform males, science students outperform students in humanities, and adults with university education outperform adults without university education. The implications of these findings for lexicography and education are also discussed. This study expands the extant literature on definitional skill development.

Keywords: word definition; definitional skills; language development; definition types; content and form of definitions

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrse.2020.5021

Cite this article:
Dourou, C., Gavriilidou, Z., & Markos, A. (2020). Definitional skills and preferred definition types according to age, gender, educational level and career orientation. International Journal of Research Studies in Education, 9(2), 29-49. https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrse.2020.5021

*Corresponding Author