Young Children′s Thinking

Marion Dowling

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781446289884
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Elementary Education

?This is a book to be treasured. This deeply respected pioneer brings together major research literature, theoretical understanding and practical help. She does so in a way that demonstrates her love and commitment in working with young children and helping them to have rich lives intellectually and with personal fulfillment?
-Professor Tina Bruce CBE

?What comes through is weighty warmth. The weight of research and experience coupled with the warmth of the fascination of children?s development over Marion?s professional and personal lifetime?
- Professor Mick Waters, Wolverhampton Universit y

?This highly knowledgeable yet accessible book will be hugely valuable for all those who care deeply about young children?s learning and development?
-Liz Roberts, Editor, Nursery World

?A tour de force which has the potential to change practice and thinking about early childhood?
-Helen Moylett, Early Learning and Consultancy, President of Early Education

Clearly linking theory and practice, this highly accessible book will be valuable to practitioners, teachers and students. The author explores the development of children?s thinking from 0-7 years, and how this affects home, Early Years settings and schools.

The book includes:

- case studies

- professional checkpoints to help reflection

- practical suggestions

- guidance on involving parents

- suggested reading

- questions for discussion.

It will be a great asset for students on Early Years Foundation Degrees, Initial Teacher Education and Early Childhood Studies courses.

Marion Dowling works as a trainer and consultant in the UK and overseas, and is Vice President of Early Education, a national charity.

1

Thinking about Young Children’s Thinking

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Intentions

This chapter explores:

• what is thinking in young children
• why it is important to have regard for young children’s thinking
• what happens when young children think
• how we recognise their thinking

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Our brains, minds and thoughts

Brain and mind

We are all born with a physical brain but how does the mind develop? This is a vast and almost imponderable question but we know that the mind is more than the grey matter that we all inherit. Rather, it is shaped and refined by individual personal experience – as such, it is unique to each person. Susan Greenfield suggests that ‘the mind may be the evolving personal aspect of the physical world’ and ‘consciousness brings the mind alive’ (1). Young babies become conscious of and responsive to personal experiences from birth, in particular the loving interactions they have with close adults. Maria Robinson states that ‘From this sensitive beginning of understanding the individual needs of the baby, there is also born the beginnings for the baby to have a mind of their own’ (2).

We know that the young physical brain is very receptive to experience, and Gopnik and her colleagues liken a new baby’s brain to a computer that is set up and running. This enables them to absorb experiences from their world and gradually start to make sense of them (3). Given these insights, Tricia David helpfully suggests that ‘maybe if we use a computer analogy we can, for now, think of the brain as the hardware and the mind as the software’ (4).

Thought

Defining thinking is equally difficult and particularly so as much research focuses only on ‘thinking skills’ (5, 6). The National Curriculum states that thinking involves the basic cognitive skills of perception (understanding), memory, concept formation (forming ideas), language and symbolisation (representations); these underpin the ability to reason, to learn and to solve problems (7). But any person familiar with young children knows that their thoughts and ideas are not only to do with intellectual development. As Robson points out in her comprehensive book, Developing Thinking and Understanding in Young Children: ‘It is more than a skill. Equally important is the development of the disposition to make use of this skill, to want to be a thinker and to enjoy thinking’ (8).

Thinking and learning

Some educationalists such as Claxton reject the term ‘thinking’ in favour of the broader term ‘learning’ (9). For the purposes of this book, I refer to young children thinking but not only in a narrow, rational sense. I link mind and thought, recognising that thinking results from processing all the experiences that are received in the mind. Peel summarised this over fifty years ago: ‘Thinking is part of what goes on inside the mind, in between sense-reception and effective action’ (10). When we apply this definition to young children and observe their behaviour, we recognise that their thinking is closely linked to early physical and sensory experiences, social growth and feelings and their creative powers. Thinking is closely involved with the whole child.

Why it is important to consider young children’s thinking

Parents and practitioners living and working with children have always been faced (and sometimes fazed!) by young children’s thoughts and ideas. Often we are amused and bemused by children’s actions and comments but are not sure what they signify. In recent years there has been an upsurge of interest in issues around children’s thinking. Why is it so high on our agenda for young children and what messages are we receiving? Some reasons are to do with:

• strong support from research evidence
• imperatives in National Frameworks
• increased insights from practitioners in their day-to-day work

Support from research evidence

During the last twenty-five years studies have recognised that thinking starts very early; young babies are primed to think in their unceasing efforts to make sense of the world. Parents have long known, for example, that their babies are aware of familiar faces and alert to stimulus – neuroscience now provides the evidence. Within the first year of life babies learn about others’ minds and begin to recognise that when people disappear they have not gone for ever but still exist. Some of these points are highlighted in Chapter 1. Tricia David sums up powerful messages from the research she reviewed for Birth to Three Matters.

Babies come already ‘designed’ or ‘programmed’ to be deeply interested in the people and world in which they find themselves. They are incredibly observant and selective, as well as being extremely clever at interpreting what they witness. They learn best by playing with things they find in their world and, above all, by playing with the familiar people who love them. (11)

Social contacts

Early studies starting with John Bowlby in the 1950s (12) and followed twenty years later by Mary Ainsworth (13) showed that babies and young children need close relationships to provide a secure base from which to explore the world. Sue Gerhardt’s more recent work supports this with reference to neuroscience. She explores how early, loving contacts shape the baby’s nervous system and suggests, for example, that being lovingly held is the greatest spur to development. Her work points up the importance of babies forming close attachments both with immediate family members and then a key person in daycare. These significant people are able to read a young child’s behaviour and provide a tailor-made response to individual needs:

Like a plant seedling, strong roots and good growth depend on environmental conditions, and this is most evident in the human infant’s emotional capacities which are the least hard-wired in the animal kingdom, and the most influenced by experience. (14)

Around the same time as Mary Ainsworth, Lev Vygotsky’s work showed that social relationships are not only important for emotional development, but are central to thinking and learning in the young brain. He regarded language exchanges as particularly significant in communicating meanings which a child can then use as the basis for his or her thinking (15). Barbara Rogoff builds on Vygotsky’s theories and suggests that learning and thinking grow through guided participation with others (16). This might range from support and guidance from their special person to incidental contacts with family and play with friends.

Companionable learning and thinking

Rosemary Roberts introduces the notion of ‘companionable learning’, which, as she defines it, is very much to do with guided participation:

Companionable learning is an essentially interactive process. The learners may not be learning the same things. ... But they will be jointly involved and focused; and companionably engaged, interacting with each other in the process of their learning together. (17)

Roberts outlines some principles of companionable learning which she claims support children’s well-being. The principles are equally applicable in sustaining their thinking. The headlines below are adapted from Roberts’ book, Wellbeing from Birth, and are expanded in subsequent chapters.

• First principle: companionable attention – young children gain full attention and are assured of their companion’s continuing physical presence and interest
• Second principle: companionable play – children are engaged in play with close adults and peers
• Third principle: companionable conversations – children and close adults communicate through body language and talk
• Fourth principle: companionable apprenticeship – children and close adults do routine activities together, the child being regarded as a competent helper.

Communication is threaded across these four principles. It has been well researched in recent years (18, 19) and is a theme running through this book. Babies and infants use their bodies and facial gestures, in fact every means at their disposal, to reach out to close adults. The break-through to spoken language is a very significant step in thinking. Helen Moylett says that ‘the process of dialogue with others mirrors our internal dialogue’ (20). Because during the early years children use talk as a major tool to express their thoughts, parents and close adults have to listen carefully in order to appreciate what is being made public in young minds.

Making sense

Research has also helped us recognise that context or situation hold the key to the potential for children’s thinking. Piaget made it clear that young children are not simply immature adults with undeveloped thinking mechanisms. He emphasised that children’s thinking is qualitatively different but just as powerful as the thoughts of older people. The difference lies in them having less experience of life but using all their mental capacities to make sense of what they know. However, Piaget also held a somewhat inflexible view of young children; he believed that babies and children progress through distinct and fixed stages of development, for example, that children under seven years were not able to think in abstract ways but were entirely dependent on concrete experiences for understanding. This led practitioners to set a ceiling on children’s abilities. During the 1960s and 1970s, when Piagetian thinking was most influential, a great deal of practice centred around waiting for individual children to achieve the next stage of readiness in their thinking rather than adults helping them to become ready (21).

These theories were radically extended by theorists such as Margaret Donaldson and David Wood, who opened our eyes to see that children are actually much more capable of higher levels of thinking if they are in situations which make sense to them (22, 23). Donaldson agreed with Piaget that formal and abstract thinking are simply not accessible to young children. Such thinking may involve theoretical situations or understanding and manipulating symbols. She suggested that this type of thinking is not linked to familiar and concrete situations. In this situation, young children will fail. However, rather than accept this deficient view, Donaldson suggested that if we offer young children opportunities to think or problems to solve which are linked or associated to known scenarios or to familiar stories, they show themselves to be significantly more competent.

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Case Study 1.1

Raisa’s dad complained to her nursery teacher that his daughter was not learning properly. He said that he had asked Raisa (3 years 7 months) to divide 9 by 3 – she had merely looked puzzled and walked away.

Jen, Raisa’s teacher, gently explained that the little girl was in fact learning very well but needed to make sense of what was required of her and to understand the language used. She persuaded Raisa’s father to stay with his child for an hour in the nursery. During this time Raisa was happily engaged in domestic role-play with some dolls. Jen took a tin of nine cakes into the role-play area and suggested that these were a special treat and that Raisa should share the cakes fairly among the three dolls. Raisa shared out the cakes easily and equally.

Comment

Raisa was not able to solve a mathematical problem in the abstract. However, she was able to do so when the problem was associated with her play. She understood the use of language, ‘share’ and ‘fairly’, and could demonstrate her understanding through practical activity. Raisa’s father began to understand how he could recognise his daughter’s thinking and learning.

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Importantly, we now understand that children’s abilities to think are not sta...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the authors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary of terms
• 1 Thinking about Young Children’s Thinking
• 2 Early Thoughts: Babies’ and Infants’ Thinking from Birth to Three Years
• 3 How Close Adults can Support Babies’ and Infants’ Thinking
• 4 Playing with Thoughts and Ideas: Young Children’s Thinking 3–5 Years
• 5 How Close Adults can Support Young Children’s Thinking at 3–5 Years
• 6 Brimming with Thoughts at Home and in School: Children’s Thinking 5–7 Years
• 7 How Close Adults can Support Children’s Thinking during the Early School Years
• Index