Why is there currently such a huge interest in young children's thinking? Possibly because early years professionals recognise that a heavy focus on content and assessing knowledge is not the way forward. We can plan and implement a Foundation Stage curriculum, but we cannot ensure that children learn unless they are actively engaged, exercising choices, making decisions and offering their thoughts and views.
When this happens, children are likely to be motivated and challenged, and so invest their energies in learning. The result is genuine intellectual growth and progress, as opposed to children simply knowing about things.
Good thinking in the early years is also fundamental to achievement later in school and in life. To learn to write clearly, children must be able to think clearly. Moreover, for adults, clear, hard thinking is required to take advantage of options in life and adopt a considered lifestyle.
The interest in children thinking is fuelled by national guidance and findings from recent research. Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage highlights the need to provide a climate for using talk for thinking. For example, 'Use language to imagine and recreate roles and experiences' and 'Use talk to organise, sequence and clarify thinking, ideas, feelings and events' (p58).
Studies of the brain emphasise that the sensitive periods for neural development and children's thought processes start very early in life. The experiences that we offer young children can help them to form connections and so move forward in their thinking.
'The first higher brain capacities to develop are social, and they develop in response to social experiences. Rather than holding up flashcards to a baby, it would be more appropriate to the baby's stage of development to simply hold him and enjoy him' (Gerhardt, 2004, p38).
The EPPE (Effective Provision of Pre-School Education) and REPEY (Researching Effective Pedagogy in the Early Years) studies suggest that in high-quality settings, children improve their thinking skills. In the most effective settings, staff provide opportunities to sustain and challenge children's thinking and to encourage children to share their thinking with other children.
'"Sustained, shared thinking" occurs when two or more individuals "work together" in an intellectual way to solve a problem, clarify a concept, evaluate an activity, extend a narrative, etc. Both parties must contribute to the thinking and it must develop and extend the understanding.' (DfES, EPPE Project: final report, 2004, pvi.) As practitioners, we can gain insights into children's thinking and support that thinking through:
* the provision we make
* the environment we provide
* what we say and do.
GAINING INSIGHTS
Persistent curiosity is a feature of young children growing up. They spend a great deal of their time trying to make sense of the world. But it's not always easy to recognise how and what they are thinking. What they say and do may seem bizarre and unconnected with what's going on. However, there is always a link.
Piaget was the first to suggest that young children's thinking is qualitatively different from adults'. Their logic is based on little life experience (around 36-48 months) and so their conclusions are different from those an adult might make. However, they apply all that they know, extend it with new discoveries and imaginative leaps, and make incredibly sensible deductions from the little information they have. The following are some ways children reveal their thinking.
Pre-occupations or schemes of thought
Young children develop all-abiding interests from a very early age. As babies and toddlers, they can become absorbed by different patterns of movement. Later, these interests can extend in many ways to reflect their experiences.
Children's play often appears random and sometimes quite unconnected to what you have planned. However, a child's preoccupation may provide a thread of thought that is woven through the different activities.
Example: Nicki (three years six months) appeared to flit across several activities. She covered herself with shawls in the home corner, took beads to the dough table and buried them in dough. She experimented with different colours of paint, but then invariably obliterated everything with black paint. Outside, she chose to hide in the large wooden cube. She carried a favourite teddy with her in a carrier bag, wrapped in several blankets.
Through her observations, Nicki's keyperson, Pat, recognised that all the activities involved covering or enveloping things. Pat, therefore, planned additional activities (including planting bulbs) to strengthen Nicki's thinking.
Representations
Children will strengthen their interests and represent their understandings through the range of curricular activities and experiences made available to them - for example, dance, role play, constructing, modelling, painting and drawing. The broader the curriculum, the greater the extent for children to demonstrate their thoughts.
Questions
Given the right climate, children are insistently curious and ask many different types of questions, including:
* rhetorical questions (where children already know the answer)
* exploratory questions ('what if...?')
* philosophical/imaginative questions ('I wonder how...')
* information-seeking questions ('where is...?')
Often children's questions are difficult to respond to quickly: 'Why does the sea go in and out?' 'What is the moon?' Although it is sometimes tempting to duck these searches for explanations, it is important that we take them seriously, admitting honestly if we do not have the answers but taking steps to find out.
Talk
When setting up their own activities and making decisions, children often reveal their thoughts to one another or in a monologue.
Example: Jack (three years two months) is generally quiet and happy with his own company. One morning he wanders off to the construction area, taking with him two tractors. He selects blocks carefully, muttering, 'Tractors live in a big field - yes they live here. Make a fence, yes, round and round the field.'
Jack completes an enclosure and stands back to look. 'Oh, no, tractors can't get out - oh no, tractor is sad. Make a... a... make a door - where's a door?' He searches in the block box and exclaims, 'Door, no door.' He returns to the 'field' perplexed. He then smiles and removes a block in the fence. 'Door is here.'
Children will recall and use their previous experiences when involved in group role play. Occasionally they will appropriate or try out language when thinking through a role.
Example: Abu announced that she was the 'big nurse' in the hospital play area. She walked around, saying firmly, 'I call the shoots - I'm the big nurse and I call the shoots.'
If we are alert to young children's behaviour, actions and talk, we can gain hugely valuable insights into their prime concerns. To understand what a child is thinking, practitioners need to listen, observe and then take an imaginative leap into the child's mind. Once this is achieved, the adult is able to support the child in thinking further.
Activities
* Observe the preoccupations of two children over three days. Use this information to help you plan to take their thinking further.
* List and analyse the questions that children ask over the course of two days. Use this information to help you tune into their thinking. Plan ways to encourage children to ask different types of questions.
* Observe children in self-directed play. Listen to their commentaries and conversations to find out about their current concerns and interests.
TYPES OF THINKING
Young children start to understand their hopes and fears and the reasons for their behaviour. Different environments and experiences give scope to think in different ways. We may see children:
* planning, predicting, thinking ahead and speculating ('I'm going to make a house with these bricks.')
* solving problems, working things out, finding solutions ('We gotta build this wall to our den, then the baddies won't get in.')
* reasoning using logic, explaining, making connections, noticing cause and effect ('See, if I kick this ball real hard I can make it go over that wall.')
* investigating, exploring, gathering and using information ('Look, these ladybirds are the same. They're the same as these pictures in the book.')
* imagining new situations, identifying with other people or creatures, fantasising, creating ('This carpet is very magic and it flies in the air.
I know the magic word to make it fly.')
* reflecting, recalling, sorting out feelings ('Chloe's not my friend any more.') Although it is helpful to be aware of and provide opportunities for these different modes of thinking, in practice they overlap. A well-balanced and broad curriculum should provide for a good range of thinking.
Example: After listening to Michael Rosen's We're Going on a Bear Hunt, Mohammed and his friend Jason planned a 'monster hunt' in the outdoor wild area. They discussed the monsters they might find, but Mohammed reasoned, 'We are not going to find giant monsters because there is not enough room for them to live here.' As it was raining, the boys thought that the monsters might be hiding and so be difficult to find. They discussed what they might do if they discovered a monster. Jason wanted to kill it, but Mohammed said, 'You must never hurt things, because that makes you a bad person.'
Comment: Here we see the boys engaged in planning, speculating, reasoning, imagining and reflecting.
CLIMATE
The way in which an early years programme is planned and organised reflects the practitioner's beliefs about the degree of responsibility to give children. If we look at extreme ends of the spectrum, settings can be organised as controlling or informational climates.
In the past, many settings adopted a predominantly controlling climate, with the practitioners firmly in charge and responsible for decision-making.
In such a climate, children were expected to carry out prescribed activities, using materials and apparatus already selected for them. They were only able to respond and comply with the decisions made and so became dependent on the adult for their learning.
Today, as we understand the need for children to be actively engaged in thinking and learning, climates are more informational. Children are encouraged to make decisions about the activities they do and select resources for themselves. They take responsibility for themselves, make and learn from mistakes and discover the best way of doing things. The adult role is to facilitate learning and provide an ethos where all ideas are encouraged and valued.
Although, of course, there are times when practitioners need to take a leading role to inform children, teach knowledge and skills and set boundaries for social living together, an informational climate provides the seedbed for thinking (Deci, EL and Ryan, RM, 1985, p73).
REFERENCES
* Deci, EL and Ryan, RM (1985) Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behaviour. New York: Plenum Press
* Gerhardt, S (2004) Why Love Matters. Brunner-Routledge
* Murris, K (1992) Teaching Philosophy with Picture Books. Infonet
* Siraj-Blatchford I, Sylva K, Muttock S, Giden R, and Bell D (2002) Researching Effective Pedagogy in the Early Years (REPEY), DfES Research Report. 356 www.ioe.ac.uk/cdl/eppe
* Siraj-Blatchford I, Sylva K, Taggart B, Sammons P, and Melhuish E (2003) Technical Paper 10: Case Studies of practice across the Foundation Stage.
Institute of Education/DfES
* Sylva K, Melhuish EC, Sammons P, Siraj-Blatchford I and Taggart B (2004) The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) Project: Technical Paper 12 - The Final Report: Effective Pre-School Education. London: DfES/Institute of Education, University of London.
* www/standards.dfes.gov.uk/ensuring quality/research/earlyyears/eppe/
* QCA (2000) Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage, London: QCA/DfEE, pp 20-24
RECOMMENDED MATERIALS
* Early Education Training Materials (2005) Supporting Young Children's Sustained, Shared Thinking: An Exploration The British Association for Early Childhood Education. Visit www.early-education.org.uk
* Worcestershire County Council Training Materials (2005) All the Cakes are Different, County Hall, PO Box 73, Spetchley Road, Worcestershire WR5
