Nurturing Thinking Learners In The Early Years (National Early Childhood Conference) Part I

This post is long overdue. Here is a summary of what I have learned at the conference by Dr. Lilian G Katz a renown early childhood educator. It was my first conference and I find it very interesting. There are several workshops as well and I attended one on teaching math to young children. Dr. Lilian Katz is a witty professor who has extensive knowledge and experience in early childhood learning. I find her very engaging and I find her project approach to learning very interesting. I will share this on my next post. Today I would like to share about nurturing thinking learners in the early years.

Dr. Lilian spoke on 15 principles in teaching young children. Some may agree and some may disagree with her principles but in general, I find it good. It gives me a clearer picture on my own approach in teaching Reese.

According to the her, before anyone begins teaching a child in any subjects, there are four questions that must be addressed:

1. What should be learned? This addresses the aims, goals, and objectives of the curriculum.

2. When should it be learned? This question addresses our understanding of early development and learning.

3. How is it best learned? Answers to this question are based in large part on combining the answers to the first two questions.

4. How can we tell how well we have answered the first 3 questions? This deals with evaluation, assessment and testing of various kinds, depending on what is being learned and the ages of the learners. 

One important idea to keep in mind if we want to nurture thinking learners is that from the very beginning, all children are thinkers, and all children are learners.  But at the same time, it is important to remember that they do not always think necessarily what we want them to think or how we want them to think, and they do not always learn what we want them to learn.

She proposed to address these issues in parts as follows:

Part 1. A developmental approach to nurturing young children's thinking and learning

Part 2. What kinds of learning and thinking should be emphasized?

Part 3. What pedagogical strategies should be used?

Part 1 A developmental approach to nurturing young children's thinking and learning

Principle 1 A developmental approach to nurturing young children's thinking and learning is one that takes into account development changes that come with age and with the range of experience that comes with age. Development is a particular kind of change. It is a combination of biology, maturation, and experiences obtained in the environment in which a child is growing.

Principle 2. Development has two different and equally important dimensions:

The normative dimension addresses the abilities, socio-emotional competences and range of behaviours that are typical by age. So when preparing a learning activity, you will be able to make reliable assumptions about what activities they would or would not find interesting, enjoyable and so forth.

The dynamic dimension addresses aspects of development that help understand an individual's path to maturity. While the normative dimension addresses linear patterns of development, e.g. gradual increases in height or weight or vocabulary, etc. But there are many aspects of development that are not incremental but occur in cyclic rather than linear fashion. 

She gave an example of a child with low verbal skills will likely to be ignored, avoided or rejected by his peers. When this happens, the child loses  opportunities to improve his or her verbal skills and learn more and it goes on in a negative cycle. Similarly, a child who is verbally articulate and easy to understand is more readily accepted by other children and therefore has opportunities to practice as well as increase his or her verbal skills. This is a positive cycle.

Concern about development also includes matters of the sequence in which things should be experience and learned, and the stages in which learning occurs. The concept of development also includes concerns about possible delayed effects of early experience, effects that may appear at a much later time.

Principle 3

The view of development implied in Principle 2 suggests that just because children can do something - from a normative perspective, does not mean that they should do it. Such concerns are important in case of long term or delayed negative effects or certain kinds of early experience. This principle suggests what children should learn and should do must be decided on the basis of what best serves their development in the long term.

Part 2. What kinds of learning and thinking should be emphasized?

Learning goals:

a. knowledge & understanding

b. Skills

c. Dispositions

d. Feelings

a. Knowledge and understand 

Children acquire knowledge and understanding in many places other than schools: from parents and siblings at home, friends in the neighborhood, from television, school and others. According to Dr. Lilian there is some evidence that much learning of knowledge by young children is acquired without real understanding. She feels that having frequent and early experience of behaving as though they understand something when they really do not may undermine their disposition to be thinkers and learners, and causes many to doubt their own abilities.

b. Skills are different from knowledge. They can be defined as small units of behavior that can be fairly earily observed or inferrred from behavior. Skills also tend to require some practice to achieve skillfulness. There are very many of them, depending on how specific one wishes to be. There are a wide variety of verbal skills, social skills, physical skills, etc. that are learned during the early years.

c. Dispositions are difficult to define, and are probably best thought of as habits of mind with intentions, and motives.  There are many important dispositions, such as to be generous, to be compassionate, and so forth. Not all dispositions are positive ones, e.g. to be quarrelsome or critical, et.. think of the distinction, for example, between having reading skills versus having the habit, or disposition, to be a reader. It is possible to have the skills, but never want to read outside of the classroom. But, of course, it would be of little value to have the disposition to be a reader without having the skills. Thus as educators our goal must be to help children learn the useful and desirable skills, and at the same time, the dispositions to use them.

Note also that dispositions cannot be learned from instruction, though they can be damaged by inappropriate instructional methods. Furthermore, there may be in-born pre-dispositions, and probably some of the most important ones that concern us today are most likely in-born dispositions. For example, the dispositions to learn, and to make sense of one's own experience are inborn in all children. A curriculum for young children will nurture their thinking and learning if it supports their strong early disposition to make sense of their own environments. when they get older, schooling must help them to make sense of other people's experiences - those far away in both time and place. But in the early years of our concern we nurture them by deepening their understanding of their own experience. Dispositions cannot be learned from instruction, are partly in-born, but also are supported and learned from being around people who have them, and in whose behavior children observe them. So what dispositions we want our children to have be seen by them in us?

d)Feelings are the fourth learning goal, not because they are less impotant than the preceding three goals outlined above, but because many important capacities for feeling may be inborn. However, many important feelings are learned from experience. Feelings cannot be learned from instruction, exhortation, or indoctrination, but from direct first-hand experiences. 

Phew...got to go...will continue tomorrow......