Nurturing Thinking Learners in the Early Years Part II
by Dr. Lillian Katz

Principle 5

The younger the children, the more important it is to strengthen their dispositions to look more closely at the events and phenomena in their own environment worth learning more about.

Principle 6

The younger the children, the more important it is that what they are thinking and learning about has horizontal rather than vertical relevance. Vertical relevance means that what they children are learning about and learning to do is intended to prepare them for the next class. Horizontal relevance means that what the children are learning about and learning to do is meaningful in their present lives and current experiences. We are more likely to nurture young children's thinking and learning when we help them to make fuller, deeper and more accurate sense of their own experience and environments - topics that have horizontal relevance.

Principle 7

Unless children have early and frequent experience of what it feels like to understand something in depth, they cannot acquire the disposition to seek in-depth knowledge and understanding, to become life-long thinkers and learners. One important thing to keep in mind about dispositions is that once they are lost they are likely to be very difficult put back into the learner later.

Principle 8

The younger the learner, the more important it is to focus on intellectual than on academic goals. As children grow older, their education must address both of these two kinds of goals.

Academic goals are those that address small specific pieces of information and knowledge, and the skills required for competence in literacy and numeracy. They are typically items that can be either correct or incorrect. These elements of instruction are typically taught out of context they are practiced in exercise books and worksheets. Many of these are academic elements of instruction that have no internal logic but nevertheless must be memorized and learned, e.g. alphabet, numbers and etc.

Intellectual goals refer to basic dispositions, such as the dispositions to make sense of experience, to analyze, and theorize explanations of one's observations, to synthesize ideas and information, to seek understanding of cause-effect relationships, to predict consequences and events, to hypothesize and to speculate, and similar activities of the mind. For example, in her project approach to learning, your child and you decided to do a project on balls. From collecting different types of balls, you can branch into the function of different balls for different games, shapes of balls, measurement of the balls, colours, texture and so on. Children can make sense of what they are learning and gradual progression that can cover different area of studies.

Principle 9

Dr. Lilian said that the introduction to formal academic instruction too early and too intensely may result in children learning the academic details, but at the expense of the dispositions to use them, and at the expense of the development and strengthening of their intellectual dispositions.

There is now some research to indicate that children who have been in preschool programs focused heavily on academic exerises appear to do better than preschoolers who have more informal and child-initiated learning experiences when they are tested at the end of their preschool experience. BUT when they are followed up later during their elementary school years, the children who were in preschool programs focused on early academic instruction did not show the continuation of the early advantage (See Marcon, 2002). Futhermore, the long-term negative effects of early academic instruction appear to be more severe for boys than for girls. While this finding is difficult to interpret, on possible explanation may be that the early academically focused curriculum puts children in a passive role, on that is more likely to be difficult for boys than for girls in most cultures.

In sum, it is not much use for young children to acquire academic knowledge and skills early if the disposition to use them might be damaged in the processes of acquiring them. The focus of a curriculum in the early years should be to strengthen their intellectual dispositions and to introduce them, little by little, to useful academic skills to be used in the service of their intellectual pursuits.

Principle 10

It is best to assume that all children has strong intellectual dispositions to make the best sense they can of their own experience. The children's intellectual dispositions must be supported, appreciated, strengthened, and used.

to be continue.....