Developing children's thinking of their own learning

• This study focuses on developing children's awareness of their own learning. What children begin to think of as learning, and how they think learning comes about have previously been described in terms of qualitatively different conceptions of learning (Pramling, 1983). In this study, to develop children's awareness means to bring about a qualitative change in how learning is conceptualised. In an experimental-descriptive study three groups of preschool children (in total 56 children) were interviewed, and subsequently observed for two to three weeks while working with the same curriculum topic. After a week they were interviewed a second time, and they were interviewed a third and final time after six months. One of the groups was involved in metacognitive dialogues (Pramling, 1986b) about learning as a natural part of their everyday activities. In this group and one of the others the topic was structured in a similar way. The third teacher did not use either this structure or the metacognitive dialogues. Children's awareness of their own learning increased significantly in the group that worked with dialogues about learning that were related to the content.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Young children

learning

ECE

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)