critical thinking in early childhood education

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4 Strategies for Sparking Critical Thinking in Young Students

Fostering investigative conversation in grades K–2 isn’t easy, but it can be a great vehicle to promote critical thinking.

In the middle of class, a kindergartner spotted an ant and asked the teacher, “Why do ants come into the classroom?” Fairly quickly, educational consultant Cecilia Cabrera Martirena writes , students started sharing their theories: Maybe the ants were cold, or looking for food, or lonely. 

Their teacher started a KWL chart to organize what students already knew, what they wanted to know, and, later, what they had learned. “As many of the learners didn’t read or write yet, the KWL was created with drawings and one or two words,” Cabrera Martirena writes. “Then, as a group, they decided how they could gather information to answer that first question, and some possible research routes were designed.” 

As early elementary teachers know, young learners are able to engage in critical thinking and participate in nuanced conversations, with appropriate supports. What can teachers do to foster these discussions? Elementary teacher Jennifer Orr considered a few ideas in an article for ASCD .

“An interesting question and the discussion that follows can open up paths of critical thinking for students at any age,” Orr says. “With a few thoughtful prompts and a lot of noticing and modeling, we as educators can help young students engage in these types of academic conversations in ways that deepen their learning and develop their critical thinking skills.”

While this may not be an “easy process,” Orr writes—for the kids or the teacher—the payoff is students who from a young age are able to communicate new ideas and questions; listen and truly hear the thoughts of others; respectfully agree, disagree, or build off of their peers’ opinions; and revise their thinking. 

4 Strategies for Kick-Starting Powerful Conversations

1. Encourage Friendly Debate: For many elementary-aged children, it doesn’t take much provoking for them to share their opinions, especially if they disagree with each other. Working with open-ended prompts that “engage their interest and pique their curiosity” is one key to sparking organic engagement, Orr writes. Look for prompts that allow them to take a stance, arguing for or against something they feel strongly about. 

For example, Orr says, you could try telling first graders that a square is a rectangle to start a debate. Early childhood educator Sarah Griffin proposes some great math talk questions that can yield similar results:

• How many crayons can fit in a box?
• Which takes more snow to build: one igloo or 20 snowballs?
• Estimate how many tissues are in a box.
• How many books can you fit in your backpack?
• Which would take less time: cleaning your room or reading a book?
• Which would you rather use to measure a Christmas tree: a roll of ribbon or a candy cane? Why?

Using pictures can inspire interesting math discussions as well, writes K–6 math coach Kristen Acosta . Explore counting, addition, and subtraction by introducing kids to pictures “that have missing pieces or spaces” or “pictures where the objects are scattered.” For example, try showing students a photo of a carton of eggs with a few eggs missing. Ask questions like, “what do you notice?” and “what do you wonder?” and see how opinions differ.

2. Put Your Students in the Question: Centering students’ viewpoints in a question or discussion prompt can foster deeper thinking, Orr writes. During a unit in which kids learned about ladybugs, she asked her third graders, “What are four living and four nonliving things you would need and want if you were designing your own ecosystem?” This not only required students to analyze the components of an ecosystem but also made the lesson personal by inviting them to dream one up from scratch.

Educator Todd Finley has a list of interesting writing prompts for different grades that can instead be used to kick off classroom discussions. Examples for early elementary students include: 

• Which is better, giant muscles or incredible speed? Why?
• What’s the most beautiful person, place, or thing you’ve ever seen? Share what makes that person, place, or thing so special. 
• What TV or movie characters do you wish were real? Why? 
• Describe a routine that you often or always do (in the morning, when you get home, Friday nights, before a game, etc.).
• What are examples of things you want versus things you need? 

3. Open Several Doors: While some students take to classroom discussions like a duck to water, others may prefer to stay on dry land. Offering low-stakes opportunities for students to dip a toe into the conversation can be a great way to ensure that everyone in the room can be heard. Try introducing hand signals that indicate agreement, disagreement, and more. Since everyone can indicate their opinion silently, this supports students who are reluctant to speak, and can help get the conversation started. 

Similarly, elementary school teacher Raquel Linares uses participation cards —a set of different colored index cards, each labeled with a phrase like “I agree,” “I disagree,” or “I don’t know how to respond.” “We use them to assess students’ understanding, but we also use them to give students a voice,” Linares says. “We obviously cannot have 24 scholars speaking at the same time, but we want everyone to feel their ideas matter. Even if I am very shy and I don’t feel comfortable, my voice is still heard.” Once the students have held up the appropriate card, the discussion gets going.

4. Provide Discussion Sentence Starters: Young students often want to add their contribution without connecting it to what their peers have said, writes district-level literacy leader Gwen Blumberg . Keeping an ear out for what students are saying to each other is an important starting point when trying to “lift the level of talk” in your classroom. Are kids “putting thoughts into words and able to keep a conversation going?” she asks.

Introducing sentence starters like “I agree…” or “I feel differently…” can help demonstrate for students how they can connect what their classmate is saying to what they would like to say, which grows the conversation, Blumberg says. Phrases like “I’d like to add…” help students “build a bridge from someone else’s idea to their own.”

Additionally, “noticing and naming the positive things students are doing, both in their conversation skills and in the thinking they are demonstrating,” Orr writes, can shine a light for the class on what success looks like. Celebrating when students use these sentence stems correctly, for example, helps reinforce these behaviors.

“Students’ ability to clearly communicate with others in conversation is a critical literacy skill,” Blumberg writes, and teachers in grades K–2 can get students started on the path to developing this skill by harnessing their natural curiosity and modeling conversation moves.

MSU Extension Child & Family Development

The importance of critical thinking for young children.

Kylie Rymanowicz, Michigan State University Extension - May 03, 2016

Critical thinking is essential life skill. Learn why it is so important and how you can help children learn and practice these skills.

We use critical thinking skills every day. They help us to make good decisions, understand the consequences of our actions and solve problems. These incredibly important skills are used in everything from putting together puzzles to mapping out the best route to work. It’s the process of using focus and self-control to solve problems and set and follow through on goals. It utilizes other important life skills like making connections , perspective taking and communicating . Basically, critical thinking helps us make good, sound decisions.

Critical thinking

In her book, “Mind in the Making: The seven essential life skills every child needs,” author Ellen Galinsky explains the importance of teaching children critical thinking skills. A child’s natural curiosity helps lay the foundation for critical thinking. Critical thinking requires us to take in information, analyze it and make judgements about it, and that type of active engagement requires imagination and inquisitiveness. As children take in new information, they fill up a library of sorts within their brain. They have to think about how the new information fits in with what they already know, or if it changes any information we already hold to be true.

Supporting the development of critical thinking

Michigan State University Extension has some tips on helping your child learn and practice critical thinking.

• Encourage pursuits of curiosity . The dreaded “why” phase. Help them form and test theories, experiment and try to understand how the world works. Encourage children to explore, ask questions, test their theories, think critically about results and think about changes they could make or things they could do differently.
• Learn from others. Help children think more deeply about things by instilling a love for learning and a desire to understand how things work. Seek out the answers to all of your children’s “why” questions using books, the internet, friends, family or other experts.
• Help children evaluate information. We are often given lots of information at a time, and it is important we evaluate that information to determine if it is true, important and whether or not we should believe it. Help children learn these skills by teaching them to evaluate new information. Have them think about where or who the information is coming from, how it relates to what they already know and why it is or is not important.
• Promote children’s interests. When children are deeply vested in a topic or pursuit, they are more engaged and willing to experiment. The process of expanding their knowledge brings about a lot of opportunities for critical thinking, so to encourage this action helps your child invest in their interests. Whether it is learning about trucks and vehicles or a keen interest in insects, help your child follow their passion.
• Teach problem-solving skills. When dealing with problems or conflicts, it is necessary to use critical thinking skills to understand the problem and come up with possible solutions, so teach them the steps of problem-solving and they will use critical thinking in the process of finding solutions to problems.

For more articles on child development, academic success, parenting and life skill development, please visit the MSU Extension website.

This article was published by Michigan State University Extension . For more information, visit https://extension.msu.edu . To have a digest of information delivered straight to your email inbox, visit https://extension.msu.edu/newsletters . To contact an expert in your area, visit https://extension.msu.edu/experts , or call 888-MSUE4MI (888-678-3464).

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More Than a Foundation: Young Children Are Capable STEM Learners

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Two second-graders sit on their knees with quiet intensity, stacking unit blocks on a wide tower, higher and higher. A casual observer might think they’re simply enjoying the scale of their project and looking forward to knocking it down. Their teacher might see more, understanding that their activities are setting the stage for important spatial skills and physics concepts. Reaching as high as she can, one of the children drops a marble into the top of the tower, which is now over five feet high. Both children observe the tower intently. They hear a click, click, click, click, but no marble is in sight. The marble finally emerges from the bottom of the tower, rolling down a ramp and onto the carpet. The two children jump up and down, clapping and exclaiming, “Yay!” (The opening vignette is drawn from a video embedded in Revealing the Work of Young Engineers in Early Childhood, by Beth Van Meeteren and Betty Zan, available at http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/beyond/seed/zan.html .) 

What is easy to miss in this scenario is the engineering capacity already present in these two young children. The children had hidden in their tower a series of zig-zagging ramps—like the ramps in a parking garage—each placed at a precise distance from the previous one and stacked with care at alternating heights. In fact, the children had built and tested several smaller prototypes of the tower to determine the appropriate ramp distances. One of their key discoveries was that putting the ramps too close together resulted in too much marble speed (the marble would shoot out the sides of the tower), but putting the ramps too far apart resulted in the marble dropping straight down through the center of the tower. They worked collaboratively to get the design right, then they built the deceptively simple-looking tower on a larger scale with a complex, invisible inner structure (Van Meeteren & Zan 2010).

In the minds of these children, too, there was a complex inner process—one that is hard to see, which often results in adults underestimating young children’s current capacities. As new research shows, many people believe that “real” science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning doesn’t occur until children are older, and that exposure to STEM concepts in early childhood (birth to 8 years) is only about laying a foundation for the serious STEM learning that takes place later (McClure et al. 2017).

Many people believe that "real" STEM learning doesn't occur until children are older.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. A recent two-year research analysis found that young children are capable of engaging in, at developmentally appropriate levels, the scientific practices that high school students carry out (McClure et al. 2017). As one researcher explained, young children “can make observations and predictions, carry out simple experiments and investigations, collect data, and begin to make sense of what they found” (16). Even in the first year of life, babies systematically test physical hypotheses when they see something that doesn’t conform to their expectations (McClure et al. 2017). For example, researchers showed 11-month-olds a toy car going off the side of a table and appearing to float; the babies were more likely to observe the strange car for longer than normally behaving toy cars and to try exploring and dropping the car themselves (Stahl & Feigenson 2015). And, as the children building the tower demonstrated, young children are capable of using engineering habits of mind (e.g., systems thinking, creativity, optimism, communication, collaboration, supported persistence, and attention to ethical thinking) in their free-play activities (Van Meeteren & Zan 2010).

The research is clear: when we say children are “born scientists,” we’re not just being cute; they really are active scientists, right now, systematically and intentionally exploring their environments, even from the day they are born.

Never too young for STEM

The misconception about STEM being more meaningful for older students is important for several reasons. First, early STEM exposure is critical for later educational outcomes; when adults downplay its importance in the early years, they also diminish young children’s current and future potential. Research shows that among preschool-aged children, knowledge of math is a better predictor of later academic achievement than early reading or attention skills (Duncan et al. 2007). Some argue that early STEM is as critical today as early literacy exposure (McClure et al. 2017). STEM habits of mind—such as critical thinking, persistence, and systematic experimentation—are important across all subject areas and may be essential to how children learn to learn (Duncan & Magnuson 2011). This development is not just about the basics like counting and vocabulary, although these skills and background knowledge are important too; it’s about problem solving and other higher-level skills that transfer across many domains.

Think of it this way: as we learn new skills, our brains weave skill strands into ropes we use to solve problems, meet challenges, and, in turn, acquire new skills. When children have opportunities to practice framing questioning, collecting data, and solving scientific problems, they build strong ropes that can be used in many ways, now and throughout life (McClure et al. 2017).

Take, for example, the profound ties between STEM learning and language learning. Early STEM instruction leads to better language and literacy outcomes (Sarama et al. 2012), and exposure to more spatial language during block play in infancy and early childhood leads to improved spatial thinking abilities (Pruden, Levine, & Huttenlocher 2011). Furthermore, math skills and reading skills at kindergarten entry are equally predictive of reading skills in eighth grade (Business Roundtable 2016), and background knowledge about the world and how it works (much of which falls within the realm of STEM concepts) is critical for listening comprehension throughout life and for reading comprehension once children are able to sound out words (Guernsey & Levine 2015). So when adults do not fully appreciate the importance of STEM learning in early childhood, they do children a serious disservice, weakening their potential development across many other domains such as literacy and executive function.

But just because children are born scientists doesn’t mean they can do all this alone; they need adults to help them realize and expand their STEM capacities (Early Childhood STEM Working Group 2017). This leads to the second reason this misconception is so important: adults’ attitudes and beliefs about STEM learning often transfer to children. For example, one recent study found that the strongest predictor of preschoolers’ math learning was their teachers’ belief that math education was appropriate for their age (Seker & Alisinanoglu 2015). These beliefs also lead to concrete changes in the methods and amount of time teachers spend on STEM topics: when teachers hold negative attitudes toward early mathematics, for example, these feelings lead to avoiding math instruction, and teaching math in ineffective ways (McClure et al. 2017).

When we say children are “born scientists,” we’re not just being cute. Children really are intentionally exploring their environments.

Teachers come by these feelings honestly and may even be passing on what they themselves were taught. A recent study of teacher-preparation faculty members in California and Nebraska reported that they considered including early mathematics less important than other domains in the preparation of early childhood teachers. And the cycle may not end there—the faculty members also said that they themselves feel less prepared to teach math than they do other subjects (Austin, Sakai, et al. 2015; Austin, Whitebook, et al. 2015). In other words, there is a misconception about the suitability of STEM topics for young children that is passed from one generation of teachers and teacher educators to the next. It is time to break the cycle.

Parents’ beliefs also play a critical role in their children’s STEM success. For example, parents’ beliefs about their child’s ability in math are a stronger predictor of the child’s self-perception in math than the child’s previous math scores (Gunderson et al. 2012). In other words, when teachers and parents don’t think that young children are capable of real STEM learning, children believe them . This results in a self-fulfilling and detrimental STEM prophecy. But there is reason for hope: when the adults in a child’s life believe in and support a child’s STEM capacity, the child’s natural abilities are both acknowledged and then expanded (McClure et al. 2017).

Incorporating STEM into early learning

To appropriately bring STEM into early learning, teachers need support, including high-quality, proper preservice training and ongoing professional development. This will require an enormous investment from universities, school systems, funders, and society at large. Adults at every level of a child’s complex ecosystem will need to commit to the importance of early learning generally, and of early STEM learning in particular (for a framework describing the commitments necessary at each level, see McClure et al. 2017).

The role of a good STEM teacher is often to resist directly answering children's questions.

In the meantime, what can teachers do, without having to wait for systemic changes in the broader systems in which they work? Realizing that young children have enormous capacity for STEM learning now can go a long way. Understanding that supporting children’s growth is about encouraging STEM habits of mind, educators can incorporate engaging STEM practices in their classrooms in simple ways. Educators can start by recognizing three research-supported facts, each of which is explained in the following sections: you don’t have to be an expert; you’re not alone; and teaching STEM is not an either/or exercise.

You don’t have to be an expert

Many people believe that supporting STEM learning means having STEM expertise to offer students. This makes sense, given other common misconceptions: when adults are not aware of young children’s capacity to engage in real STEM practices, they tend to focus on expanding children’s content knowledge. But, as in other academic domains, STEM knowledge and skills grow together. Through experiential learning (combining hands-on investigations with informative read-alouds and discussions), young children develop their conceptual understanding, acquire new facts, and engage in essential skills such as observing, forming hypotheses, collecting evidence, revising hypotheses, devising experiments, and so on (NSTA 2014). They also develop STEM understandings and habits of mind from interacting with their everyday environments in curiosity-driven ways with support from teachers and other adults.

The role of a good STEM teacher is often to resist directly answering children’s questions. Teachers can encourage STEM habits of mind and facilitate learning by asking purposeful questions and then supporting children as they investigate for themselves. Classrooms that rely primarily on lecture-based instruction, in which teachers control decision making and discussion, are the least effective at fostering self-reliance and resilience, two characteristics that are foundational to STEM inquiry and practices (Van Meeteren & Zan 2010).

You are not alone

Some adults have the misconception that real STEM learning only happens inside classrooms, which may leave teachers feeling isolated and unsupported. But when adults recognize that even very young children are capable of meaningfully engaging in STEM inquiries anytime, anywhere, they can extend that STEM learning in multiple ways to many aspects of children’s lives. As with learning a new language, children become fluent  in STEM habits and more knowledgeable about STEM topics when they are immersed in them (McClure et al. 2017). The more opportunities they have to explore STEM—at museums, at libraries, and at home—the more fluent they will become.

Children become more knowledgeable about STEM topics when they are immersed in them.

Understood in this way, early STEM learning is a communitywide effort, with many individuals outside of schools who can be tapped for guidance and ideas. Ideally, the community forms a network of learning, engaging young children in a variety of STEM experiences and, as needed, offering teachers and parents reviews of concepts as varied as the attributes of levers and pulleys, why mold forms, or why rainbows appear. Informal learning environments like museums are very effective at helping adults engage children’s interest in STEM with thoughtful questions and conversations (Haden et al. 2014). In fact, many museums and libraries offer free resources for teachers, sometimes even including STEM professional development programs.

Teachers can encourage family engagement by sharing local STEM resources with parents. Since parents may feel anxious about supporting their child’s STEM learning, it is important to communicate to them the enormous capacity of their child for STEM inquiry and the impact parents can have by modeling curiosity and asking wh questions— who , what , when , where , and why —throughout the day. Technology can be a powerful partner when extending children’s learning at home. For example, teachers can encourage parents to use the Bedtime Math app ( http://bedtimemath.org/apps/ ), which aims to make math part of families’ everyday routines, just like a bedtime story. Using the app at home, even as little as once a week, has been shown to put children ahead by the equivalent of three months in math achievement by the end of the school year; and it is most effective for children whose parents are anxious about math (Berkowitz et al. 2015).

Teaching STEM is not an either/or exercise

Many teachers feel burdened by overwhelming curricular requirements and are skeptical about adding instructional blocks to their days. But recall that STEM habits of mind are transferable and that STEM knowledge encompases essential concepts and vocabulary; they strengthen all kinds of skills ropes, including literacy and attention development. When early STEM learning is understood as the development of both knowledge and inquiry-based habits of mind, teachers can begin to discover ways to infuse STEM practices and concepts into their existing curriculum. For example, a teacher may notice that many of the books she reads aloud include these STEM-like features: a problem to be solved, an evidence-driven solution that is attempted (and often iterated and reattempted), and the discovery of a method that works. Even simple books, like the lift-the-flaps board book Where’s Spot? , by Eric Hill, contain this progression: the mother dog looks in many locations for her puppy, and to the delight of children who search along with her, she finds other silly creatures hidden along the way—a bear behind the door, a monkey in the closet. By noticing and emphasizing the mother dog’s use of the scientific method, the teacher can show that STEM is everywhere and that there is an inherent drama to STEM exploration. She can also highlight the mother dog’s persistence in her systematic search, the joy in the error of the trial-and-error-laden journey (children love finding the wrong animal behind each door), and the evidence the mother collects and uses to eventually find Spot.

Teachers can begin to discover ways to infuse STEM practices and concepts into their existing curriculum.

Explicit STEM-based activities can be used to enhance other curriculum blocks as well. For example, one preschool class was engaged in a segment on the book Lost and Found, by Oliver Jeffers, about a lost penguin finding his way home on a boat. Teachers asked the 3-year-olds to build and test boats made from aluminum foil to transport a small penguin figure across the water table. The children were deeply engaged in the activity, which enhanced their experience with the book and encouraged them to talk at length about the story, while providing an immersive and meaningful STEM experience (Draper & Wood 2017). 

Fully embracing the enormous capacity of young children to engage in real STEM learning will take time and focused effort. Early childhood program directors and elementary school principals will need to provide space and flexibility for their educators to experiment with new ways of investigating STEM concepts together with young children. But once early educators start to embed these approaches to teaching, they will be in a prime position to help each other—and the wide public—see the remarkably sophisticated, and often hidden, STEM capacity of young children in the present, and to see how powerful early STEM experiences can be in shaping the minds of the next generation. 

Professional development information

• Foundations of Science Literacy http://foundationsofscienceliteracy.org
• Early Childhood STEM Conference (annual) www.ecstem.org
• PBS STEM Alive https://whut.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/stemalive/#.WYR8odPyui4

Curriculum information and STEM activities

• Ramps and Pathways https://regentsctr.uni.edu/ramps-pathways
• STEM from the Start http://stemfromthestart.org
• PEEP and the Big Wide World www.peepandthebigwideworld.com/en
• Boston Children’s Museum, STEM Sprouts (Teaching Guide and Parent Tip Sheets) www.bostonchildrensmuseum.org/stem-sprouts
• National Science Teachers Association blog “Early Years” http://nstacommunities.org/blog/category/earlyyears/
• Science Is Simple: Over 250 Activities for Preschoolers, by Peggy Ashbrook (Gryphon House)
• Young Scientist Series curriculum guides: Exploring Water with Young Children, Discovering Nature with Young Children, and Building Structures with Young Children (Redleaf)
• Making and Tinkering with STEM: Solving Design Challenges with Young Children, by Cate Heroman (NAEYC)
• Ramps and Pathways: A Constructivist Approach to Physics with Young Children, by Rheta DeVries and Christina Sales (NAEYC)

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Austin, L.J.E., M. Whitebook, F. Kipnis, L. Sakai, F. Abbasi, & F. Amanta. 2015. “Teaching the Teachers of Our Youngest Children: The State of Early Childhood Higher Education in California, 2015.” Berkeley: CSCCE. http://cscce.berkeley.edu/files/2015/California-HEI-Narrative-Report.pdf .

Berkowitz, T., M.W. Schaeffer, E.A. Maloney, L. Peterson, C. Gregor, S.C. Levine, & S.L. Beilock. 2015. “Math at Home Adds Up to Achievement in School.” Science 350 (6257): 196–98.

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Duncan, G.J., C.J. Dowsett, A. Claessens, K. Magnuson, A.C. Huston, P. Klebanov, L.S. Pagani, L. Feinstein, M. Engel, J. Brooks-Gunn, H. Sexton, K. Duckworth, & C. Japel. 2007. “School Readiness and Later Achievement.” Developmental Psychology 43 (6): 1428–46.

Duncan, G.J., & K. Magnuson. 2011. “The Nature and Impact of Early Achievement Skills, Attention Skills, and Behavior Problems.” Chap. 3 in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances , eds. G.J. Duncan & R.J. Murnane, 47–69. New York: Russell Sage.

Early Childhood STEM Working Group. 2017. Early STEM Matters: Providing High-Quality STEM Experiences for All Young Learners . Policy report. Chicago, IL: UChicago STEM Education; Chicago: Erikson Institute. http://d3lwefg3pyezlb.cloudfront.net/docs/Early_STEM_Matters_FINAL.pdf .

Guernsey, L., & M.H. Levine. 2015. Tap, Click, Read: Growing Readers in a World of Screens . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Gunderson, E.A., G. Ramirez, S.C. Levine, & S.L. Beilock. 2012. “The Role of Parents and Teachers in the Development of GenderRelated Math Attitudes.” Sex Roles 66 (3–4): 153–66.

Haden, C.A., E.A. Jant, P.C. Hoffman, M. Marcus, J.R. Geddes, & S. Gaskins. 2014. “Supporting Family Conversations and Children’s STEM Learning in a Children’s Museum.” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 29 (3): 333–44.

Hoisington, C. 2010. “Picturing What’s Possible—Portraits of Science Inquiry in Early Childhood Classrooms.” ECRP: Beyond This Issue , Collected Papers from the SEED (STEM in Early Education and Development) Conference. http://ecrp.illinois.edu/beyond/seed/Hoisington.html .

McClure, E.R., L. Guernsey, D.H. Clements, S.N. Bales, J. Nichols, N. Kendall-Taylor, & M.H. Levine. 2017. STEM Starts Early: Grounding Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education in Early Childhood. New York: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/01/jgcc_stemstartsea... .

NSTA (National Science Teachers Association). 2014. “Early Childhood Science Education.” Position statement. www.nsta.org/about/positions/earlychildhood.aspx .

Pruden, S.M., S.C. Levine, & J. Huttenlocher. 2011. “Children’s Spatial Thinking: Does Talk About the Spatial World Matter?” Developmental Science 14 (6): 1417–30.

Sarama, J., A.A. Lange, D.H. Clements, & C.B. Wolfe. 2012. “The Impacts of an Early Mathematics Curriculum on Oral Language and Literacy.” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 27 (3): 489–502.

Seker, P.T., & F. Alisinanoglu. 2015. “A Survey Study of the Effects of Preschool Teachers’ Beliefs and Self-Efficacy Toward Mathematics Education and Their Demographic Features on 48- to 60-MonthOld Preschool Children’s Mathematic Skills.” Creative Education 6 (3): 405–14.

Stahl, A.E., & L. Feigenson. 2015. “Observing the Unexpected Enhances Infants’ Learning and Exploration.” Science 348 (6230): 91–94.

Van Meeteren, B., & B. Zan. 2010. “Revealing the Work of Young Engineers in Early Childhood Education.” ECRP: Beyond This Issue , Collected Papers from the SEED (STEM in Early Education and Development) Conference. http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/beyond/seed/zan.html .  

Photographs: p. 83, 84, 85, 87, courtesy of Beth D. Van Meeteren

Elisabeth McClure, PhD, is a research specialist in creativity and learning at the LEGO Foundation. She is a former research fellow at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and the lead author of the 2017 report STEM Starts Early: Grounding Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education in Early Childhood. Elisabeth conducts research on families, young children, and digital media. [email protected]

Vol. 72, No. 5

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Creative and Critical Thinking in Early Childhood

• First Online: 02 January 2023

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• Nicole Leggett 3 , 4  

Part of the book series: Integrated Science ((IS,volume 13))

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Early childhood (from prenatal to eight years of life) is the most important period of growth in human development, with peak synaptic activity in all brain regions occurring in the first ten years of life. This time-sensitive course of brain development results in different functions emerging at different times. It is during the preschool years that sensitive periods for cognitive development are formed, in particular, creative and critical thinking skills. Sociocultural perspectives ascertain that a child’s cognition is co-constructed through the social environment. This chapter draws from Vygotsky’s sociocultural cognitive theory and creative imagination theory to explain the processes involved as young children generate new knowledge. Examples from children’s interactions in social learning environments are presented, demonstrating how children think creatively and critically as they solve problems and seek meaning through play and imagination.

Graphical Abstract/Art Performance

Collaborative problem-solving.

(Photography by Nicole Leggett).

Creativity is intelligence having fun. Albert Einstein

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Leggett, N. (2022). Creative and Critical Thinking in Early Childhood. In: Rezaei, N. (eds) Integrated Education and Learning. Integrated Science, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15963-3_7

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How to Teach Your Child to Be a Critical Thinker

Blue Planet Studio / iStockphoto

What Is Critical Thinking?

• Importance of Critical Thinking

Benefits of Critical Thinking Skills

• Teach Kids to Be Critical Thinkers

Every day kids are bombarded with messages, information, and images. Whether they are at school, online, or talking to their friends, they need to know how to evaluate what they are hearing and seeing in order to form their own opinions and beliefs. Critical thinking skills are the foundation of education as well as an important life skill. Without the ability to think critically, kids will struggle academically, especially as they get older.

In fact, no matter what your child plans to do professionally someday, they will need to know how to think critically, solve problems, and make decisions. As a parent, it's important that you ensure that your kids can think for themselves and have developed a healthy critical mindset before they leave the nest.

Doing so will help them succeed both academically and professionally as well as benefit their future relationships. Here is what you need to know about critical thinking, including how to teach your kids to be critical thinkers.

Critical thinking skills are the ability to imagine, analyze, and evaluate information in order to determine its integrity and validity, such as what is factual and what isn't. These skills help people form opinions and ideas as well as help them know who is being a good friend and who isn't.

"Critical thinking also can involve taking a complex problem and developing clear solutions," says Amy Morin, LCSW, a psychotherapist and author of the best-selling books "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do" and "13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don't Do."

In fact, critical thinking is an essential part of problem-solving, decision-making, and goal-setting . It also is the basis of education, especially when combined with reading comprehension . These two skills together allow kids to master information.

Why Critical Thinking Skills Are Important

According to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which evaluated 15-year-old children in 44 different countries, more than one in six students in the United States are unable to solve critical thinking problems. What's more, research indicates that kids who lack critical thinking skills face a higher risk of behavioral problems.

If kids are not being critical thinkers, then they are not thinking carefully, says Amanda Pickerill, Ph.D. Pickerill is licensed with the Ohio Department of Education and the Ohio Board of Psychology and is in practice at the Ohio State School for the Blind in Columbus, Ohio.

"Not thinking carefully [and critically] can lead to information being misconstrued; [and] misconstrued information can lead to problems in school, work, and relationships," she says.

Critical thinking also allows kids to gain a deeper understanding of the world including how they see themselves in that world. Additionally, kids who learn to think critically tend to be observant and open-minded.

Amy Morin, LCSW

Critical thinking skills can help someone better understand themselves, other people, and the world around them. [They] can assist in everyday problem-solving, creativity, and productivity.

There are many ways critical thinking skills can benefit your child, Dr. Pickerill says. From being able to solve complex problems in school and determining how they feel about particular issues to building relationships and dealing with peer pressure, critical thinking skills equip your child to deal with life's challenges and obstacles.

"Critical thinking skills [are beneficial] in solving a math problem, in comparing and contrasting [things], and when forming an argument," Dr. Pickerill says. "As a psychologist, I find critical thinking skills also to be helpful in self-reflection. When an individual is struggling to reach a personal goal or to maintain a satisfactory relationship it is very helpful to apply critical thinking."

Critical thinking also fosters independence, enhances creativity, and encourages curiosity. Kids who are taught to use critical thinking skills ask a lot of questions and never just take things at face value—they want to know the "why" behind things.

"Good critical thinking skills also can lead to better relationships, reduced distress, and improved life satisfaction," says Morin. "Someone who can solve everyday problems is likely to feel more confident in their ability to handle whatever challenges life throws their way."

How to Teach Kids to Be Critical Thinkers

Teaching kids to think critically is an important part of parenting. In fact, when we teach kids to be critical thinkers, we are also teaching them to be independent . They learn to form their own opinions and come to their own conclusions without a lot of outside influence. Here are some ways that you can teach your kids to become critical thinkers.

Be a Good Role Model

Sometimes the best way to teach your kids an important life skill is to model it in your own life. After all, kids tend to copy the behaviors they see in their parents. Be sure you are modeling critical thinking in your own life by researching things that sound untrue and challenging statements that seem unethical or unfair.

"Parents, being the critical thinkers that they are, can begin modeling critical thinking from day one by verbalizing their thinking skills," Dr. Pickerill says. "It’s great for children to hear how parents critically think things through. This modeling of critical thinking allows children to observe their parents' thought processes and that modeling lends itself to the child imitating what [they have] observed."

Play With Them

Children are constantly learning by trial and error and play is a great trial and error activity, says Dr, Pickerill. In fact, regularly playing with your child at a very young age is setting the foundation for critical thinking and the depth of their critical thinking skills will advance as they develop, she says.

"You will find your child’s thinking will be more on a concrete level in the earlier years and as they advance in age it will become more abstract," Dr. Pickerill says. "Peer play is also helpful in developing critical thinking skills but parents need to be available to assist when conflicts arise or when bantering takes a turn for the worse."

As your kids get older, you can play board games together or simply spend time talking about something of interest to them. The key is that you are spending quality time together that allows you the opportunity to discuss things on a deeper level and to examine issues critically.

Teach Them to Solve Problems

Morin says one way to teach kids to think critically is to teach them how to solve problems. For instance, ask them to brainstorm at least five different ways to solve a particular problem, she says.

"You might challenge them to move an object from one side of the room to the other without using their hands," she says. "At first, they might think it’s impossible. But with a little support from you, they might see there are dozens of solutions (like using their feet or putting on gloves). Help them brainstorm a variety of solutions to the same problem and then pick one to see if it works."

Over time, you can help your kids see that there are many ways to view and solve the same problem, Morin says.

Encourage Them to Ask Questions

As exhausting as it can be at times to answer a constant barrage of questions, it's important that you encourage your child to question things. Asking questions is the basis of critical thinking and the time you invest in answering your child's questions—or finding the answers together— will pay off in the end.

Your child will learn not only learn how to articulate themselves, but they also will get better and better at identifying untrue or misleading information or statements from others. You also can model this type of questioning behavior by allowing your child to see you question things as well.

Practice Making Choices

Like everything in life, your child will often learn through trial and error. And, part of learning to be a critical thinker involves making decisions. One way that you can get your child thinking about and making choices is to give them a say in how they want to spend their time.

Allow them to say no thank-you to playdates or party invitations if they want. You also can give them an allowance and allow them to make some choices about what to do with the money. Either of these scenarios requires your child to think critically about their choices and the potential consequences before they make a decision.

As they get older, talk to them about how to deal with issues like bullying and peer pressure . And coach them on how to make healthy choices regarding social media use . All of these situations require critical thinking on your child's part.

Encourage Open-Mindedness

Although teaching open-mindedness can be a challenging concept to teach at times, it is an important one. Part of becoming a critical thinker is the ability to be objective and evaluate ideas without bias.

Teach your kids that in order to look at things with an open mind, they need leave their own judgments and assumptions aside. Some concepts you should be talking about that encourage open-mindedness include diversity , inclusiveness , and fairness.

A Word From Verywell

Developing a critical mindset is one of the most important life skills you can impart to your kids. In fact, in today's information-saturated world, they need these skills in order to thrive and survive. These skills will help them make better decisions, form healthy relationships, and determine what they value and believe.

Plus, when you teach your kids to critically examine the world around them, you are giving them an advantage that will serve them for years to come—one that will benefit them academically, professionally, and relationally. In the end, they will not only be able to think for themselves, but they also will become more capable adults someday.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA): Results from PISA 2012 problem-solving .

Sun RC, Hui EK. Cognitive competence as a positive youth development construct: a conceptual review .  ScientificWorldJournal . 2012;2012:210953. doi:10.1100/2012/210953

Ghazivakili Z, Norouzi Nia R, Panahi F, Karimi M, Gholsorkhi H, Ahmadi Z. The role of critical thinking skills and learning styles of university students in their academic performance .  J Adv Med Educ Prof . 2014;2(3):95-102. PMID:25512928

Schmaltz RM, Jansen E, Wenckowski N. Redefining critical thinking: teaching students to think like scientists .  Front Psychol . 2017;8:459. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00459

By Sherri Gordon Sherri Gordon, CLC is a published author, certified professional life coach, and bullying prevention expert. 

Brainstorming a Path to Critical Thinking

• Lisa Sutherland
• September 11, 2019

I was recently working in an early childhood classroom where the teacher was discussing nocturnal animals. After explaining what nocturnal meant, she asked the children to come up with reasons why some animals would rather stay up at night and sleep during the day.

She then wrote all of the children’s responses down on a chart paper. She told the children that the list would be up for them to think about over the next few weeks and that they could add items to the list if they had additional ideas.

The Long List

When I went back to that classroom a week later, I noticed that the list had grown significantly. When I asked the teacher about the growing list, she told me that the children were really intrigued by the question and kept coming up with new ideas. She also told me that the children had been acting out their ideas in the dramatic play area, having conversations at snack time, and talking to their parents and siblings about their ideas at home. 

When I sat down to have snack with the students and the teacher, one little boy started talking about how he saw glowing eyes in the forest when his family was driving home in the evening from his grandparents’ house. He proceeded to tell his friends that he thought that nocturnal animals must have special eyes that see things better at night. This child had engaged in critical thinking. He saw glowing eyes in the forest, determined the eyes must belong to a nocturnal animal since it was after dark, and then reasoned that nocturnal animals had special eyes.

The Making of a Critical Thinking Mind

Critical thinking is one of the most important skills that today’s young children will need for the future. Ellen Galinsky, author of “Mind in the Making,” includes critical thinking on her list of the seven essential life skills needed by every child.

As we consider a world where educators are preparing students for jobs that don’t even exist yet, fostering children’s ability to think critically is an essential. Any time children use their existing knowledge to contemplate why things happen or to evaluate ideas and form opinions, they are engaging in critical thinking.

While there are many ways for a teacher to support children in developing or exercising critical thinking skills, brainstorming activities are a great way to get started if you are just starting to think about how you can support critical thinking.

Beautiful Brainstorming

When you engage children in brainstorming activities that begin with “why do you think…,” you are asking them to think critically. When you ask children to brainstorm solutions to problems and encourage them to keep coming up with additional ideas before settling on a solution, you are teaching them to think outside the box and consider a variety of solutions before deciding on the action they want to take. This is a really important critical thinking skill.

 When you encourage children to continue thinking about the brainstorming activity over time and provide engaging props (like nocturnal animal puppets) and visual reminders (a list on the wall), you will find the children deepen their thinking over time.

You can also use ideas from a brainstorming list created by your students to identify future activities, stories and materials that they find interesting. Think of all the ways you can brainstorm with your students by engaging in some of your own brainstorming.

Lisa Sutherland is the Director of Early Learning for Cognia, a school improvement and accrediting organization. Her favorite thing to do in the world after scuba diving is supporting early childhood programs in exploring what elements of continuous improvement will be most meaningful for their organization and how to implement them.

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Critical literacy in early childhood education: Questions that prompt critical conversations

Shu-yen law new zealand tertiary college, practitioner research： vol 6, no 3 - may 2020.

This article proposes the use of questioning as a strategy to foster and provoke children’s critical thinking through the medium of literacy. The art of questioning includes adults both asking questions in purposeful ways and eliciting children’s responses and questions. This strategy prompts children to make connections to prior knowledge and experiences, share perspectives, reflect on ideas and explore possible responses. This article is informed by both the author’s own research and a range of literature. Examples of questions and conversations are provided to demonstrate how critical thinking can be fostered in early childhood education settings. In this article, picture books are viewed as a valuable resource for teachers to nurture critical thinking as they can portray concepts and ideas that are meaningful and relevant for children.

Introduction

When children engage in shared reading with educators, they develop an understanding of the story and meaning of the world around them. This understanding can be deepened by supporting children to develop a critical stance so that they become confident to engage in critical discussions on current and meaningful topics that touch their lives. Picture book reading is not just about what children can see and hear, but also how it makes them feel, think and how these ideas might be applied to their lives. This comprises engagement in critical literacy: a learning journey where children are encouraged to think critically and reflect on meanings presented in texts. This article draws on findings from my own studies in China (Law & Zheng, 2013) and New Zealand (Law, 2012) to explore the ways in which teachers can use picture books to support the development of children’s critical thinking.

What is critical literacy and why is it important in early childhood education?

The origins of critical literacy can be traced to domains such as feminism, multiculturalism, critical theory, anti-racism, and post-structuralism, each presenting different perspectives on the influence of power dynamics in society (Janks, 2000). Comber (1999) clarifies that despite the different orientations, the starting point of these viewpoints are:

…about shaping young people who can analyse what is going on; who will ask why things are the way they are; who will question who benefits from the ways things are and who can imagine how things might be different and who can act to make things more equitable (p. 4).

Based on a literature review spanning thirty years, Lewison, Flint and van Sluys (2002) found that critical literacy provides educators with the opportunity to explore social issues and discuss ways children can contribute to positive change in the community (cited in Norris, Lucas, & Prudhoe, 2012). It is vital to encourage children to be open to different perspectives and explore challenging concepts presented in texts, such as diversity, divorce, stereotypes, bullying, disability, and poverty as these are issues relevant to people of all ages, including children in the early years (Lewison et el., 2002; Mankiw & Strasser, 2013). The objective of the discussion therefore does not stop at the analysis of text but includes reflection on one’s own experiences, which promotes social awareness and positive actions.

One might question how relevant social issues are to children in early childhood education. Ayers, Connolly, Harper and Bonnano (cited in Hawkins, 2014) point out that “children as young as three have the capability to develop negative attitudes and prejudices towards particular groups” (p. 725). The New Zealand Early Childhood Curriculum Te Whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa (Te Whāriki) (MoE, 2017) supports the cultivation of social justice. The strand contribution voices the aspiration that children will demonstrate “confidence to stand up for themselves and others against biased ideas and discriminatory behaviour” (p. 37). Teachers can achieve this through creating opportunities for children to “discuss bias and to challenge prejudice and discriminatory attitudes” (p. 39). Therefore, young children can be involved in critical literacy through meaning making, perspective sharing, and reflecting on the social justice concepts presented in picture books.

Picture book reading

Picture book reading is an interactive, sociocultural experience, where adults and children can engage in collaborative learning (Helming & Reid, 2017; Norris et al., 2012). Picture books make great teaching tools as they bring in fresh perspectives on social issues, prompting children to explore concepts and  consider how this might influence their actions (Robertson, 2018). When children’s perspectives broaden through critical discussions, positive attitudes towards others in society are also likely to take shape (Kim, 2016). Picture book reading also supports the development of oral language needed for critical thinking and discussion (Education Review Office [ERO], 2017). Shared picture book reading enables meaningful, shared conversations and the introduction of a wide vocabulary, while children ask questions and share their understandings and experiences (ERO, 2017). An example of this was evident in my study when children were asked during a reading session using the children’s book Don’t Panic Annika (Bell & Morris, 2011):

“What does that mean when you say ‘panic’? When did you feel scared?” to which a child responded: “When I was four or even three, every morning, I was scared and I could not even see my mum or my dad; I thought it was a monster”, while another expressed, “When I was trying to peel the potatoes, I thought I was going to hit my finger. I know what panicky means. You scream, crying and like stomping your feet” (Law, 2012, p. 66).

This question supported the children to connect a new word to their real life experiences, which helped them “make sense of learning, literacy, life and themselves” (MoE, 2009, p. 23). When teachers support children to learn new words through making connections to prior knowledge and experiences, children will then have the vocabulary needed to engage in further conversations around the topic.

The art of questioning

Questioning is defined by how adults ask questions meaningfully and how adults elicit children’s questions through strategies such as probing, listening, commenting, and modelling thinking out loud. Open-ended questions foster a good balance between a hands-on and hands-off approach to teaching as they provoke thinking while accepting individual unique perspectives. Open-ended questions promote open-mindedness and endless possibilities. A child-centred approach allows children to bring their own cultural perspectives and understanding of the world to the table, enabling them to make connections and form their own working theories (Peters & Kelly, 2011). These abilities to make meanings and connections, ask questions, consider multiple perspectives, and make predictions are also learning dispositions beneficial for success in reading (Whyte, 2019). 

In addition to teacher questioning, children should be encouraged to be proactive at asking questions as well. It is vital to strike a balance between teacher questioning and child questioning where both engage in active listening and exchanging of thoughts, opinions, and wonderings based on personal experiences and feelings (Mackey & de Vocht-van Alphen, 2016). This can be achieved by moving away from the commonly used ‘teacher-question, student-answer, and teacher-reaction‘ pattern which can inhibit learning if used improperly, as it can cause excessive attention to guessing what is in the teacher’s mind rather than being creative in exploring more in-depth about the texts  (MoE, 2003). Levy (2016) supports this noting the importance of creating learning environments where children are encouraged to ask questions and explore dominant discourses in texts, while teachers’ open-ended questions welcome individual opinions and model critical thinking. Te Whāriki (MoE, 2017)aspires for children to be active questioners and thinkers on issues in life that are relevant to them. Supporting this goal, children should be encouraged to inquire, reflect, challenge ideas and make meanings, which support engagement in critical literacy. These opportunities for children to express opinions and ask questions are a way to advocate for their own and others’ rights (Luff, Kanyal, Shehu, & Brewis, 2016), contributing both to social justice and creating an equitable learning environment. 

Examples of questions

Some examples of questions will be shared and discussed in this section to show how they can be used in purposeful ways to promote engagement in critical literacy. This includes making connections to prior knowledge and experiences; sharing perspectives and reflecting on ideas in the story to explore possible responses. It is worth noting that the proposed practices are not hierarchical in importance or sequential, but rather implemented according to both the content and storyline of the books, and the children’s sociocultural context. This includes taking into consideration factors such as families’ beliefs and values, development appropriateness, and the intended outcomes for the children.

Prompts for making connections to prior knowledge and experiences

What happened in the story? What does this [picture/word] say? How do you know? Have you [done/seen] this before? Tell me about it. Can you remember …? What happened? How is [the character] feeling? Why is [the character] feeling this way?

When teachers actively support children to make meaning through connecting to their prior knowledge experiences, children are supported in developing a critical stance towards text (Mackey & de Vocht-van Alphen, 2016). When being read a story about Alfie and the Big Boys (Hughes, 2007) a group of five-year-old children were asked, “Why is Ian [a big boy in the story] not talking to the little kids?” Although the story portrays Ian as happy playing with another little girl, the children offered their own interpretations suggesting; “He may be angry at them” and “He doesn’t know their names”. This story was purposefully selected for the children who had just transitioned from early childhood centres into new entrant classrooms. By eliciting the children’s voice, the teacher was able to understand the challenges the children were facing and the thoughts that were guiding their actions, and was able to introduce strategies to support their sense of belonging and social competence (Law, 2012).

Books such as Mum and Dad Glue (Gray, 2009) and No Ordinary Family (Krause, 2013) convey messages around the different family structures; the first a narrative about a child’s feelings over his parents’ separation and the latter looking at children’s experience of being in a blended family. These books resonate with many children nowadays and present opportunities for teachers to use them as a tool to support children to help clarify misconceptions or provide reassurance for the anxiety they may be feeling. Questions like “Who do you live with now?”, “What do you do when you are with [Mum/Dad]?” or “Do you like sharing your room with your [half/step siblings]? Why?” provokes children to talk about their own experience or opinions which could then lead to further discussions around fairness and family diversity.

Prompts for sharing perspectives

What do you think [the character] could do? What else?  What is going to happen next? Are these pictures the same or different? Teachers need to also allow time for children to respond to images before starting to read. Prompt or model thinking out loud if needed, for example: “What can you see?”, “I wonder how [the character] is feeling?”

Empowerment is one of the principles that drives the vision for children at the heart of Te Whāriki (MoE, 2017). Effective questioning and giving time for children to respond to what they see, can empower them to create stories in different ways according to their own views and interests. Questions like “What is going to happen next?” prompt children to make predictions about the story and form questions based on their knowledge of the world, understanding that their voice and opinion are valid while realising that others can bring in their own perspectives too.

It is equally important that teachers take time to listen to children, allowing them to share their ideas and ask questions, thereby recognising that they are active participants (Peters & Kelly, 2011). This facilitation of social interactions amongst children prompts them to be open-minded and become aware that people give meaning to texts in different ways (Bailin, Case, Coombs, & Daniels, 2010). This is crucial to critical literacy as perspective-taking and empathy are two social competencies that enhance the attributes of sharing and caring (Robertson, 2018). The digital book Oat the Goat (MoE, 2018) is a great teaching tool for encouraging perspective-taking and empathy as children are given opportunities to make choices and justify their opinions. This can be done by asking “What would you do if you were the Goat? Why?” in the scene where Amos, a mossy, green, hairy creature, was laughed at and criticised by a few sheep for how he looks, calling him “a weirdo” and “mossy head”. Further probing concepts of bullying or discrimination can be done by modelling thinking out loud, “Look at Amos, I wonder how he’s feeling when the sheep laugh at him?” With this, children are encouraged to reflect on the situation, share their perspectives, while respecting that their peers may hold differing views from their own.

Wordless picture books like Bee & Me (Jay, 2016) is one that facilitates children to use their own unique imagination and prior knowledge to fill in the details, taking away different meanings with them (Law & Zheng, 2013). Throughout the text, children are presented with images that leave them room to question or add their own voice to it. Simple probing questions like, “What can you see?”, “What do you think this picture means?” encourage children’s voice and input, which supports the strand of contribution in Te Whāriki (MoE, 2017) where children become increasingly capable of “recognising and appreciating their own ability to learn” (p. 37).

Prompts to reflect on concepts and exploring actions

What would happen if…?  Is it good or bad to…? Is it ok if/when…? Why or why not? What would you do/feel if you are [a character]? Who do you like in this story? Why?

It is imperative that children recognise how a particular text may affect their feelings, thoughts, or perceptions in order to be active citizens who are able to think about their responsibilities in the environment they live in. The Selfish Crocodile (Charles, 2010) illustrates a self-centered crocodile who initially refuses to share the forest with the other animals but eventually becomes friendly and considerate after being helped by a mouse. Children can be invited to share their thoughts through questions such as “Is it ok to have the whole space to yourself? What will happen if you do that?” or “What can you say to your friends so they play with you?” These questions prompt children to use their comprehension of the story and the images to reflect on issues of equality and inclusion and through a collaborative reading experience, they can develop an awareness of certain positive behaviours in life that promotes social justice.

One example from the book Zoobots (Whatley & Whatley, 2010) shows how children are supported to not only identify key message of the story but also further reflect on their own thoughts about friendship.

Teacher: What do you think this story is about? Child A: Making friends . Teacher: What about making friends? Child A: Like they build a friend and that‘s kind of like people finding friends. At this time, another child, B, added his own point of view about friendship. Child B: You cannot have too many friends. Teacher: But was it ok they (the characters) found another friend? Child B: Yes. Teacher: Did it matter in the end what the friend looked like? Child B: No. (Law, 2012, p. 64)

In this example, the teacher ensures that the main concept in the story connects to the children’s lives and that Child B can form an inclusive view about making friends. Similarly, other social justice issues such as bullying and discrimination can be explored by using books such as Isaac and His Amazing Asperger Superpowers (Walsh, 2016) or Julian Is A Mermaid (Love, 2018) engaging children in further discussions around the message, leading to prompts that support their application to their own experiences. The first book illustrates how a child with Asperger’s syndrome would perceive the world and the second book is about a boy who wants to be a mermaid. Questions such as “If you are Isaac’s [character] friend, what will you do to play with him?” or “Is it okay for boys to play with dolls?” and “Is it okay for girls to be firemen?” can foster positive attitudes in children to matters relevant to their lives and with the growing awareness of equality, empower them to act with kindness and empathy.

Critical literacy in early childhood education is warranted with the increased complexity and diversity of society and the need for children to be socially responsible individuals who can take the lead and make good decisions and actions in life. Critical literacy helps address real life issues through empowering children to make connections, share perspectives, and reflect on ideas and explore possible responses.   This article advocates for the purposeful use of questioning in promoting critical literacy through picture book reading experiences, where there is a balance between teacher questioning and children questioning to promote critical, creative, and reflective conversations. A sociocultural approach has been applied, where children’s prior knowledge and experience are activated and where picture book choices are relevant to matters relating to their lives in order for the learning to be meaningful and impactful. This can be practiced by having reflective teachers who are critical and conscious of their own beliefs, assumptions, and biases, and an environment that ensures children’s views and feelings are valued and that their voices are listened to.

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How to cite this article

Shu-Yen, L. (2020). Critical literacy in early childhood education: Questions that prompt critical conversations. He Kupu, 6 (3), 26-33.

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Vygotsky Thinking and Speaking

This chapter is an abbreviated version of the preface written by Vygotsky for the Russian edition of Piaget’s first two books (Gosizdat, Moscow, 1932). Vygotsky’s criticism, based on Piaget’s early work, is hardly applicable to Piaget’s later formulations of his theories – Editor .

PSYCHOLOGY owes a great deal to Jean Piaget. It is not an exaggeration to say that he revolutionized the study of child language and thought. He developed the clinical method of exploring children’s ideas which has since been widely used. He was the first to investigate child perception and logic systematically; moreover, he brought to his subject a fresh approach of unusual amplitude and boldness. Instead of listing the deficiencies of child reasoning compared with that of adults, Piaget concentrated on the distinctive characteristics of child thought, on what the child has rather than on what the child lacks. Through this positive approach he demonstrated that the difference between child and adult thinking was qualitative rather than quantitative.

Like many another great discovery, Piaget’s idea is simple to the point of seeming self-evident. It had already been expressed in the words of Rousseau, which Piaget himself quoted, that a child is not a miniature adult and his mind not the mind of an adult on a small scale. Behind this truth, for which Piaget provided experimental proof, stands another simple idea the idea of evolution, which suffuses all of Piaget’s studies with a brilliant light.

For all its greatness, however, Piaget’s work suffers from the duality common to all the path-finding contemporary works in psychology. This cleavage is a concomitant of the crisis that psychology is undergoing as it develops into a science in the true sense of the word. The crisis stems from the sharp contradiction between the factual material of science and its methodological and theoretical premises, which have long been a subject of dispute between materialistic and idealistic world conceptions. The struggle is perhaps more acute in psychology than in any other discipline.

As long as we lack a generally accepted system incorporating all the available psychological knowledge, any important factual discovery inevitably leads to the creation of a new theory to fit the newly observed facts. Freud, L�vy-Bruhl, Blondel, each created his own system of psychology. The prevailing duality is reflected in the incongruity between these theoretical structures, with their metaphysical, idealistic overtones, and the empiric bases on which they are erected. In modern psychology great discoveries are made daily, only to be shrouded in ad hoc theories, prescientific and semi-metaphysical.

Piaget tries to escape this fatal duality by sticking to facts. He deliberately avoids generalizing even in his own field and is especially careful not to step over into the related realms of logic, of the theory of cognition, or of the history of philosophy. Pure empiricism seems to him the only safe ground. His book, he writes, is

first and foremost a collection of facts and documents. The bonds uniting the various chapters are those that a single method can give to diverse findings – by no means those of systematic exposition [ Language and Thought in the Child p. 1].

Indeed, his forte is the unearthing of new facts, their painstaking analysis, their classification – the ability, as Clapar�de puts it, to listen to their message. An avalanche of facts, great and small, opening up new vistas or adding to previous knowledge, tumbles down on child psychology from the pages of Piaget. His clinical method proves a truly invaluable tool for studying the complex structural wholes of child thought in its evolutional transformations. It unifies his diverse investigations and gives us coherent, detailed, real-life pictures of child thinking.

The new facts and the new method led to many problems, some entirely new to scientific psychology, others appearing in a new light. Problems gave birth to theories, in spite of Piaget’s determination to avoid them by closely following the experimental facts and disregarding for the time being that the choice itself of experiments is determined by hypotheses. But facts are always examined in the light of some theory and therefore cannot be disentangled from philosophy. This is especially true of facts relative to thinking. To find the key to Piaget’s rich store of data we must first explore the philosophy behind his search for facts – and behind their interpretation, which he presents only at the end of his second book [ Judgment and Reason in the Child ] in a resume of its contents.

Piaget approaches this task by raising the question of the objective interrelatedness of all the characteristic traits of child thinking he observed. Are these traits fortuitous and independent, or do they form an orderly whole, with a logic of its own, around some central, unifying fact? Piaget believes that they do. In answering the question, he passes from facts to theory, and incidentally shows how much his analysis of facts was influenced by theory, even though in his presentation the theory follows the findings.

According to Piaget, the bond uniting all the specific characteristics of child logic is the egocentrism of the child’s thinking. To this core trait he relates all the other traits he found, such as intellectual realism, syncretism, and difficulty in understanding relations. He describes egocentrism as occupying an intermediate position, genetically, structurally, and functionally, between autistic and directed thought.

The idea of the polarity of directed and undirected thought is borrowed from psychoanalytical theory. Piaget says:

Directed thought is conscious, i.e., it pursues aims that are present in the mind of the thinker. It is intelligent, i.e., it is adapted to reality and strives to influence it. It is susceptible of truth and of error ... and it can be communicated through language. Autistic thought is subconscious, i.e., the goals it pursues and the problems it sets itself are not present in consciousness. It is not adapted to external reality but creates for itself a reality of imagination or dreams. It tends, not to establish truths, but to gratify wishes and remains strictly individual and incommunicable as such by means of language, since it operates primarily in images and must, in order to be communicated, resort to roundabout methods, evoking, by means of symbols and of myths, the feelings that guide it [ Language and Thought in the Child , pp. 59-60].

Directed thought is social. As it develops, it is increasingly influenced by the laws of experience and of logic proper. Autistic thought, on the contrary, is individualistic and obeys a set of special laws of its own.

Between these two contrasting modes of thought

there are many varieties in regard to their degree of communicability. These intermediate varieties must obey a special logic, intermediate too between the logic of autism and the logic of intelligence. We propose to give the name of egocentric thought to the principal of these intermediate forms [ Language and Thought in the Child , p. 62].

While its main function is still the satisfaction of personal needs, it already includes some mental adaptation, some of the reality orientation typical of the thought of adults. The egocentric thought of the child “stands midway between autism in the strict sense of the word and socialized thought” [ Judgment and Reason in the Child , p. 276]. This is Piaget’s basic hypothesis.

It is important to note that throughout his work Piaget stresses the traits that egocentric thought has in common with autism rather than the traits that divide them. In the summary at the end of his book, he states emphatically: “Play, when all is said and done, is the supreme law of egocentric thought [ Judgment and Reason in the Child , p. 323]. The same tendency is especially pronounced in his treatment of syncretism, even though he notes that the mechanism of syncretic thinking represents a transition from the logic of dreams to the logic of thought.

Piaget holds that egocentrism stands between extreme autism and the logic of reason chronologically as well as structurally and functionally. His conception of the development of thought is based on the premise taken from psychoanalysis that child thought is originally and naturally autistic and changes to realistic thought only under long and sustained social pressure, this does not, Piaget points out, devaluate the intelligence of the child. “Logical activity isn’t all there is to intelligence” [ Judgment and Reason in the Child , p. 267]. Imagination is important for finding solutions to problems, but it does not take care of verification and proof, which the search for truth presupposes. The need to verify our thought – that is, the need for logical activity – arises late. This lag is to be expected, says Piaget, since thought begins to serve immediate satisfaction much earlier than to seek for truth; the most spontaneous form of thinking is play, or wishful imaginings that make the desired seem obtainable. Up to the age of seven or eight, play dominates in child thought to such an extent that it is very hard to tell deliberate invention from fantasy that the child believes to be the truth.

To sum up, autism is seen as the original, earliest form of thought; logic appears relatively late; and egocentric thought is the genetic link between them.

This conception, though never presented by Piaget in a coherent, systematic fashion, is the cornerstone of his whole theoretical edifice. True, he states more than once that the assumption of the intermediate nature of child thought is hypothetical, but he also says that this hypothesis is so close to common sense that it seems little more debatable to him than the fact itself of child egocentrism. He traces egocentrism to the nature of the practical activity of the child and to the late development of social attitudes.

Clearly, from the genetic point of view, one must start from the child’s activity in order to understand his thought; and his activity is unquestionably egocentric and egotistic. The social instinct in well-defined form develops late. The first critical period in this respect occurs toward the age of 7 or 8 [ Judgment and Reason in the Child , p. 276].

Before this age, Piaget tends to see egocentrism as all-pervading. All the phenomena of child logic in their rich variety he considers directly or indirectly egocentric. Of syncretism, an important expression of egocentrism, he says unequivocally that it permeates the child’s entire thinking, both in the verbal and in the perceptual sphere. After seven or eight, when socialized thinking begins to take shape, the egocentric features do not suddenly vanish. They disappear from the child’s perceptual operations but remain crystallized in the more abstract area of purely verbal thought.

His conception of the prevalence of egocentrism in childhood leads Piaget to conclude that egocentrism of thought is so intimately related to the child’s psychic nature that it is impervious to experience. The influences to which adults subject the child

are not imprinted on him as on a photographic plate: They are “assimilated,” that is to say, deformed by the living being subjected to them and become implanted in his own substance. It is this psychological substance of the child or, in other words, the structure and the functioning peculiar to child thought that we have endeavored to describe and, in a measure, to explain [ Judgment and Reason in the Child , p. 338].

This passage epitomizes the nature of Piaget’s basic assumptions and brings us to the general problem of social and biological uniformities in psychic development, to which we shall return in Section III. First, let us examine the soundness of Piaget’s conception of child egocentrism in the light of the facts on which it is based.

Since Piaget’s conception of child egocentrism is of primary significance in his theory, we must inquire what facts led him not only to accept it as a hypothesis but to put such great faith in it. We shall then test these facts by comparing them with the results of our own experiments.

The factual basis of Piaget’s belief is provided by his investigation of the child’s use of language. His systematic observations led him to conclude that all conversations of children fall into two groups, the egocentric and the socialized. The difference between them lies mainly in their functions. In egocentric speech, the child talks only about himself, takes no interest in his interlocutor, does not try to communicate, expects no answers, and often does not even care whether anyone listens to him. It is similar to a monologue in a play: The child is thinking aloud, keeping up a running accompaniment, as it were, to whatever he may be doing. In socialized speech, he does attempt an exchange with others – he begs, commands, threatens, conveys information, asks questions.

Piaget’s experiments showed that by far the greater part of the preschool child’s talk is egocentric. He found that from 44 to 47 per cent of the total recorded talk of children in their seventh year was egocentric in nature. This figure, he says, must be considerably increased in the case of younger children. Further investigations with six- and seven-year-olds proved that even socialized speech at that age is not entirely free of egocentric thinking. Furthermore, besides his expressed thoughts the child has a great many unexpressed thoughts. Some of these, according to Piaget, remain unexpressed precisely because they are egocentric, i.e., incommunicable. To convey them to others the child would have to be able to adopt their point of view. “One might say that an adult thinks socially even when he is alone, and a child under seven thinks and speaks egocentrically even in the society of others” [ Language and Thought in the Child , p. 56]. Thus the coefficient of egocentric thought must be much higher than the coefficient of egocentric speech. But it is the data on speech, which can be measured, that furnish the documentary proof on which Piaget bases his conception of child egocentrism. His explanations of egocentric speech and of child egocentrism in general are identical.

In the first place, there is no sustained social life among children of less than 7 or 8; in the second place, the real social language of the child, that is, the language used in the basic activity of children – play – is a language of gestures, movements, and mimicry as much as of words [ Language and Thought in the Child , p. 56].

When, at the age of seven or eight, the desire to work with others manifests itself, egocentric talk subsides.

In his description of egocentric speech and its developmental fate, Piaget emphasizes that it does not fulfil any realistically useful function in the child’s behavior and that it simply atrophies as the child approaches school age. Our own experiments suggest a different conception. We believe that egocentric speech early assumes a very definite and important role in the activity of the child.

In order to determine what causes egocentric talk, what circumstances provoke it, we organized the children’s activities in much the same way Piaget did, but we added a series of frustrations and difficulties. For instance, when a child was getting ready to draw, he would suddenly find that there was no paper, or no pencil of the color he needed. In other words, by obstructing his free activity we made him face problems.

We found that in these difficult situations the coefficient of egocentric speech almost doubled, in comparison with Piaget’s normal figure for the same age and also in comparison with our figure for children not facing these problems. The child would try to grasp and to remedy the situation in talking to himself: “Where’s the pencil? I need a blue pencil. Never mind, I'll draw with the red one and wet it with water; it will become dark and look like blue.”

In the same activities without impediments, our coefficient of egocentric talk was even slightly lower than Piaget’s. It is legitimate to assume, then, that a disruption in the smooth flow of activity is an important stimulus for egocentric speech. This discovery fits in with two premises to which Piaget himself refers several times in his book. One of them is the so-called law of awareness, which states that an impediment or disturbance in an automatic activity makes the actor aware of that activity. The other premise is that speech is an expression of that process of becoming aware.

Our findings indicate that egocentric speech does not long remain a mere accompaniment to the child’s activity. Besides being a means of expression and of release of tension, it soon becomes an instrument of thought in the proper sense – in seeking and planning the solution of a problem. An accident that occurred during one of our experiments provides a good illustration of one way in which egocentric speech may alter the course of an activity: A child of five and a half was drawing a streetcar when the point of his pencil broke. He tried, nevertheless, to finish the circle of a wheel, pressing down on the pencil very hard, but nothing showed on the paper except a deep colorless line. The child muttered to himself, “It’s broken,” put aside the pencil, took watercolors instead, and began drawing a broken streetcar after an accident, continuing to talk to himself from time to time about the change in his picture. The child’s accidentally provoked egocentric utterance so manifestly affected his activity that it is impossible to mistake it for a mere by-product, an accompaniment not interfering with the melody. Our experiments showed highly complex changes in the interrelation of activity and egocentric talk. We observed how egocentric speech at first marked the end result or a turning point in an activity, then was gradually shifted toward the middle and finally to the beginning of the activity, taking on a directing, planning function and raising the child’s acts to the level of purposeful behavior. What happens here is similar to the well-known developmental sequence in the naming of drawings. A small child draws first, then decides what it is that he has drawn; at a slightly older age, he names his drawing when it is half done; and finally he decides beforehand what he will draw.

The revised conception of the function of egocentric speech must also influence our conception of its later fate and must be brought to bear on the issue of its disappearance at school age. Experiments can yield indirect evidence but no conclusive answer about the causes of this disappearance. Nevertheless, the data obtained strongly suggest the hypothesis that egocentric speech is a transitional stage in the evolution from vocal to inner speech. The older children in our experiments behaved differently from the younger ones when faced with obstacles. Often the child examined the situation in silence, then found a solution. When asked what he was thinking about, he gave answers that were quite close to the thinking-aloud of the preschooler. This would indicate that the same mental operations that the preschooler carries out through egocentric speech are already relegated to soundless inner speech in the schoolchild.

There is, of course, nothing to this effect in Piaget, who believes that egocentric speech simply dies off. The development of inner speech in the child receives little specific elucidation in his studies. But since inner speech and voiced egocentric speech fulfil the same function, the implication would be that if, as Piaget maintains, egocentric speech precedes socialized speech then inner speech also must precede socialized speech an assumption untenable from the genetic point of view.

The inner speech of the adult represents his “thinking for himself” rather than social adaptation; i.e., it has the same function that egocentric speech has in the child. It also has the same structural characteristics: Out of context, it would be incomprehensible to others because it omits to “mention” what is obvious to the “speaker.” These similarities lead us to assume that when egocentric speech disappears from view it does not simply atrophy but “goes underground,” i.e., turns into inner speech. Our observation that at the age when this change is taking place children facing difficult situations resort now to egocentric speech, now to silent reflection, indicates that the two can be functionally equivalent. It is our hypothesis that the processes of inner speech develop and become stabilized approximately at the beginning of school age and that this causes the quick drop in egocentric speech observed at that stage.

Limited in scope as our findings are, we believe that they help one to see in a new and broader perspective the general direction of the development of speech and thought. In Piaget’s view, the two functions follow a common path, from autistic to socialized speech, from subjective fantasy to the logic of relationships. In the course of this change, the influence of adults is deformed by the psychic processes of the child, but it wins out in the end. The development of thought is, to Piaget, a story of the gradual socialization of deeply intimate, personal, autistic mental states. Even social speech is represented as following, not preceding, egocentric speech.

The hypothesis we propose reverses this course. Let us look at the direction of thought development during one short interval, from the appearance of egocentric speech to its disappearance, in the framework of language development as a whole.

We consider that the total development runs as follows: The primary function of speech, in both children and adults, is communication, social contact. The earliest speech of the child is therefore essentially social. At first it is global and multifunctional; later its functions become differentiated. At a certain age the social speech of the child is quite sharply divided into egocentric and communicative speech. (We prefer to use the term communicative for the form of speech that Piaget calls socialized as though it had been something else before becoming social. From our point of view, the two forms, communicative and egocentric, are both social, though their functions differ.) Egocentric speech emerges when the child transfers social, collaborative forms of behavior to the sphere of inner-personal psychic functions. The child’s tendency to transfer to his inner processes the behavior patterns that formerly were social is well known to Piaget. He describes in another context how arguments between children give rise to the beginnings of logical reflection. Something similar happens, we believe, when the child starts conversing with himself as he has been doing with others. When circumstances force him to stop and think, he is likely to think aloud. Egocentric speech, splintered off from general social speech, in time leads to inner speech, which serves both autistic and logical thinking.

Egocentric speech as a separate linguistic form is the highly important genetic link in the transition from vocal to inner speech, an intermediate stage between the differentiation of the functions of vocal speech and the final transformation of one part of vocal speech into inner speech. It is this transitional role of egocentric speech that lends it such great theoretical interest. The whole conception of speech development differs profoundly in accordance with the interpretation given to the role of egocentric speech. Thus our schema of development first social, then egocentric, then inner speech – contrasts both with the traditional behaviorist schema – vocal speech, whisper, inner speech – and with Piaget’s sequence – from nonverbal autistic thought through egocentric thought and speech to socialized speech and, logical thinking. In our conception, the true direction of the development of thinking is not from the individual to the socialized, but from the social to the individual.

It is not possible within the limits of the present study to evaluate all aspects of Piaget’s theory of intellectual development; our interest focuses on his conception of the role of egocentrism in the developmental relationship of language and thought. We shall, however, point out briefly those of his basic theoretical and methodological assumptions which we consider erroneous, as well as the facts he fails to take into account in his characterization of child thinking.

Modern psychology in general, and child psychology in particular, reveal a tendency to combine psychological and philosophical issues. A subject of the German psychologist Ach aptly summarized this trend when he remarked at the end of a session, “But that is experimental philosophy!” And indeed many issues in the complex field of child thinking border on the theory of cognition, on theoretical logic, and on other branches of philosophy. Time and again Piaget inadvertently touches upon one or another of these but with remarkable consistency checks himself and breaks off. Yet in spite of his express intention to avoid theorizing, he does not succeed in keeping his work within the bounds of pure factual science. Deliberate avoidance of philosophy is itself a philosophy, and one that may involve its proponents in many inconsistencies. An example of this is Piaget’s view of the place of causal explanation in science.

Piaget attempts to refrain from considering causes in presenting his findings. In doing so, he comes dangerously close to what he calls, in the child, “precausality,” though he himself may view his abstention as a sophisticated “supracausal” stage, in which the concept of causality has been outgrown. He proposes to replace the explanation of phenomena in terms of cause and effect by a genetic analysis in terms of temporal sequence and by the application of a mathematically conceived formula of the functional interdependence of phenomena. In the case of two interdependent phenomena, A and B, A may be viewed as a function of B, or B as a function of A. The investigator reserves the right to organize his description of the data in the way that best suits his purpose at the time, although he will usually give preferential position to the earlier developmental phenomena as being more explanatory in the genetic sense.

This substitution of the functional for the causal interpretation deprives the concept of development of any real content. Even though Piaget, in discussing the biological and the social factors, acknowledges that the student of mental development is duty-bound to explain the relation between them and to neglect neither, his solution is as follows:

But, to begin, it is necessary to choose one of the idioms to the disadvantage of the other. We have chosen the sociological idiom, but we emphasize that there is nothing exclusive about this – we reserve the right to return to the biological explanation of child thought and to translate into its terms the description we are attempting here [ Judgment and Reason in the Child , p. 266].

This indeed makes Piaget’s whole approach a matter of purely arbitrary choice.

The basic framework of Piaget’s theory rests on the assumption of a genetic sequence of two opposite forms of mentation which are described by the psychoanalytic theory as serving the pleasure principle and the reality principle. From our point of view, the drive for the satisfaction of needs and the drive for adaptation to reality cannot be considered separate from and opposed to each other. A need can be truly satisfied only through a certain adaptation to reality. Moreover, there is no such thing as adaptation for the sake of adaption; it is always directed by needs. That is a truism inexplicably overlooked by Piaget.

Piaget shares with Freud not only the untenable conception of a pleasure principle preceding a reality principle but also the metaphysical approach which elevates the desire for pleasure from its true status of a biologically important ancillary factor to that of an independent vital force, the prime mover of psychic development. Once he has separated need and pleasure from adaptation to reality, logic forces Piaget to present realistic thought as standing apart from concrete needs, interests, and wishes, as “pure thought” whose function is the search for truth exclusively for its own sake.

Autistic thought – the original opposite of realistic thought in Piaget’s scheme – is, – in our opinion, a late development, a result of realistic thought and of its corollary, thinking in concepts, which leads to a degree of autonomy from reality thus permits satisfaction in fantasy of the needs frustrated in life. This conception of autism is consistent with Bleuler’s. Autism is one of the effects of the differentiation and polarization of the various functions of thought.

Our experiments brought to the fore another important point overlooked so far: the role of the child’s activity in the evolution of his thought processes. We have seen that egocentric speech is not suspended in a void but is directly related to the child’s practical dealings with the real world. We have seen that it enters as a constituent part into the process of rational activity, taking on intelligence, as it were, from the child’s incipiently purposeful actions; and that it increasingly serves problem-solving and planning as the child’s activities grow more complex. This process is set in motion by the child’s actions; the objects he deals with mean reality and shape his thought processes.

In the light of these facts, Piaget’s conclusions call for clarification concerning two important points. First, the peculiarities of child thought discussed by Piaget, such as syncretism, do not extend over quite so large an area as Piaget believes. We are inclined to think (and our experiments bear us out) that the child thinks syncretically in matters of which he has no knowledge or experience but does not resort to syncretism in relation to familiar things or things within easy reach of practical checking – and the number of these things depends on the method of education. Also, within syncretism itself we must expect to find some precursors of the future causal conceptions which Piaget himself mentions in passing. The syncretic schemata themselves, despite their fluctuations, lead the child gradually toward adaptation; their usefulness must not be underrated. Sooner or later, through strict selection, reduction, and mutual adaptation, they will be sharpened into excellent tools of investigation in areas where hypotheses are of use.

The second point which calls for reappraisal and limitation is the applicability of Piaget’s findings to children in general. His experiments led him to believe that the child was impervious to experience. Piaget draws an analogy which we find illuminating: Primitive man, he says, learns from experience only in a few special, limited cases of practical activity – and he cites as examples of these rare cases agriculture, hunting, and manufacturing things.

But this ephemeral, partial contact with reality does not in the least affect the general trend of his thinking. The same is all the more true of children [ Judgment and Reason in the Child , pp. 268-269].

We would not call agriculture and hunting negligible contacts with reality in the case of primitive man; they are practically his whole existence. Piaget’s view may hold true for the particular group of children he studied, but it is not of universal significance. He himself tells us the cause of the special quality of thinking he observed in his children:

The child never really and truly comes in contact with things, because he does not work. He plays with things, or takes them for granted [ Judgment and Reason in the Child , p. 269].

The developmental uniformities established by Piaget apply to the given milieu, under the conditions of Piaget’s study. They are not laws of nature but are historically and socially determined. Piaget has already been criticized by Stern for his failure sufficiently to take into account the importance of the social situation and milieu. Whether the child’s talk is more egocentric or more social depends not only on his age but also on the surrounding conditions. Piaget observed children at play together in a particular kindergarten, and his coefficients are valid only for this special child milieu. When the children’s activity consists entirely of play, it is accompanied by extensive soliloquizing. Stern points out that in a German kindergarten, in which there was more group activity, the coefficient of egocentrism was somewhat lower, and that in the home children’s speech tends to be predominantly social at a very early age. If that is true of German children, the difference between Soviet children and Piaget’s children in the Geneva kindergarten must be even greater. Piaget admits, in his foreword to the Russian edition of his book, that it is necessary to compare the behavior of children of different social backgrounds to be able to distinguish the social from the individual in their thinking. For this reason he welcomes collaboration with Soviet psychologists. We, too, are convinced that the study of thought development in children from a different social environment, and especially of children who, unlike Piaget’s children, work, must lead to results that will permit the formulation of laws having a much wider sphere of application.