Young children reflecting on their learning: teachers’ conversation strategies

Abstract

A two-year research project with teachers in nine different early childhood centres was designed to explore and extend opportunities for young children to reflect on their learning. This was described as children becoming ‘wise’ about their learning journeys; the aim was to find ways to assist them to articulate their understanding of what they had learned and how they had learned it. The location for extending these abilities and dispositions was children and teachers talking together as they revisited and reviewed documented learning events. This paper highlights the strategies that worked well for thoughtful conversations, and comments on those strategies that did not. It argues for the value of children as co-authors in conversations about their learning; these conversations can contribute to their developing views about how they learn and assist them to construct continuities of the learning that is valued in this place.

Keywords:

• early years
• pedagogy
• dialogue
• learning stories
• narrative

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative programme, funded by the Ministry of Education and administered by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. The author is grateful to the participants in the ‘Wisdom’ research group: Wendy Lee, the Director of the Educational Leadership Project (ELP), seven project facilitators from ELP, the teachers in the nine early childhood centres who were so prepared to share their failures as well as their successes, and the children and families in those centres as well. Transcripts on pages 4 and 11 will also appear in Carr and Lee (forthcoming).