WHAT YOUNG CHILDREN SHOULD BE LEARNING
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The question of what should be learned must be addressed by all teachers at
every level. In terms of broad goals, most teachers and parents readily agree
that children should learn whatever will ultimately enable them to become
healthy, competent, productive, and contributing members of their communities.
But when it comes to the specifics of what should be learned next month, next
week, or on any particular day, agreement is not so easily achieved.
The
answers will depend partly on the ages of the learners. In other words, the
question of what should be learned to some extent depends upon when it is to be
learned. Although the what question deals with the goals and objectives of
education, the when question involves considerations of what we know about the
nature of development and how it relates to learning.
What should be
learned takes on new importance as states begin to establish standards for
student performance, and as new concern is voiced about "social promotion." The
interest in standards, competencies, and promotion policies is likely to have a
renewed "push-down" effect on prekindergarten education. It is interesting to
note that the recent legislation reappropriating funds for Head Start
establishes performance standards and stipulates that all Head Start graduates
must learn 10 letters of the alphabet (National Head Start Association, 1998, p.
5). What the letters are expected to mean to the children has not been
addressed; these new requirements are apparently intended to address the issue
of readiness for formal instruction in literacy and numeracy.
This
Digest first defines the concept of development and then outlines some ways to
approach both the "what" and "when" questions in terms of what we are learning
from research about the effects of various curriculum approaches.
THE
NATURE OF DEVELOPMENT
The concept of development includes two major
dimensions:
- The normative dimension concerns the typical or normal capabilities
as well as limitations of most children of a given age within a given cultural
milieu.
- The dynamic dimension concerns the sequence and changes that occur in
all aspects of the child's functioning with the passage of time and increasing
experience, and how these changes interact dynamically (Saarni, Mumme, &
Campos, 1998).
Although the normative dimension indicates a probable
range of what children typically can and cannot be expected to do and to learn
at a given age, the dynamic dimension raises questions about what children
should or should not do at a particular time in their development in light of
possible long-term dynamic consequences of early experience. In many preschool
programs and kindergartens, for example, young children are given instruction in
phonics and are expected to complete worksheets and recite number facts in rote
fashion. But just because young children can do those things, in a normative
sense, is not sufficient justification for requiring them to do so. Most young
children willingly do most things adults ask of them. But their willingness is
not a reliable indicator of the value of an activity. The developmental question
is not only, "What can children do?," rather it is also, "What should children
do that best serves their development and learning in the long
term?"
FOUR CATEGORIES OF LEARNING GOALSThe four
categories of learning outlined below are relevant to all levels of
education-especially to the education of young children:
1.KNOWLEDGE
In early childhood, knowledge consists of facts,
concepts, ideas vocabulary, stories, and many other aspects of children's
culture. Children acquire such knowledge from someone's answers to their
questions, explanations, descriptions, and accounts of events, as well as
through active and constructive processes of making the best sense they can of
their own direct observations.
2.SKILLS
Skills are small units of action that occur in a
relatively short period of time and are easily observed or inferred. Physical,
social, verbal, counting, and drawing skills are among a few of the almost
endless number of skills learned in the early years. Skills can be learned from
direct instruction or imitated based on observation, and they are improved with
guidance, practice, repetition, drill, and actual application or use.
3.DISPOSITIONS
Dispositions can be thought of as habits of mind or
tendencies to respond to certain situations in certain ways. Curiosity,
friendliness or unfriendliness, bossiness, generosity, meanness, and creativity
are examples of dispositions or sets of dispositions, rather than of skills or
items of knowledge. Accordingly, it is useful to keep in mind the difference
between having writing skills and having the disposition to be a writer, or
having reading skills and having the disposition to be a reader (Katz, 1995).
Dispositions are not learned through formal instruction or exhortation.
Many important dispositions, including the dispositions to learn and to make
sense of experience, are in-born in all children-wherever they are born and are
growing up. Many dispositions that most adults want children to acquire or to
strengthen-for example, curiosity, creativity, cooperation, openness,
friendliness-are learned primarily from being around people who exhibit them;
they are strengthened by being used effectively and by being appreciated rather
than rewarded (Kohn, 1993).
To acquire or strengthen a particular
disposition, a child must have the opportunity to express the disposition in
behavior. When manifestations of the dispositions occur, they can be
strengthened as the child observes their effectiveness and the responses to them
and experiences satisfaction from them. Teachers can strengthen certain
dispositions by setting learning goals rather than performance goals. A teacher
who says, "See how much you can find out about something," rather than, "I want
to see how well you can do," encourages children to focus on what they are
learning rather than on an external evaluation of their performance (Dweck,
1991).
4.FEELINGS
Feelings are subjective emotional states. Some feelings
are innate (e.g., fear), while others are learned. Among feelings that are
learned are those of competence, confidence, belonging, and security. Feelings
about school, teachers, learning, and other children are also learned in the
early years.
LEARNING THROUGH INTERACTIONContemporary
research confirms that young children learn most effectively when they are
engaged in interaction rather than in merely receptive or passive activities
(Bruner, 1999; Wood & Bennett, 1999). Young children therefore are most
likely to be strengthening their natural dispositions to learn when they are
interacting with adults, peers, materials, and their surroundings in ways that
help them make better and deeper sense of their own experience and environment.
They should be investigating and purposefully observing aspects of their
environment worth learning about, and recording and representing their findings
and observations through activities such as talk, paintings, drawings,
construction, writing, and graphing. Interaction that arises in the course of
such activities provides contexts for much social and cognitive
learning.
RISKS OF EARLY ACADEMIC INSTRUCTIONResearch on
the long-term effects of various curriculum models suggests that the
introduction of academic work into the early childhood curriculum yields fairly
good results on standardized tests in the short term but may be
counterproductive in the long term (Schweinhart & Weikart, 1997; Marcon,
1995). For example, the risk of early instruction in beginning reading skills is
that the amount of drill and practice required for success at an early age seems
to undermine children's disposition to be readers. It is clearly not useful for
a child to learn skills if, in the process of acquiring them, the disposition to
use them is lost. In the case of reading in particular, comprehension is most
likely to be dependent on actual reading and not just on skill-based reading
instruction (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). On the other hand, acquiring the
disposition to be a reader without the requisite skills is also not desirable.
Results from longitudinal studies suggest that curricula and teaching should be
designed to optimize the simultaneous acquisition of knowledge, skills,
desirable dispositions, and feelings (Marcon, 1995). Another risk of introducing
young children to formal academic work prematurely is that those who cannot
relate to the tasks required are likely to feel incompetent. Students who
repeatedly experience difficulties leading to feelings of incompetence may come
to consider themselves stupid and bring their behavior into line accordingly
(Bandura et al., 1999).
VARIETY OF TEACHING
METHODSAcademically focused curricula for preschool, kindergarten,
and primary programs typically adopt a single pedagogical method dominated by
workbooks and drill and practice of discrete skills. It is reasonable to assume
that when a single teaching method is used for a diverse group of children, many
of these children are likely to fail. The younger the children are, the greater
the variety of teaching methods there should be, because the younger the
children, the less likely they are to have been socialized into a standard way
of responding to their social environment.
In this way, it is more likely
that children's readiness to learn school tasks is influenced by background
experiences that are idiosyncratic and unique. For practical reasons, there are
limits to how varied teaching methods can be. It should be noted, however, that
while approaches dominated by workbooks often claim to individualize
instruction, individualization rarely consists of more than the day on which a
child completes a particular page or other routine task. As suggested by several
follow-up studies, such programs may undermine children's in-born disposition to
learn-or at least to learn what the schools want them to learn (Schweinhart
& Weikart, 1997; Marcon, 1995).
THE LEARNING
ENVIRONMENTAs for the learning environment, the younger the children
are, the more informal it should be. Informal learning environments encourage
spontaneous play in which children engage in the available activities that
interest them, such as a variety of types of play and construction. However,
spontaneous play is not the only alternative to early academic instruction. The
data on children's learning suggest that preschool and kindergarten experiences
require an intellectually oriented approach in which children interact in small
groups as they work together on projects that help them make increasing sense of
their own experience. Thus, the curriculum should include group projects that
are investigations of worthwhile topics. These projects should strengthen
children's dispositions to observe, experiment, inquire, and examine more
closely the worthwhile aspects of their environment. They usually include
constructions and dramatic play as well as a variety of early literacy and
numeracy activities that emerge from the work of the investigation and the tasks
of summarizing findings and sharing the experiences of the work
accomplished.
This Digest is a revision of the 1987 Digest WHAT SHOULD YOUNG
CHILDREN BE LEARNING? by Lilian Katz.
