Classroom interaction and metacognition by ‘enculturation’ of thinking in early education

‘I Should Do Her Finger Here, on Her Cheek—Hmm, to Play or to Draw? That’s How One Thinks’: What Preschoolers Tell Us about Thinking through Drawing

“…Salmon and Lucas [13] reported that children aged 3 to 5 related thinking to the objects and events of thinking (i.e., associative responses), while some older participants (5 years old) expressed more sophisticated views that linked thinking to the mental actions one takes during the thinking process (i.e., strategic responses). More recently, the findings of Gómez-Barreto et al [12] confirmed the above evidence. Their professional development project to promote a culture of thinking in several classrooms had a clear positive impact on children's awareness of the thinking process.…”

“…We theorized thinking through a sociocultural lens, and we examined children's descriptions alongside their drawings outside the box of previous categorisations and beyond a metacognition and developmental framework. In doing so, we went deeper and uncovered perceptions that seem to have remained hidden in previous research [12,13].…”

“…In the context of reflective activities and problem solving, they manage to describe their thinking process in detail, discover weaknesses in previous actions, and even suggest improvements [26,27]. In any case, metacognition seems to emerge between the ages of 3 and 5, especially when teachers create a culture of thinking [12], use collaborative and problemsolving activities [28], and promote peer interaction and play in their classrooms [6].…”

“…Their professional development project to promote a culture of thinking in several classrooms had a clear positive impact on children's awareness of the thinking process. More importantly, the empirical evidence showed that after the intervention, the youngest children increased associative responses related to the human brain, while the oldest (aged 6-7) increased "strategic responses based on memory and knowledge" [12] (p. 15). In both studies, the children's responses were selected using the drawing-telling technique, which, as the researchers point out, enabled the participating children to make their understanding visible.…”

“…There is also extensive research on the development of children's metacognition [7], their awareness of the content of their thoughts [8], and the mental world [7][8][9], as well as on teachers' views of children's thinking and practices to develop it [10,11]. However, there is a lack of research on young children's own perceptions of thinking in educational settings [12,13] and in different contexts.…”