Young Children’s Recognition of the Intentionality of Teaching

Abstract

Two studies examined the role of intention in preschoolers' understanding of teaching. Three- to 5-year-olds judged stories in which there was an intention to teach or not (teaching vs. imitation) for 4 different learning outcomes (successful, partial, failed, and unknown). They also judged 2 stories with embedded instructional intent (e.g., guided discovery learning) and several standard theory of mind tasks. There was an age-related change in the understanding of teaching. Five-year-olds distinguished teaching from imitation and recognized guided discovery learning. Understanding of imitation and false belief was related. The findings indicate that theory of mind is relevant to other means of knowledge acquisition besides perceptual access and that understanding intention could help young children to recognize instruction and identify its different forms.

The older, the wiser?Profiles of string instrument teachers with different experience according to their conceptions of teaching, learning, and evaluation

“…Teaching would be a set of activities designed with the aim of producing learning in others, starting from the beliefs that the "others" do not possess certain knowledge or only possess it partially, i.e. there is intentionality (Strauss, 2005;Ziv & Frye, 2004;Ziv, Solomon, & Frye, 2008), which is evaluated to determine both whether the student has learned or attained the aims of the curriculum, and whether the quality of teaching is appropriate (Black & Wiliam, 1998;Crooks, 1988;Hill, 2000). Between the traditional teaching standpoint at conservatories, where the teacher is in charge of transmitting knowledge to the student (Hallam, 1998), and -in the words of Musumeci (2005) -the "more humanly compatible" position according to which the teaching of music is based on the student constructing his/her knowledge (Andrews, 2004;Eley, 2006), there is a wide range of conceptions regarding what is taught, what is learned and how both the processes and the product of playing an instrument are evaluated.…”

Young children are natural pedagogues

“…First, the work of Strauss and collaborators showing that children spontaneously engage in teaching (TNCA), revealing an understanding of the intentionality of knowledge transmission (LeBlanc & Bearison, 2004;Strauss & Ziv, 2012;Tomasello & Rakoczy, 2003;Ziv et al, 2008). Second, the theoretical proposal of a natural pedagogy, based on OC, which enables efficient social learning of generic, complete and relevant knowledge (Csibra & Gergely, 2009).…”

“…It has also been shown that the exchange of knowledge between children is initially marked by guidance, with the child teacher regulating the experience and later on becoming a more collaborative behavior (LeBlanc & Bearison, 2004). How and when children engage in teaching was studied in the remarkable seminal work of Strauss and collaborators (Strauss & Ziv, 2012;Ziv & Frye, 2004;Ziv et al, 2008). The authors showed that children as young as age 3 teach effortlessly and spontaneously.…”

“…A handful of studies showed that children spontaneously teach when they sense a disparity of knowledge (Maynard, 2002;Strauss & Ziv, 2012;Ziv & Frye, 2004;Ziv, Solomon, & Frye, 2008). It has also been shown that the exchange of knowledge between children is initially marked by guidance, with the child teacher regulating the experience and later on becoming a more collaborative behavior (LeBlanc & Bearison, 2004).…”

“…This question can be addressed by quantifying the precision of verbal explanations (LeBlanc & Bearison, 2004;Ziv & Frye, 2004;Ziv et al, 2008). In fact, several researchers (Fuchs et al, 1996;Graesser, Person, & Magliano, 1995;Topping, Cambell, Douglas, & Smith, 2003) have defined normative procedures to identify fragments in discourse that have a clear pedagogical intention.…”