Inquiry- Based Sciencefree macaroni and low-fat cheese); its ants-on-a-log (now made with non-dairy...

■ Developmentally Appropriate STEM: It’s STREAM! by Dan Gartrell

■ Creating a Culture of Scientific Inquiry among Educators in an Early Childhood Context by Alison Maher and Ellen Hall

■ Children Draw the World to Know the World by Jinan k.b.

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Inquiry-Based Science

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INQUIRY-BASED SCIENCE 51 MAY/JUNE 2016 EXCHANGE

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Developmentally Appropriate STEM: It’s STREAM!(Science, Technology, Relationships, Engineering, Arts, and Math)*

by Dan Gartrell

From time to time in American education there occurs a nationwide push for a new teaching emphasis or a new curriculum approach. Those who initiate are usually well-intended educators, policy makers, and politicians who grab an idea ‘whose time has come’ and decide that, yes, this is what American students need! Business interests tied to the education world are glad for any new push, of course, because they can then produce new curriculum guides, activity books, and textbooks relating to the trend. STEM education (education in and for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) is now such a push. Another continuing and long overdue national push is for high-quality preschool education.

Many early childhood colleagues and I are concerned about the current trend regarding STEM. The reason has nothing to do with a primary and laudatory intent of STEM: to help more girls become competent in and committed to professions in the sciences. We know that the potential of young children, both girls and boys, has no bounds. We are passionate in our efforts to support and nurture the potential of every child — including for girls to go into the sciences and boys of color to go further in their educations than tenth or twelve grade!

The concern ECE colleagues have conveyed to me about STEM is this: Similar to other ‘reform’ trends in the past that have a content/curriculum focus, STEM may perhaps be appropriate in subject-focused schooling at the upper grade levels. However, in holistic early childhood education, STEM might morph into a developmentally inappropriate academic pushdown of curriculum and teaching methods, to be mis-used with infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and indeed, primary grade children.

The father of all pushes gone wrong, of course, is the wholesale intent to improve education by making teaching and learning accountable through standardized tests (Gartrell, 2012). While models of authentic assessment document that ‘minimally invasive’ practices work just fine, political accountability rather than more rational educational accountability has taken hold. Nationwide, at all education levels, an undue emphasis has grown up around single number scores on high-stakes standardized tests. As a consequence ‘education’ at all levels is being reduced to teaching for the test. The general attitude seems to be no child should go untested and no teacher ungraded by children’s test scores. It is my observation that stress levels have never been so high in American education. No wonder ECE teachers are wary about the prospect of another new ‘academic’ push.

STEM in the Context of DAP

To many of us in the field, Developmentally Appropriate Practice is NAEYC’s most fundamental stock-in-trade. DAP is NAEYC’s macaroni and cheese (now made with gluten-free macaroni and low-fat cheese); its ants-on-a-log (now made with non-dairy ‘cheese spread’ and raisins for those with peanut and dairy allergies). In fact, more so than for

Dan Gartrell is a former sixth grade teacher in Ohio and Head Start teacher for the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe in northern Minnesota. During the 1970s, Dan was a CDA trainer and instructor at Bemidji State University. In 1977, he completed his Doctoral Degree from the University of North Dakota. For nearly 40 years, Dan was director of the Child Development Training Program and professor

of Early Childhood and Foundations Education at Bemidji State University. Between November 2005 and November 2014, Dan was primary author of the column for Young Children titled “Guidance Matters.” Dan is the author of numerous articles and four books, two of which were honored by NAEYC as Comprehensive Membership selections. Dan has presented over 300 keynotes, workshops, and trainings at national conferences and in many states, Germany, and México. Dan is a member of a blended family that includes wife, Dr. Julie Jochum, five children, and 11 grandchildren!

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*Thanks to Thea Blair for sharing the term “STREAM.” Thanks also to Lilian Katz, who back in the “Academic Eighties” famously said that the 3 Rs need a fourth, “Relationships.”

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any other professional association, the brand behind DAP is NAEYC. My position is that STEM must happen within the context of DAP. The message of this viewpoint piece is that early childhood professionals will be accepting of, and should be enthusiastic toward, STEM if content and methods surrounding the approach remain true to, and in fact sustain, developmentally appropriate practice.

Some readers may know that I sprinkle my writings and presentations with illustrative vignettes (all based on real events in real classrooms) in order to make ideas accessible and worth reflecting about. (My more ‘scholarly’ pieces also provide frequent references to make them more ... scholarly.) This Viewpoint uses vignettes (with source information provided) in order to provide one answer to the question: What do developmentally appropriate STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) applications in EC programs look like?

Science

DA science in ECE goes beyond the stereotypical ‘lab setting’ with a teacher doing a demonstration and children watching — think a baking soda and vinegar ‘volcano’ here (which kids from Hawaii’s Big Island know is totally bogus). But the direction in which DA science has moved may surprise some people. During the 1980s the term ‘sciencing’ captured well the active and interactive dimensions of what many of us know to be DA science experiences. In such experiences, there may not be a structured science lesson at all. Instead, teachers motivate children to use (if informally) the scientific method: carefully observe situations, act intentionally (often with open-ended materials), reach independent conclusions, and interact with others about their discoveries. Teachers use the interactions as teachable moments relative to science ideas.

Why is this good science? In the largest, purest sense, Karen was practicing scientific thinking. She observed the conventional Rudolph and sensed what millions of adults over many years had missed or ignored: the misplaced physics of light. Tail lights belong in the back; headlights belong in the front. Through the experimental expression of her hypothesis, Karen improved on society’s conventional wisdom. Along the way she gave herself an anatomy lesson concerning deer, used mathematical sets — four legs, two ears, one nose — and experimented with the chemistry of markers interacting with paper. Significantly, she codified her findings and conclusions in a ‘science journal’ — the story-picture. To me this is sciencing at its best. You go, Karen!

Teacher Natisha organized a cluster of activities around Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The group read the book, learned the song, and discussed how Rudolph was a deer that overcame a disability. One of the follow-up activities was in the art area, where Natisha did not have a model of Rudolph for the children to copy. Instead, she used spoken motivation, inviting the children to do their own unique ‘story-pictures’ (pictures that tell stories) of any idea they wanted relating to Rudolph.

Karen, aged four, decided to draw her own Rudolph using markers. She worked carefully, got the anatomy just right, and then gave Rudolph a yellow nose. Using personal script (which some call scribble writing) she wrote two lines with a big ‘R’ in the middle. She wrote her name at the end.

When Natisha complimented details in her story picture, Karen pointed to the two lines, “This says my Rudolph’s got a yellow nose. That’s so Santa can see better.” The teacher’s reaction was an amazed grin, a nod of the head, and this acknowledgement: “Karen, you know that Santa needs a headlight up front, don’t you? You drew that and you wrote it in your story picture!” Karen smiled and nodded.

(Source: Dan’s Head Start Classroom in Red Lake, Minnesota, 1968. Teacher’s name changed.)

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Note that the adult response to Karen’s creative scientific thinking means everything here. For Karen’s experiment to be a success, the interaction with Natisha had to be reflective of Karen’s intent, and be positive. Notice also that if the activity had been reduced to ‘non-art’ by having the children copy a pre-made Rudolph, Karen would have done the activity ‘wrong.’ With pre-cursive young children, theme-related open-ended art serves as the child’s first science journal. DA science needs opportunities for children to act using open-ended materials, along with supportive interactions involving caring adults (with whom the child develops and maintains a trusting relationship.)

Technology

Along with Diane Levin (2013), I think that a legitimate worry in this media age is a widespread faulty self-identity process. Some young individuals are coming to prefer virtual relationships with remote (sometimes animated) others, over real relationships in the here-and-now. Face-to-face relationships come with responsibilities and frustrations. If real relationships become too challenging, they can pressure young individuals into this risky, electronic escape mode. So much technology use today is individual in orientation and seems to be contributing to this skewing of identity formation.

Perhaps in ECE at least, socializing children in the use of media should often have a real human, relational component. When they become adults, today’s children will certainly be more ethical with technology (and probably

more intelligent with it) if they are able to use ‘Big T’ cooperatively, together with real and present others.

Technology comes so naturally to today’s children. But humane, productive, and socially enriching ways of using technology do not come so naturally. Adults need to guide children in forming pro-social kinds of connections around media devices, connections that start with learning communities that are humane, productive, and enriching — where children feel included and are encouraged to be inclusive toward others.

Engineering

A definition of engineering (from my Microsoft Word system dictionary) is: “The branch of science and technology concerned with the design, building, and use of engines, machines, and structures.” Children become nascent engineers every time they use hands-on materials during the classroom day. Everything from beads and puzzles to Legos®, blocks, and carpentry constitute valid, developmentally appropriate engineering experiences (meaningful practice at designing, building, and using objects). A child who draws a

Kabir and his family have moved to a rural Minnesota community, and the almost five year old has just begun Head Start. Kabir sits on a large beanbag chair next to Wesley and Anna. He watches them play a game on an iPad. After a short time Anna says, “It’s your turn now, Kabir.” Wesley agrees, hands the iPad to Kabir, and moves to sit on the other side of him. Anna and Wesley coach Kabir on how to play the game. Austin walks over and asks if he can have a turn. “Kabir’s using it,” Anna tells him. “You have to wait.” After Kabir catches onto the game, Anna and Wesley sit back and watch. Elissa, the teacher of these four year olds, observes the whole thing. She causally asks the children what they are doing, and Anna explains. After about 10 minutes with the iPad, Kabir gives it to Austin. Elissa can’t stop beaming.

(Source, author observation of videotaping: Elissa Braaten’s Head Start classroom, Detroit Lakes, Minnesota 2012.)

The teachers at a child care center wanted to have a carpentry center. They found an old solid workbench-sized table and cut the legs short. They got soft pinewood scraps, sturdy nails, and 8-ounce ‘household’ hammers from a building center. At a class meeting they explained the center would only be open when an adult could supervise; only two children would use the center at a time; children would need to wear safety glasses; and there would be a sign-up sheet.

It was Senouri’s turn at the table. She whispered to the teacher she was going to make ‘a plane.’ She got two pine pieces and began to nail them together criss-cross. One nail was mostly in. She was starting on the second when she hit her thumb. Tearing up, she put her thumb in her mouth and turned around to look for the teacher. She saw two children waiting to take their turns at the table, turned back around, and kept hammering! Senouri got her plane nailed together and asked the teacher if she could paint it orange like her brother’s remote control airplane. When mom picked her up, Senouri proudly showed her the creation. The teacher was there, too, and told mom how Senouri had showed real grit in finishing her project. Senouri took home her own orange plane with quiet pride. This anecdote is from many years ago; bet she still has the orange plane she made.

(Source, author observation: Kristin Anderson’s First Learning Circle Preschool, Bemidji Minnesota, 1982.)


map from her home to the school is engaging in prototype engineering activity. So is a three and a half-year-old who uses a hammer and nail at a carpentry table.

Since having a carpentry table in my Head Start classroom back in 1967, I have been encouraging ECE teachers to include carpentry (this most fundamental form of engineering) in their classrooms ever since. Taking the precautions mentioned here, I have never heard of a serious injury.

The reality is that too many adults have had limited opportunities to use building tools, especially hammers and nails, during their formative years. If we want girls and boys to think of themselves as potential engineers, or at least as handy at building and repairing things, we need to provide them with repeated, practical building experiences as they are growing up. If STEM means that modern education focuses a bit less on two-dimensional test preparation and a bit more on practical three-dimensional engineering experiences, we should be all for it! In the arena of prototype engineering, ECE should continue to lead the way.

Math

Long-time kindergarten teacher Pat once told me that she often used ‘a fish cracker math curriculum’ and did a lot with subtraction!

Piaget held that as children transition from the magic and charm of the preoperational mental stage to the ‘crackers-on-the table’ concrete operations stage, they begin to perform a key cognitive operation called ‘conservation of quantity’ (Gartrell, 2012b). The idea is that as children become more sophisticated in their thinking, they realize that quantities can remain the same when their appearances change. Chris indeed gave a sophisticated, developmentally advanced response to Pat’s question, an answer that another teacher might have concluded was naively simple and wrong.

After many years of observing young children, my perception (different than the conventional wisdom on the topic) is that they move fully into the concrete operations stage at any time between about age five and eight. Until they do, young children can think perceptively and intelligently about quantities as long as they have objects before them that they can manipulate and group together (such as eight counters next to the numeral eight).

A widespread concern about math curricula for young children is that teachers too often force them into numeral-based exercises before they have progressed from needing hands-on materials to think mathematically. The archetype example is the ‘power test’ — requiring young children to complete numerous problems of addition and subtraction ‘on the clock.’ Especially if used before children have made the transition in their numerical thinking — and most especially if a teacher makes the stakes high by publicly

One day Pat is doing an individual math activity with Chris. The teacher and Chris have put four fish crackers on a napkin and Pat asks, “Chris, can you count them and tell me how many there are?” “Don’t need to count them, Pat,” says Chris. “There are four.”

“Now eat two,” says Pat, which Chris happily does. “Now how many do you have?” “Four,” says Chris. Pat frowns, and kindly tries to scaffold, “No, you had four, Chris, but you ate two. So how many do you have?”

Chris, now scaffolding for the teacher: “Four, Pat. Two here,” Chris points to the table, “And two here!” he points to his stomach. Pat laughs out loud and says to Chris, “You are right. You have two on the table, two in your tummy, and that makes four. I couldn’t fool you, could I?” Chris says, “No way,” and asks if he can eat the other two crackers. A doctoral student at the time, Pat nods and may have muttered, “Piaget‘s got nothing on you, kid!”

(Source, author interview with Pat Sanford, now retired kindergarten teacher, Bemidji, Minnesota, circa 2000.)

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comparing children’s scores — power test type mathematics seems a sure way to teach not basic math concepts, but basic math anxiety. The case of Chris teaches us that effective mathematical teaching and learning starts with the teacher-child relationship: the teacher knowing the individual child and being open to understanding how the child thinks.

Developmentally Appropriate STEM

The key to DA STEM is not the efficient instruction of teacher-led, pre-set science lessons. In John Dewey’s hallowed words, it is the teacher’s ability to “psychologize the curriculum” (Gartrell, 2012). As I see it, this means the ability to use trust-based relationships with children to nudge them into perceiving openly, acting with materials creatively, and interacting with others cooperatively about their efforts and discoveries.

DA STEM cannot happen by itself. To effectively implement STEM, teachers need to bring intentional openness to new teaching and learning opportunities. They need to work at organizing intriguing learning opportunities. They need to nurture and celebrate children’s amazing responses while doing activities. Energy, organization, and reflective enthusiasm are required on the teacher’s part.

Developmentally appropriate STEM is holistic. For the child, scientific problem-solving, artistic creative expression, and

building and using meaningful structures all take similar self-affirming, brain building exploratory processes. Interaction with others about these experiences is natural, and positive interaction, especially with adults, is vital. Some of us consider STEM in early childhood education to be better thought of as STREAM: science, technology, relationships, engineering, arts, and mathematics.* But let’s give the STEM proponents their due. Girls as well as boys benefit in lasting ways from ongoing science- and math-oriented experiences that involve hands-on materials — as well as regular shoes-in-the-woods encounters with the outdoors. If DA STEM helps children to open their senses to the world around them and to more fully interact with and learn about that world, this is a trend we, in early childhood education, should embrace.

References

Gartrell, D. J. (2012a). Education for a civil society: How guidance teaches young children democratic life skills. Washington, DC: NAEYC.

Gartrell, D. J. (2012b). A guidance approach for the encouraging classroom. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage.

Levin, D. E. (2013). Beyond remote-controlled childhood: Teaching young children in the media age. Washington, DC: NAEYC.

An Educator Culture of Scientific Inquiry

All Educators at Boulder Journey School begin the school year by getting to know students and families. Additionally, this time of year signifies when each Educator outlines his own professional goals. These goals are often framed as a question in order to engage Educators in a process of scientific inquiry. Educator questions are closely linked to observations of students and consider the potential for contributions to the field of Early Childhood Education.

The process of documentation is integral to scientific inquiry, as it provides the data for research findings. Educators observe and document using a variety of tools, such as photographs, video, transcribed conversations, charts, graphs, and/or samples of work. They reflect on the collected documents in order to analyze classroom learning experiences, with the goal of better understanding teaching and learning.

When analyzing photographs, videos, transcribed conversations, charts, graphs, sounds, notes, and/or samples of work, our Educators ask:

■ What do you notice? What is surprising? What makes you laugh, wonder, or pause? How are these documented observations similar or different from others?

■ What does this communicate about children? What are the children doing? What are the children not doing? What are their goals, strategies, and theories?

■ What does this communicate about Educators? What are the Educators doing? What are the Educators not doing? What are the Educators’ goals, strategies, and theories? How are their goals, strategies, and theories similar or different from those of the children?

■ What does this communicate about families? What opportunities are presented for more actively partnering with families?

■ What does this communicate about human learning? How does this relate to 21st Century skills? What is the purpose of education and what connections can we make with what we have documented?

■ How might this experience be extended? How might you further challenge the children? How might you further challenge the adults (yourself, your colleagues, and/or the families)? What learning opportunities might you offer children and adults?

Such an analysis of documented observations turns daily moments into opportunities for scientific inquiry for Educators. Children and adults are learning together from the same daily moments. The process of documentation offers Educators an opportunity to make connections between classroom experiences and theories of learning,

Alison Maher, MA, is the Education Director and Teacher Education Program Director of Boulder Journey School. She has been in the field of Early Childhood Education for over 20 years and has demonstrated expertise in leadership, strategic planning, innovative education and public relations. She has provided educational consulting to a wide variety of public and private schools in the

United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, and Ireland, where she has worked with thousands of children, families, educators, administrators, and university professors. Alison has also presented at numerous national and international conferences.

Ellen Hall, PhD, is the Founder and Executive Director of Boulder Journey School and the Boulder Journey School Teacher Education Program. Ellen travels internationally, sharing the work of Boulder Journey School with educators, policy makers, and child advocates. She serves on the boards and advisory committees of organizations, including World Forum Foundation, Dimensions Educational

Research Foundation, Videatives, Resource Area for Teaching, International Child Resource Institute, Law and Civics Reading and Writing Institute, and Hawkins Centers of Learning. Her research focuses on Boulder Journey School’s applied philosophy of supportive social learning and on children’s rights, with an emphasis on children’s right to participation.

Creating a Culture ofScientific Inquiry among

Educators in an Early Childhood Context

by Alison Maher and Ellen Hall




call (800) 221-2864.

motivation, and child development. Plans for future learning experiences are then developed based on new understandings. In this way, the process of scientific inquiry includes ongoing observation, reflection, and action, and is a process that unfolds throughout the year, resulting in a curriculum that is contextual, relevant, and challenging for both children and adults.

Additionally, Educators share their documented observations and their discoveries publicly — on classroom walls, in booklets, on family blogs, on social media, in meetings. Rather than sharing a list of classroom experiences in their entirety, they are sharing their most significant research findings, the results of their scientific inquiry, which are intended to be provocative and spark new thinking in others (parents, colleagues, visitors, community members). In this way, documentation does more than tell the story of what happened — it makes a statement about children, teaching, learning, and the field of Early Childhood Education. Sharing with children, families, the school community, and colleagues world-wide invites multiple perspectives and creates an even larger body of work from which to make meaning and co-construct learning.

Examples of Educator Scientific Inquiry

Teaching is a worthy and complex profession. Thus, topics for scientific inquiry by Educators are countless and range from social-emotional development or mathematics to our work with clay or family participation. A sampling of research questions unfolding at Boulder Journey School includes:

■ How do we define technology? What technological tools are appealing and appropriate for toddlers?

■ How can we weave inspiration from Educators Frances and David Hawkins into the daily life of a classroom?

■ What role can the environment play in developing classroom community?

■ What mathematical concepts are being developed through children’s play with an overhead projector?

■ What strategies do children use to build relationships?

■ How can experiences with sand and water help us understand what children know about volume?

■ How can we learn more about the value of games, such as peek-a-boo?

■ How can we collaborate with families to better understand the transitions that happen at school?

■ How can we improve the quality of our outdoor experiences?

■ How can we engage preschoolers in philanthropy? What is developmentally appropriate and interesting to preschoolers?

■ What can we, as adults, learn about the potential of paint in order to support higher quality classroom painting experiences?

■ How can we promote sustainability in a school for young children? Can children and families be actively involved? How can we partner with children to be better stewards of the world?

■ Can we improve the quantity and quality of musical experiences in the school? Can we offer young children access to real instruments, a wider variety of recorded music, live music?

■ Can we engage community businesses in a collection of discarded materials that can be useful in schools?

■ Can our knowledge of the process of documentation support the work of a local, public, after-school science program?

■ How do teachers respond when children express their emotions?

Scientific Inquiry Leads to Implications for Teaching

Infant Educators engage in scientific inquiry surrounding the question, “How can we document and share documentation in a way that communicates the value of the infants’ experience?” They observe that their strategies for documenting are not fully capturing and communicating what the infants are experiencing. There is so much to document when observing infants. They are continuously absorbing and processing new information, and this often goes unnoticed. The Educators realize that in order to communicate the value of the infants’ experiences, they first must truly value the experiences. They experiment with new strategies for documenting the infants. They begin to zoom in on their mouths, their hands, their feet. They experiment with taking photographs from the infant’s perspective by placing the camera at the infant’s eye level. Capturing the infant’s perspective from this vantage point causes them to re-evaluate some of the decisions they are making as Educators, such as placing children underneath dangling materials when they are sad. By analyzing the photographs they have taken from the infants’ perspectives, the Educators realize this can be disturbing, and they re-think this practice.

They also re-discover the many ways that infants explore the world with their entire bodies, their entire beings.



Infant Educators

Often, what the infant is gazing at is not the focus of his attention. Instead, his focus may be on what his feet are touching or the sounds he hears. For example, as a child manipulates a shell in his hands, he is processing a great deal of information about the shell: its shape, its temperature, its texture. His gaze may shift to other places, but he continues to manipulate the shell in his hands, indicating to the Educators that his focus remains on the feel of the shell. The Educators begin to make additional discoveries that they did not anticipate. They observe that children’s experiences outdoors possess a different quality than their experiences indoors. The infants appear more relaxed, focused, and at ease outdoors. They wonder if this is related to the harmonious environment offered by nature and begin to think about how they can alter indoor spaces — the sounds, the smells, the light, the materials and furniture — in order to replicate what is appealing about the outdoor spaces.

The process of scientific inquiry engaged in by these Infant Educators leads to further questions for continued reflection:

■ Do we value the role of the infant teacher as one that is more than just caring for infants?

■ Do we recognize what we can understand about human learning from observing our youngest citizens?

■ Do we understand that it is only through collaboration that Educators can become more skilled at scientific inquiry and the process of documentation?

Toddler Educators

Toddler Educators engage in scientific inquiry surrounding the question, “How can we promote collaborative experiences among Toddlers through the use of open-ended media?” and “In how many ways can we consider aspects of collaboration when setting up experiences for Toddlers?” While analyzing documentation of classroom experiences, they notice that our language often unintentionally grants ownership of materials. For example, Educators make statements, such as, “Can you give him his pencil back?” or “Is this your painting or his?” They begin to wonder who has the right to a particular classroom material: the child who needs it or the child who has already incorporated it into her work?

The Educators debate how to best support such strife, which occurs daily in a classroom setting, so that the work and ideas of each child are valued. They continue to review and discuss video footage of children in conflict over materials and analyze the Educators’ responses. They wonder if children have to share materials, if they have to have equal

amounts, and if the adults’ desire to make sure everyone shares and has the same amount contributes to children’s possessiveness of materials. They begin to speculate that, rather than assigning ownership to particular materials when conflicts arise, the role of the Educator can be to help the children find ways to use materials together. They support one another in integrating this technique into their daily practice. While doing so, they note that instances of collaboration most frequently exist within pairs of children. They wonder if having a third or fourth person in the group is more challenging because more than one other person’s perspective must be taken into consideration. They wonder if offering more opportunities for children to work in pairs would build their competence with regard to collaboration and support them in working more successfully in larger group configurations.

The process of scientific inquiry engaged in by these Toddler Educators leads to further questions for continued reflection:

■ In how many ways can we understand the formation of learning groups? What are the differences between groups of children that adults form and groups of children that children form? How is a learning experience affected by the number of children and adults in the group?

■ Do we fully understand the complexity of our work? Do we understand that every moment, every decision, every word is worthy of consideration?

■ Do we have a growth mindset in our work as Educators — a mindset that accepts mistakes as a natural part of understanding our work — a mindset that places more emphasis on new understandings and less on blame?

Preschool Educators

Preschool Educators engage in scientific inquiry surrounding the question, “How can we offer preschool students more challenging materials?” The Educators note that many of our preschool students have been at the school since infancy, and thus, have mastered many of the typical preschool materials. They wonder about more sophisticated materials and whether or not wood and wood glue would offer the children new challenges. They collect many pieces of wood with children and families and offer a variety of ways for children to attach or combine pieces of wood — wood glue, as well as string, composition, hammers and nails. Noticing the children’s interest in natural materials themselves, they expand their collection from wood to all treasures found in nature. They invest time, many weeks, collecting and sorting these materials with children and families, and together, they rediscover the beauty of nature: the patterns, the textures, the continual changes, the many shades of brown.


The process of scientific inquiry engaged in by these Preschool Educators leads to further questions for continued reflection:

■ Do we accept the materials that are marketed to early childhood classrooms (glitter, pom-poms, googly eyes, chenille stems) or are we open to considering what materials might best support the children in developing their thoughts and ideas?

■ Can we brainstorm hundreds of possibilities for our work, so that we do not limit ourselves to the few materials that are deemed appropriate for early childhood classrooms?

■ Do we recognize that children and adults have the right to be surrounded by beauty? If so, doesn’t this mean that we will not accept anything in the school that is not beautiful? Can this thought be applied to every aspect of our work (the environment, the collections of materials, the presentation of student work, parent-teacher conference reports)? In what ways can we work together to improve our understanding of the role aesthetics plays in school and in life?

■ Do we recognize that the thoughts and contributions of parents can improve the quality of classroom experiences for students, families, and Educators? What examples in our work do we have to support this idea, and what examples do we have of missed opportunities?

Pre-kindergarten Educators

Pre-kindergarten Educators engage in scientific inquiry surrounding the question, “How can we better interpret experiences with paint and drawing through the lens of mathematics?” The Educators observe that when they offer the children a reference (a photo or model of an object or idea) for their drawings and paintings, the children rely on mathematical concepts, such as symmetry, shape, pattern, addition, subtraction and multiplication, to replicate the object or idea. The children read the image in the reference and decide how to recreate it on their canvas, relying on the concept of one-to-one correspondence. The children evaluate their work by ensuring that different parts of their drawing or painting have the same quantity of details or by ensuring that both sides match. This matching process is the foundation for subtraction, the difference between two quantities. When comparing two similar objects, such as a photograph and a drawing of that photograph, the children see the difference between the two. The Educators refer to the children’s observations as one representation having ‘less than’ or ‘more than’ the other, laying the foundation for both subtraction and addition.

The process of scientific inquiry engaged in by these Prekindergarten Educators leads to further questions for continued reflection:

■ What specific mathematical challenges are embedded in representing something that is two-dimensional in a three-dimensional manner, and vice versa?

■ Is our view of mathematics in early childhood too narrow?

■ In how many ways can we encourage and extend the mathematical thinking that is embedded in daily classroom experiences, such as drawing and painting?

■ How can mathematics be integrated into all classroom experiences rather than isolated to a particular time of day?

■ How can we use documentation to develop strategies to support each child’s zone of proximal development?

Conclusion

Because human learning is complicated and multi-faceted, all Educators have the right to the time, support, and resources necessary to engage in scientific inquiry related to numerous aspects of their profession. This is how we can ensure quality education and how we can ensure that our approaches to education continuously evolve to meet the needs in our ever-changing world. With this in mind:

■ What potential for scientific inquiry exists in your context?

■ What aspects of teaching and learning spark your curiosity?

■ What time, support, and resources are necessary to make scientific inquiry possible?

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Exploring the potential of drawing as a tool for cognition — observation, abstraction, detailing, refinement, reflection, imagination, description, articulation, composition or space organization, analysis dexterity and, of course, creativity.

Drawing: A Redefinition

Drawing is the playing that children do on two-dimensional space, which is where modern humans are located most of the time. In the three-dimensional space, that is in the real world where children play, again, provided they have their way. But when they are forced into the two-dimensional world of the book, they draw. Drawing comes naturally to children, unlike writing. They draw on the wall, paper, floor, even on water, and on any such space where children can get their hold. They draw with whatever they can get hold of. Apart from pen and pencil their own fingers come to help while drawing on the plate, misty windows, and so on. Through the process of drawing, children are able to understand how the world looks — the form, what happens around them, both in the natural world and the social world. The reason, rules, what, and how children draw are dictated by biology or nature or life provided we don’t interfere. The same is the case with play.

We were able to observe the natural behavior of play in children during the three years of our initiative called Re-imagining Schools at a school near Pune, India (June 2011 until August 2014). In the first month we observed many incidents related to drawing.

Genesis of the Exploration

We started the Re-imagining Schools initiative in June 2011 at Sadhana Village School. On the third day we came across an event that challenged the way we deal with children. As we had ‘let’ children do what they felt like, that is what all the children were doing. Some were playing, some were drawing, and some were reading.

■ One child was drawing in a drawing book. After a few minutes another child came in and started drawing along with her. Then, yet another child joined and also started drawing on the same drawing. In a few minutes, the one who started the drawing left and the other two continued.

■ Two children were moving around and drawing on the floor all over the class, shouting that water was flowing from the tap.

■ One girl was sitting, drawing with chalk on the floor. She was drawing a big picture using both hands. Even though she was using her right hand most of the time, when the drawing went over to the left side she used her left hand.

■ Children were drawing anywhere and everywhere and were using anything they could find:

Children Draw the World to Know the Worldby Jinan k.b.

Jinan k.b., Existential Knowledge Foundation. Jinan can be reached at: [email protected]. Visit his website:www.cognitiveimportanceofdrawing.weebly.com



call (800) 221-2864.



● they were drawing on the floor, wall, ground, table, slate, and paper.

● they were using their own fingers, water, chalk, sticks, pencils, paint, and a powder made by crushing chalk, or the ready-made colour used for doing rangoli.

Observing this, we consciously began to make several changes to the ‘classroom’ and to our rigid minds. We replaced the blackboard and painted the lower half of the walls black; this enabled children to draw large pictures. As we did not have a rigid timetable, children were having this opportunity for self-initiated activities.

Discovering the Importance of Drawing

From the thousands of drawings that we studied it seems to us that children draw what they see, very much like children speak what they hear; just as in learning to speak, there is a long process from blabbering sounds to words and then to sentences and even to story. It looks like drawings are a

means to see better, to comprehend. The drawing we have in the book (shown below) is selected to show the process of fine-tuning ‘what’ and ‘how’ they see. There’s nothing we can do to accelerate this process. Moving from scribbling to drawing is similar to moving from babbling to words and the balance the child attains to stand can also be seen as an uncontrolled scribble to a firm line.

Comparing Writing and Drawing

Writing is primarily a communication tool, not a cognitive tool. Drawing is not done for communication like playing. Both writing and drawing help in cognition. The over-importance given to learning writing skills denies the possibility for the development of drawing as a tool for observation.

Biologically, we are not designed to read in order to understand the world (the context/knowledge), but to explore the world directly using our senses. Drawing helps in

What children draw is showing the process of abstraction and

comprehension of the world they are engaging with. How three

dimensional objects like house, bus, car etc gets represented initially as one plane and how these complex

figure gets represented gradually showing its three dimensionality.

Stages in drawing of bus. Starting with

essence (1), proceeding to details,

side view (2), front included in single

plane (3), clear three dimensionality (4), front view may be

from inside (5) and a very rare top view

showing all 4 sides (6)

1 2

3 4

5 6

What children draw is showing the process of abstraction and

comprehension of the world they are engaging with. How three-dimensional

objects like a house, bus, or car get represented initially as one plane

and how these complex figures get represented gradually showing their

three-dimensionality.

Stages in drawing the bus. Starting with essence (1),

proceeding to details, sideview (2),

front included in single plane (3),

clear three-dimensionality (4), frontview may be

from inside (5) and a very rare topview

showing all 4 sides (6).


enhancing observation as it would make us observe what we draw more consciously. What has been happening is that due to the introduction of literacy and schooling much before children root themselves in the world, their cognitive process gets rewired. Experiencing the world directly enables us to be in the three-dimensionality of the world and literacy takes us to the two-dimensional mental and conceptual worlds. Once naming becomes more important, the cognitive processes related to senses dies and thinking and reasoning take over. As children get entrenched in the linguistic world, the world of objects recedes from their vision. They stop being present to the world around them. From the realm of timelessness, they also get caught up in the clutches of time.

Dissociating Drawing from Art

For most people art is a dreaded ‘subject.’ It is easier to make sense of mathematics, science, and similar subjects. But art is not only inconceivable and alienating, but also not considered important in the hierarchy of subjects. Unfortunately drawing is associated with art and, hence, no deep attention has been given by adults to understand drawing. This is also the case with playing and toy making.

The Cognitive Potential of Drawing

When children are allowed to draw naturally, what is at work is their natural tendency to make sense of the world based on the natural cognitive system. The tools for learning, which are our senses, naturally get awakened as they engage with the world. So apart from sharpening their tools, they also develop various qualities and skills to learn about the world. Observation demands attention and concentration to be developed. This again leads to further interest in seeing details, how things happen, and what materials are in use. The stages or actions in drawing can be seen as observation, abstraction, detailing, refinement, reflection, imagination, description, articulation, composition or space organization, analysis dexterity and, of course, creativity.

Drawing also enables abstraction from three dimensions to two. Converting the three-dimensional object into two dimensions is an important cognitive act. The abstraction that happens is quite remarkable and is very difficult for the educated person to accomplish. It seems that children, before they are caught by the rational framework, are able to see without the need for thought to interpret what they are seeing. They are able to just observe and draw. The educated

Children draw what they see

Isnt it interesting that Children initially draw only the face of human beings, that too only the face and just a line or so to represent body

where as all other objects, they draw the side view. It is clear that that is the way we experience things.

We notice the face much more than rest of the body normally.

Children Draw What They See

Isn’t it interesting that children initially draw only the face of human beings; that only the face and just a line or so represent the body,

whereas all other objects they draw as a sideview. It is clear that is the way we experience things.

We notice the face much more than the rest of the body, normally.


person goes through three steps: they see, think, and draw and quite often they are not able to draw as easily as are children.

What Children Draw

Children draw what they see. This has become very clear to us by studying thousands of drawings children have done. They draw what they see very much like they speak what they hear. In learning to speak, there is a long process from blabbering sounds to words and then to sentences and even to a story.

Isn’t it interesting that children initially draw only the faces of human beings, then only the face and just a line or two to represent bodies, whereas they draw the side profiles of all other objects like animals, vehicles, and birds?

What children draw shows the process of abstraction and comprehension of the world they are engaging with. Three-dimensional objects like houses, buses, cars get represented initially as one plane and these complex figures get represented gradually showing their three dimensionality.

Imagination is one of the misunderstood aspects of modernity. Quite like abstraction, imagination is done with reference to something concrete. A child drawing two suns in response to her feeling cold is an example of imagination.

Unlike events, scenery drawn by children reflects the surroundings they live in, like hills, forests, pathways and trees, people and cattle, and how it appears to them. Scenery is in response to peripheral vision where the child draws forms without details. The kind of trees they have explored shows their imagination, creativity, composition skills, and organization of space, and this comes quite naturally to children.

Observation drawing is an important activity for helping children see things around them in detail. It helps to root them to the three-dimensionality of the world and this rooting helps when we occupy ourselves with the conceptual world.

Enabling Drawing

In the way a child learns to walk, where adults have no role in correcting the child, should be the way to see the drawings of children. No corrections, no comments, no praise. Just let children draw. You could create an environment for drawing by allowing children to draw where they want with what they want.

■ Drawing is like a vaccination given to the child who will be schooled out from the real world of experience, which can be felt and sensed into the imagined world of language, full of concepts, definitions, and theories.

■ Drawing needs to be developed as a functional tool, which anyone can learn.

■ Drawing needs to be distanced from art that is supposedly an activity that only the gifted or talented can do.

■ Drawing needs to be encouraged of everyone. A child naturally does this. Almost all children draw and then, for some reason, most stop drawing. Only the encouraged ‘artists’ continue. But everyone learns to write, which is a much more complicated task. Adults around must have done something to us that we are now scared to draw.

Children, if left alone, will draw things that are connected with their experience. This needs to be encouraged to keep their observation and reflection. Our work with children is showing a strong connection between what they draw, what they play, and what they experience. What they draw also shows distinct aspects of what children see, what they wish, and what they want to describe.

The author of this paper considers himself to be a victim of modern education, cognitively rewired to understand the written word instead of the real world. He has been living with illiterate people to understand the cognitive system, based on the natural propensity of any living being to make sense of the world. He has studied how children ‘learn’ and how the schooling process damages the natural cognitive system. His focus as of now is to find ways of creating space for children to awaken the natural cognitive system and to help the cognitively damaged to recover the natural learning process. He is working on a book — Seeing with hands, the cognitive importance of drawing — based on three years of observation on what children draw. He can be contacted at [email protected], www.existentialknowledgefoundation.weebly.com, and www.re-cognition.org

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