Learning to Learn: A Study of Swedish Preschool Children

ISBN-13: 9780387971223 / Angielski / Miękka / 1989 / 121 str.

Ingrid Pramling

Opis

For eight years, since I began my research, my main concern has been to understand children and their world. The first step towards understanding how children think was taken in connection with my thesis, which I presented five years ago.This was a description of how children in the age group three to eight years conceive their own learning. The thesis was published in the same series as the present monograph and is entitled "The child's conception of learning." The main emphasis in this study was on developmental psychology. As I have worked as a preschool teacher myself, I am extremely anxious that my research will be of benefit to my former colleagues. I have therefore devoted a great deal of time to writing and collaborating in numerous books of popular science. These have always been based on my own research. Now, however, the time is ripe for taking a new step, based on new research, towards understanding children and helping others to understand them., this time by publishing "Learning to learn," which is a description of how children have actually been taught to learn in preschool. In this type of study it is not a question of first obtaining results of the nature of basic research and then applying them in the educational setting, but both aspects are integrated in that the starting-point is the phenomena that are of importance to children in their everyday life.

Spis treści

1 Background.- General Theoretical Starting-Points.- 2.1 Metacognition.- 2.2 Children’s conceptions of learning.- 2.2.1 A survey.- 2.2.2 Teaching in preschool.- 2.2.3 Developing children’s conceptions.- 2.2.4 The relationship cognition — metacognition.- 2 Methods and Implementation.- Methodological Approach.- 3.1 Study subjects.- 3.2 Collection of data.- 3.3 Cooperation in the preschools studied.- 3.4 Implementation.- 3.4.1 Interviews of teachers at the beginning of term.- 3.4.2 The teachers’ comments after data were collected.- 3.4.3 The content worked with in the different preschools.- 3.4.4 Ways of working in the different preschools.- 3 Results.- Children’s Conceptions of Learning in Preschool.- 4.1 What children think they have learnt.- 4.2 Children’s ideas of how they have learnt something.- 4.3 Children’s ideas about why they visited the Natural History Museum.- 4.4 Discussion.- The Story about the Red Apple.- 5.1 How the learning experiment was carried out.- 5.2 Result of the first learning experiment.- 5.2.1 Retold 8–11 events in the story.- 5.2.2 Retold 5–7 events in the story.- 5.2.3 Retelling of 2–4 events in the story.- 5.2.4 Only retold one event.- 5.2.5 The number of events retold in the different groups.- 5.3 Discussion.- The Story: The other Side of the River.- 6.1 How the learning experiment was carried out.- 6.2 Results of the second learning experiment.- 6.2.1 The children’s drawings.- 6.2.2 Giving the story a name.- 6.2.3 What the children say spontaneously about the plot.- 6.2.4 Remembering details.- 6.2.5 Why did the bridge collapse?.- 6.2.6 Why was a new bridge built?.- 6.3 Discussion.- Children’s Understanding of an Ecological Cycle.- 7.1 How the learning experiment was carried out.- 7.1.1 The lesson at the museum.- 7.2 Results of the third learning experiment.- 7.2.1 Children’s conceptions of the cycle.- 7.2.2 The number of answers in each category.- 7.3 Discussion.- 4 Discussion.- Summary and Conclusions.- 8.1 Children’s learning and development.- 8.2 The teachers’ performance.- 8.2.1 Comparisons.- 8.3 Educational implications.- References.- Appendix 1.