Guest Author - Paula Petrie

Research shows that for small children, compassion and understanding are learned through the empathy shown to them by their mothers. When we are controlling, ruff, or deal angrily with our kids it is very hard for children to learn, share, get along well, and use options other than violence to get their own way.

Small children are also more apt to trust in what they believe to be true over what we tell them is so. Research indicates that for school aged kids to grasp new concepts, the best approach to teaching may be to start with what kids already know. We should start teaching a new concept, by initially picking a child’s brain to pull out what that child may, rightly or misguided, already believe to be fact.

A child’s ability to absorb added knowledge grows with maturity, but is also affected by already held (sometimes stubbornly) personal points of view. A learner will always have personal experiences to relate, which can affect a child’s capacity to interrupt new facts. A child is more apt to hold two contrary opinions than let go of an already established belief.

For increased learning we need to discover what a child knows, what facts should be expanded and which facts challenged.

In the research study on the way kids learn, “Teaching for Conceptual Change: Confronting Children’s Experience,” Bruce Watson and Richard Kopnicek discovered that in an elementary science study about heat, students generally held a belief that clothes were hot, and were surprised to discover that a thermometer wrapped in a sweater didn’t rise in temperature, even after 24 hours. This was to make a great starting point to begin logically learning the subject matter.

New concepts need to be made relevant, by relating them to a child’s life experience. A child needs to connect how these new facts may affect him, or affect what he already believes. When a child is actively involved, he understands a concept better than merely listening to the information.

Helping a child face up to illogical or unconnected thinking through reasoning and expermenting, or to guide a child to reason with more accurate facts, will help prompt the child to move away from preconceived ideas that aren’t quite true. This approach is also more beneficial to a child’s self-confidence. The bonus being a child may make amazing conclusions and help you learn as well.

Watson and Kopnicek also discovered the problem with applying this new teaching concept in our schools is that there would be less time to cover information. Progress would be slowed down to include actual thinking. The standard alternative is of course memorizing long lists of facts while continuing to ignore true learning of the content or concepts.