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Learning about “the shop”: An approach to learning in preschool
Early Childhood
Research Quarterly, 6, 151-166 (1991)
Learning About “The Shop”: An Approach to Learning in Preschool lngrid University
of
Pramling Gothenburg
An approach based on relating to children’s lived experiences in order to change their understanding of particular aspects of the world around them is illustrated. In the example presented, the approach was used in two preschool groups learning about “the shop” and was compared to two groups with traditional teaching of the same theme. In total, 70 children aged 5 to 6 years and their teachers participated in the investigation. The children were interviewed three times about “the shop”: before the teaching started, immediately after, and 3 months later. The results show that children from the experimental groups developed their understanding of relevant aspects of the theme to a far greater extent than children from the control groups.
BACKGROUND A View of Learning According to Marton (1988), there are three aspects to learning: skills, knowledge, and understanding. Skills refers to how we act, and knowledge refers to what we know about phenomena
that are already discerned and
already apprehended one way or another. Understanding, on the other hand, refers to the way in which the phenomena are discerned and apprehended. Let us interpret what these three aspects mean in relation to the topic of “traffic”
in preschool. To teach children traffic
from the point of
view of skills means to work with strategies, like practicing where the safest place to cross the street is in their neighborhood, that one ought to look twice in one direction before crossing, and so on. To teach traffic from the point of view of knowledge means to teach children road signs, right and left, that one is supposed to walk in the opposite direction to traffic when
there is no pavement, relevant vocabulary,
and so forth. Finally, to teach
The preparation of this article was supported by a grant from the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Ingrid Pramling, Department of Education, University of Gothenburg, Box 1010, 431 26 Miilndal, Sweden. n Received June 17, 1989; Revision received July 21, 1989; Accepted June 28, 1990. 151
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traffic from the perspective of understanding means to create opportunities where the child experiences traffic as traffic, that is, as a system of movement in which there must be rules in order for it to function. It is this third perspective, to develop understanding, that is the focus of the present study. Thinking about learning as understanding does not mean that children have to make final scientific insights, but that they should change their conceptions of the phenomenon worked on towards a more advanced level. In the present study, for instance, it is the child’s experiences about the aspects of the shop that are relevant for development, and not how these aspects could be defined “by an economist.” If a child learns, he or she changes his or her way of thinking about a phenomenon to a qualitatively different level, that is, that child can see other relationships or how things are bound together. Whether one level of thinking is regarded as more advanced in comparison with another way of thinking is due to empirical findings (see Jahoda, 1979, p. 3; Pramling, 1986). The goal is not to teach a theoretical notion but to develop children’s understanding of the world around them in some particular aspects. The definition of the aspects of the shop, which will be described later, is not made by the researcher or the teacher but by how children think in qualitatively different ways about advertising and the principle of trade. The assumption of this approach to learning in preschool is that if a teacher knows how children think about the content which is to be taught, then it should be easier for the teacher to develop the children’s understanding. The way of teaching which was proposed to develop the children’s conceptions was that of creating everyday situations (and problems) around which the children would have to think and reflect or, in other words, teaching based on the belief that reflection leads to understanding. But children have to reflect on different levels of generality: about the content and about the structure (connections for understanding). To make use of the potential of children’s different ways of thinking here means paying attention to the fact that they think in qualitatively different ways, without judging their merits. This means that the teachers change the children’s perspectives from thinking about the content itself to thinking about how they themselves and others think about the content, which could be seen as a metacognitive aspect of learning. Easley and Stake’s study (1984) on “problem-solving via dialogue” is an excellent example of this. The idea presented there is that each child solves a problem first by themselves; a problem within mathematics for 6-year-olds might be, for example, to divide 10 cookies between three children. They solve such a problem by drawing it on a piece of paper. The teacher then takes all the different ways of solving the problem from among their solutions and asks children to come up to the blackboard and explain and show how the problem is solved. She never says that something is right or wrong, but that it is “just another
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way of solving the problem.” The idea behind this is that the children should realize in the long run what a better solution is and get the message that the important thing is to think and reflect, because there can often be many ways of solving the problem (Doverborg & Pramling, 1987). According to Gordon (1987), problem solving is an important aspect of education in Japan. Gordon claimed that problems in Japanese schools are often very advanced. But because the children are aware that these problems are at a level far beyond their capability, they also know that it is the effort that counts rather than the result. Figuratively, the ground is children’s way of experiencing the world around them, and the goal is to change children’s thinking about particular aspects of the world from one level to a more advanced one. Elkind (1988) said that it is not what you put into the child, but what the child brings to the task of learning that is critical for education. He also believes that we have to change our paradigm and advocate educational practice that sees the teacher as a learner alongside the child, rather than as a simple conduit of information. Children need to learn how to learn instead of !earning specific information, which in any case might be inadequate by the time the child needs the information in the future (Pramling, 1989). The Content of the Study The main reason for choosing “the shop” as a theme to illustrate the present approach to work in preschool is that it is a common and central content in preschool. Furthermore, Jahoda (1979) showed that most children in the early grades in school have no idea about the function of money in the shop. Many children did not know that the shop had to pay for the articles sold there. And when they began to realize that the shop had to pay, children first thought the money came from somewhere else. Children conceptualize two parallel economic systems, that is, customer-articles and shop-supplier. How these two systems of selling and buying articles are integrated do not become clear to children until around 11 or 12 years of age. Furth (1980) interviewed 195 children between 5 and 11 years of age in order to describe children’s understanding of society as a system, that is, the total life in a society related to its institutions, rules and users, its service and production, its roles and symbols. According to children’s thinking about “selling and buying,” he said that younger children do not have any understanding of why articles have to be paid for. At the next level of development, children understand that articles have to be paid for, but not that the shop owner has to do so. Later, children begin to realize that there is a relation between the customer’s money and the money with which the shop has to pay for the articles delivered. The theme of the shop was also used by Pramling (1988) in an earlier study as a common content in three preschools where one of the teachers
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worked with developing children’s conceptions of their own learning by thematizing and problematizing the aspect of learning while they dealt with the theme of the shop. The content was structured from the customer’s and the shop’s perspectives. Apart from the results about children’s awareness of their own learning, qualitatively different ways of thinking about the functions of money in the shop and the role of advertising were found, among other things. Most 5- to 6-year-olds knew how to shop (they could find articles and the price tickets, they knew that money has to be given to the shop assistant, etc.). The two aspects of the shop as a system that were dealt with in this study are advertising and the principle of trade. These two aspects were chosen because earlier studies have shown that they always are taught when the theme of the shop is dealt with in preschool, but also because the development of the principle of trade is described in research studies (Pramling, 1986). The children were asked a question: “Have you ever heard about an advertisement? Well, tell me about it!” The qualitatively different ways in which children thought about advertising were: 1. Advertisement as a sign (e.g., a picture of something, i.e., the form of the advertisement). 2. Advertisement as information (whether it is wrong or right, e.g., information about a bargain price, about new articles). 3. Advertisement as a function (e.g., children talk about the way the shop tries to entice people to buy). Children’s conceptions of the principle of trade were investigated by asking children, “What happens to the money you give to the shop assistant for the articles you buy?” This question was followed by asking what the shop used the money for. The qualitatively different ideas children expressed about the principle of trade were: 1. Money is kept somewhere (e.g., in the till or safe). 2. Other customers get the money back (e.g., if one does not get money back, one has nothing to spend later). These two conceptions are expressions of what the child has seen, but the act of paying is just a ritual. 3.
Someone else gets the money (e.g., the shop assistant, the owner of the shop, the local authority for building schools, or people in poor countries where they are starving). 4. Money could be used only once (e.g., a truck takes the money to a factory where they make new money out of it).
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5. Money is used for covering costs (e.g., when the shop runs out of milk, they will use it to restock with fresh milk). All these conceptions of advertising and the principle of trade were found among these children, but only one or two children in each group held the most advanced conception about the function of advertising and realized that the money is used for covering the shop’s costs. Most children in the previous study (Pramling, 1986) still held the same conceptions about the shop after being taught about it. It seems as though some aspects of the shop’s function are so obvious that every child of around 5 or 6 years knows everything about how to shop (to be a customer). On the other hand, to understand how the shop functions seems to be very difficult, at least with the traditional teaching methods used in this study (Pramling, 1986). Berti and Bombi (1988) studied children’s constructions of economics and showed some differences in different cultures. They claimed that children’s lack of understanding at a level at which they ought to be capable can be due to the fact that children are kept out of economics in many families and cultures. What about the principle of trade when children are playing? Do children not understand the principle in situations that do not involve money? Observed in the study was a group of children apparently swapping stamps. But on studying them carefully, it is seen that they were not swapping, they either begged them or gave them away. But even after giving them away, it seemed that they still owned them. A child came back and asked, “Can I give away the Japanese stamp I got from you?” “No,” said the other child, but then changed her mind and asked, “Who are you going to give it to?” She was satisfied by the other child’s reply and said, “Well, if Catarina promises not to give it away again, she can have it!” It was obvious that the children had no understanding of the principle of exchange at all. One can, of course, question the importance of developing the idea of trade and say that this is something children will understand sooner or later. But one can also look at it as Katz (1945) did, when he described children’s thinking about economics and pointed out that not even all adults have grasped the fact that there is no value as such in a coin or note, which is the principle of trade! The Aim of the Study
The aim of the present study was to try to develop children’s understanding of particular aspects of the shop by introducing a specific approach to work in preschool. (Preschool in Sweden is up to age 7, so there is an overlap between American primary school and Swedish preschool.) Differences in teaching the theme of the shop in four preschools (with children 5 to 6 years of age) and the outcome in terms of children’s understanding will be de-
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scribed. Although one cannot claim absolute connections between teaching and learning in any way, one can describe carefully the experiences children have and study what possible understanding can take place. It is important to see the present study as a feasibility study and not as a cause-effect study. The design is “experimental-descriptive,” with its focus on describing children’s learning in the light of teaching. METHOD The Children
and the Schools
Four groups of preschoolers (in total, 70 children) worked for 2 to 3 weeks on the theme of the shop. This study was part of a larger project running for the whole school year with all four groups. The goal of the larger project was to try to develop children’s possibilities to learn in general and compare effects of different approaches to learning. Groups A and B were the two experimental groups in which the project leader and the teachers planned together based on the assumptions described earlier. Before the project started, they had read a lot about children’s thinking and discussed the purpose of the present approach which they were expected to apply. These teachers were given all the information about children’s conceptions of the content to be taught, as found in the first interview. Situations, problems, and questions which were supposed to influence children’s understanding were planned in cooperation. The project leader had already made observations once a week for half a year and discussed findings with these teachers when the theme of the shop started. Groups C and D were control groups and worked out the theme in their own ways. They were also observed for half a year, but without intervention by the teachers’ ideas or implementations. All four preschools are located in middle-class areas. The children’s conceptions of their own learning were examined at the beginning of the school year and showed no differences between groups (Pramling, 1989). All teachers had about 15 years of teaching experience. The Interviews
Children were interviewed three times about the shop theme. The interviews were similar to the Piagetian clinical interview, where children’s answers have to be followed and developed as far as it is possible (Piaget, 1975). This means that all children in the previous study were posed the following questions: “Do you know what advertisement is? Tell me about it!“, “What happens to the money you give to the shop assistant for the articles you buy?“, and “What does the shop use the money for?” According to the children’s replies, the interviewer poses follow-up questions or asks the child to say some more about it. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and form the basis of analysis, with the aim of first finding similarities and
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differences in children’s thinking and then describing qualitatively different conceptions (Marton, 1981). The qualitative description is similar to that which Piaget has described in many of his studies (see e.g., Piaget, 1975, 1976, 1978). The main result in studies like this is the description of the qualitatively different conceptions (Marton, 1981). The first interview was carried out before the theme was started. Unfortunately, Group D was not interviewed because they had already started the theme when the first interview was planned to take place, due to a misunderstanding between the teacher and the project leader. The reason for not ignoring that group here is that there would then be only one control group. The second interview was carried out a week after the theme was completed, and the third one 3 months later. The Context
of the Study
Preschools A and B. Teachers from Preschools A and B had the same goal, namely to develop situations in which the phenomena to develop children’s conceptions are clearly illustrated and children have to reflect on different problems or questions raised by the teacher or any of the children. A few situations will illustrate this principle. For example, when they were building a shop to play in, the teacher told the children to throw away the articles from the shop into the waste paper basket in her office after they had played with them. After a while the shelves became empty and the children began to complain that there was nothing left to buy. The teacher then took up the discussion about what happens in a real shop. They decided together that new articles are delivered regularly by a man in a big truck. They discussed when money changed hands in order to pay for the articles. They also discussed and reflected together about where the big trucks came from, and so on. The discussion ended with the teacher introducing a new role into the game, namely a truck driver, who drove his truck from the teacher’s office (now changed into a factory), and of course he was very keen to get money from the shop assistant for the articles he delivered to the shop. This role became very popular and assumed high status. They also worked on telling stories about different pictures with reference to money transformation. They made up a story about a farmer and what he grew, how the farmer’s products were sold, what happened at the factory, how the final product was sold to the shop, and how families came and bought it at a much higher price than the farmer was once paid. They also created their own stories in books, which were later compared, focusing on their different ways of thinking. Advertising was taken up one day when two children were sitting alone in the shop, in the role of shop assistants. The teacher asked them what they could do to get customers to come to the shop. The children suggested shout-
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ing, “Come and buy!” but still no-one came. The teacher took up the question of advertising, and the children made drawings to give to the other children. When they were about to distribute these, the teacher told them to tell the others that the shop was offering surprises that day. She then took out a cake from the freezer and put it in the microwave oven to defrost and mixed a bottle of juice. In a few minutes every child was shopping! Before children left the preschool for the day, the teacher started a discussion about advertising by asking why everybody played shop today. The reason was, of course, that they got cake and juice. “Does this happen in a real shop too?” Children had a lot of ideas about the question. They knew that they had been given balloons, food, sweets, and the like in shops. When they visited a real shop, the teacher took down two boxes of cereal, one with colored pictures on it and one rather plain. She then asked the children which one they would buy. Everybody pointed at the colorful box. “Why would you buy that one?” she asked. Children gave their ideas, such as, “It tastes better,” or “There are small pictures inside the box,” and so forth. After the children had given their ideas, the teacher said, “I would have bought the other one, why do you think I would?” Again children came up with ideas like, “You like it better,” “You have never tasted the other one,” “Maybe that one is less expensive.” The teacher then bought the two boxes and took them with her to preschool where the children had to taste the two cereals without knowing which box they came from. In this way, it became obvious for the children how they had been cheated by the pictures on the box. On another occasion, the teacher found a honey container which looked like a bear. She asked them if they knew what it was. They all did! “But why is the honey in a bear?” asked the teacher. “Because, Winnie the Pooh likes honey,” said someone. “But is he the one who’s going to buy and eat this honey, or who wants it?” They had no idea. The teacher then continued, “I think your fathers want a bear like this on the breakfast table in the morning.” Everybody laughed, and of course they realized that it was they themselves who wanted the bear filled with honey. A lot of similar situations were created by the teachers, sometimes on their own initiative and sometimes as a response to the children’s actions. It was a continuing dialogue and called for cooperation between the teachers and children and between the children themselves. The description of the teaching is anecdotal. The teachers focused on the children’s experiences about these different aspects of the shop in order to facilitate their conceptual development. Their goal was to either capture or create situations about which children could think and reflect. They also tried to make children’s own ideas visible, by drawing their attention to their different ideas, often through drawings, problem solving, drama, play, and so forth. Teachers A and B worked with the same approach, and
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examples above are taken from both groups. The goal and direction were the same in these two groups, although the different teachers planned and conducted experiences for the children in different ways. Preschool C. Teacher C regarded children in terms of maturity, which means that the children had a lot of activities, but there was no component of reflection. Her idea was that by practicing different skills, such as playing in the shop in their own ways, or by visiting real shops, the children who were mature enough would gain insights on their own. The children decided what to talk about during discussion time, and when she tried to teach them about advertising or the principle of trade she posed relevant questions to the whole group. The child who already knew the answers responded. The teacher thought that if a child is mature enough to understand something, he or she will learn by naming it. In other words, concrete activities will lead to children learning about the shop. We can consider a few illustrative examples. One day the teacher asked children to name some different kinds of shops. They suggested toy shops, sweets shops, sports shops, fur shops, shoe shops, greengrocers, bicycle shops, wool shops, paint shops, jewellers, iron mongers, furniture shops, drapers, bakeries, gasoline stations, chemists. For every shop children suggested, the teacher asked what was sold in the shop.
“Today we will make drawings of shop windows,” says the teacher and continues by asking them if they know what a shop window is. They talk about what there might be in a petshop window, in the bicycle shop’s window, and in the toy shop. “Now you have to decide which kind of window you want to make,” says the teacher. Children draw bookstores, clothes shops, and ice-
cream shops, etc. The drawings are put on the wall. A lot of empty boxes are stored in big paperbags, which children use every day for play. The play in the shop is mainly about putting all the boxes on the shelves. There is often a quarrel about who is going to be the shop assistant, which often results in there being more children behind the counter than there are shopping. The play never develops further than buying and selling, just like younger children would have played. “Where does the shop get food from?” asks the teacher. One child answers: “From the farmer,” another says, “From a factory,” and so on. “And how does it get delivered to the shop?” “By big trucks,” says another child. The teacher continues, “Does the shop have to pay for the food?” “Yes,” replies someone else.
To a large extent, the teaching consisted of naming objects in order to expand the children’s vocabulary and encouraging different activities, like drawing a shop window or playing in the shop, by themselves. The teacher
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constructed the shop-window activity to teach the children about advertisement and took it for granted that the children would understand that. Preschool D. Teacher D chose to have small “lectures” during discussion time for which she was very well prepared. She knew all the facts about the shop and shared them with the children. Her lectures were very estended and advanced (for example, she took up the meaning of import and esport). This teaching represented traditional “school teaching,” where the teacher tried to mediate her own knowledge to the children. The reason for playing shop was, from this teacher’s perspective, to develop the meaning of the information she had given them earlier. The following is a few illustrative examples of Group D: One circle-time starts with the teacher saying, “We have been talking about the shop, but not about what we must take with us to be able to buy something. ” “Money.” shouts someone. “Yes. money, or some coins is another way of saying it.” saysthe teacher. A big map with different kinds of coins is on the wall. Children look at it and the teacher points out and talks about different kinds of coins, what they looked like in earlier times, and what the) look like today. Attention is focused on a big coin which weighed 20 kg. She compares the weight of the coin with the children’s weights. They talk about gold coins and begin to look at the pictures of kings on some coins. This continues for a while with the teacher telling all about these different kings. The! then move their attention to the money of today and talk about the variety we have. The circle-time ends with 15 minutes of counting and comparing different notes and coins. Later they have the task of making drawings of what they would buy if they had an unlimited amount of money. Again, when children were taught about the principle of trade, the teacher provided very detailed information and facts: She begins by saying: “Do you remember that we talked about the money we have to pay in the shop the other day?” and continues: “We never talked about what happens to this money.” A child says: “The money is saved in the bank.” “But what happens to it all later on?” Someone says that her mother goes to the bank to get money. The teacher begins to tell them about all the different things the man who owns the shop has to pay with this money, like the stock, paper bags, the shop assistant’s salary, the rent for the building, for someone to clean the shop, and so on. The teacher not only names the things the money is used for, but she also talks a lot about each aspect. For esample, she describeshow the paper for the bags is made from wood in a factory, and the people who work there need wages. and so on. The teacher’s idea is that if children get a lot of information, they store it in their heads and use it in different activities later, for example, when they play shop. In comparing the four groups one could say that the two esperiment groups (A and B) worked on expanding children’s experiences of some
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aspects of how the shop functions by creating situations around which to reflect. The two comparison groups work on naming and doing (Group C) and telling detailed information (Group D). In both control groups, the theoretical notions were kept apart from concrete actions, whereas they were integrated in the two experimental groups. Because the teachers in the esperimental groups had information about children’s thinking, they could better focus on what children did not understand, whereas the other teachers taught a lot about how to shop and so on, which children of this age group seem to know from experience. RESL’LTS
As mentioned earlier, these four groups participated in a larger project running throughout the year which focused on the effects of different approaches to learning in preschool on children’s more general capacity to learn. The results from the total study (Pramling, 1989) are reflected within the results from the present study’s smaller focus, “the shop.” One will, however, notice some differences between the experimental groups and the control groups when this part of the project began, which I consider to be an effect of the general approach employed during the whole project. The project had been running for about 3 months when The shop was implemented. The results will be presented as a comparison between the experimental (A, B) groups and the control (C, D) groups. The reason for adding the two experimental groups together is due partly to the design of the investigation, that is, they both followed the same approach toward working with preschool children; it is also because there was no significant difference between the results in these two groups. The reasons for adding together the two control groups are that they did not follow the same approach as the experimental groups and are representative of preschool teaching in general, and that, here again, there was no significant difference between the results in these two groups. Results in a study like this one are normally to find and categorize qualitatively different conceptions. The qualitatively different ways of thinking about advertising and the principle of trade described earlier are now used for categorizing the children’s conceptions. The categorization is hierarchical, which means that a child is only categorized in the most advanced category he or she expressed. The x2 test is made on the frequencies of answers given as they are described in the categories in Table 1. Advertising
Let us first look at the similarities and differences between the two experiment and control groups. In Table 1 we can see the way children’s conceptions of advertising were expressed in the three different interviews. In the
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Table 1.
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Children’s
Conceptions
of Advertisement Interview 2
1 Preschool:
A/B
C
A/B
3 C/D
A/B
C/D
Do not know Sign Information Function
6 13 9 IO
10 4 2 1
2 2 9 25
8 10 3 11
2 1 9 26
5 11 4 12
N
38
17
38
32
38
32
first interview, A and B’s conceptions show that one fourth of the children already had the most advanced idea of advertising, whereas only one child in Group C held this conception. A statistical analysis comparing the experiment groups (A and B) and the control groups (at the first interview only Group C, but from the second interview also Group D) shows that there were already significant differences between these groups on the first interview, x2(2)= 11.12, p = .004, with regard to how children conceptualize advertisement. The most obvious difference is that there were a lot more children in the control group who answered “do not know,” whereas one fourth of the experiment groups held the most advanced conception right from the start. At the second interview, the statistical analysis shows a significant difference between the experimental and control groups, x2(2) = 8.75, p = .013, as well as at the third interview, x2(2) = 7.08, p = .029. In Table 1, we can also look at the changes from the first to the second and from the second to the third interviews, between the experiment and control groups. The greatest change by the second interview is that fewer children from the control group answered “do not know” and that a lot more children from the experimental groups changed their conceptions of advertisement to the most advanced level, that is, to the functional aspect of advertisement. To summarize children’s conceptions of advertisement, there was a significant difference between the experiment and the control groups right from the beginning. The differences remain, but if we look at the content, in terms of children’s understanding, the children in Group A and Group B developed towards a more advanced understanding. The Principle of Trade
What about children’s conceptions of the principle of trade, which according to Jahoda (1979) is not to be seen in children of this age? The conceptions described earlier are used here as well for categorization of children’s ideas. However, the three.categories, “money kept,” “other customers get money back,” and “someone gets the money,” are reduced to “input to the
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Conceptions
of the Function
Interview 2
1 Preschool:
A/B
of Money
C
A/B
3 C/D
A/B
C/D
Do not know Input costs
4 27 7
3 14 -
16 22
7 22 3
13 25
4 25 3
N
38
17
38
32
38
32
shop,” that is, the money in all these categories goes from the customers to the shop. In the category of “costs,” children conceptualize that the money is transferred to the deliverer of goods. In Table 2, we can see the similarities and differences between the groups. There were a few children in the experimental groups, but not in Group C, who in the first interview expressed the idea that the money is handed to the deliverer by the shop assistant. Statistical analysis shows however that there is no significant difference between the experimental and control groups, x2(2) = 3.8, p c .15, at the first interview. By the second interview, the difences between the experiment and control groups are significant, x2(2)= 22.04, p < .OOl, as well as at the third interview, x2(2) = 24.73, p< .OOl. At the second interview, as we can see in Table 2, the greatest change was in the experimental groups, where a little more than half of the children expressed the most advanced conception, whereas only a few individuals in the control groups did so. By the third interview, some more children in the experiment groups had further developed their understanding of the function of money, but no one had in the control groups. The difference between the two experimental groups (A and B) and the two control groups (C and D) is obvious in both aspects studied, advertisement, and the function of money in the shop. When discussing different approaches to learning, the tendency rather than the absolute figures is of interest. The children in Groups A and B developed the most. Group C developed very little, and it is difficult to say anything about Group D because of the lack of a first interview. One can, however, remark that few children in this group expressed any kind of understanding after having worked with the theme. DISCUSSION The approach to learning, which this study supports, is that teaching in preschool ought to be a question of developing the child’s understanding of the world around him or her, that is, an experientally oriented education. In the present study it was done by shifting between different levels of generality
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(the concrete situation and what it referred to in reality, and the structure in terms of connections) and also by causing the child to reflect on his or her own way of thinking. Understanding in the perspective described here is the foundation for later learning of strategies or facts (Marton, 1988; Smith, 1986). The goal is to develop children’s conceptions (ideas) and to get them to see (discern), that is, ways of experiencing, different phenomena in the world around them. Examples of this principle might be: for mathematics, develop the idea of number; for reading and writing, these are ways to communicate; for learning, develop the idea of what one learns and how learning comes about; for natural science, develop the idea of the ecological cycle; for social science, develop the ideas of advertisement and the principle of trade as described in this article. We can see, in this study, how the teacher had a clear idea of what possible conceptions to develop in children’s thinking and how she created opportunities for children to act and reflect by presenting to them problems concerning the principle of trade as well as advertising. Over and over again, she tried to make the meaning visible by letting the children express their ideas. Tools for the teacher using the approach to learning advocated in this study are: (a) to encourage children to talk and reflect and to draw on the variation expressed; (b) to be knowledgeable of the ways in which children conceptualize the content one wants to work on; (c) to learn about methodology, such as steps for planning and interview techniques; (d) to create situations and opportunities in which children are confronted with problems related to the goals. The resulting work for the teacher will be to plan themes like “The Shop” which will help the children develop an understanding of the particular content. After having found the children’s existing conceptions from earlier experiences and knowledge (which could be done through interviews, group discussions, making drawings, dramatic activities, problem solving, playing, etc.), the teacher knows what is left to work on with the children; in other words, the teacher knows to what extent the children’s conceptions differ from those which are aimed at, to see relations. What often happens in this process is that teachers realize that some of the planned content is already known by most children. The next step in the process will be to plan situations, events, experiences, about which the children can reflect. These situations must illustrate the internal structure of the phenomenon as a whole, which, for example, can be done by working with analogies (Doverborg & Pramling, 1988). Children’s reflection is the most important part. If we want to develop children’s understanding of the world around them, they have to think! The approach is based neither on concrete manipulation with objects nor on theoretical notions mediated by the teacher. Instead, the approach is
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based on children’s conceptions of the phenomenon worked on, thus they experience something other than concrete acts or the subject matter. For example, as we have seen, the teaching begins with children’s thinking about the shop and the aspects the teacher wants them to learn about. Learning here means to change the child’s way of thinking from one level to a more advanced level (Pramling, 1983). By using children’s lived experiences teaching has a greater potential. But in order to work with a starting point in children’s experiences, it is not enough for the teacher to know in an objective way what experiences the child has had; it would not help the teacher at all to know that the child goes shopping with his or her mother every week or that a child lives next to a shop when she plans the theme. But finding out what influence these experiences have had on the child’s way of thinking about the theme should help. To get this information, how these children think about the phenomena dealt with, the interview technique is very valuable (Doverberg & Pramling, 1985; Piaget, 1975). Tools for children in this approach to learning are: (a) that children learn from each other, which means that focus has to be on differences among children and not similarities; (b) that the teacher has to become familiar with children’s conceptions and use them as content; (c)that children can be engaged in activities and situations which influence them. The conclusion that teachers might draw from the study and approach described here is that there is no simple methodology that can be used in every situation and for all kinds of content. It is more a question of how the teacher relates to the children. Her goals must be to work on how children relate themselves to different phenona in the world. Whatever the teacher wants the child to conceptualize, it is the child’s “what” questions and “how” questions about the phenomenon that have to be dealt with. The teacher then has to create everyday situations-for instance, play, drama, arts and crafts, problem solving-around which children can think and reflect. It is not the information children get or children’s play as such that helps children to develop their conceptions, but rather it is the reflection on different content and context. To use children’s conceptions means to bring to their attention the differences in their drama, arts and crafts, problem solving, and so forth in terms of how they think. This means that the teacher changes focus for children from thinking about a content to how they themselves and others think about their own thinking about a particular theme. This means that there is no simple strategy to be used by teachers, because the kinds of situations to create and the questions to pose to children all depend on the content, the phenomena about which children’s ideas are to be developed. The teacher’s focus must be on how children discern or apprehend these phenomena.
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166 REFERENCES
Berti, A., & Bombi, A. (1988). The child’s construction of economics. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Doverborg, E., & Pramling, I. (1985). Atf f&f; barns tankar [To understand children’s thinking]. Stockholm: Utbildningsforlaget. Doverborg, E., & Pramling, I. (1987). I dag var det verkligen bra problem vi fick froken! [Miss, we really got good problems today]. Fb’rskolan, 2, 26-28. Doverborg, E., & Pramling, I. (1988). Temaarbele. Lbiares metodik och barns fdisldelse [Working with themes]. Stockholm: Utbildningsforlaget. Easley. J., & Stake, B. (1984). Development and evaluation of dialogic teacher education in primary mathematicsandscienceproblem-solving. Unpublished manuscript, University of Urbana-Champaign, College of Education, Urbana. Elkind, D. (1988). The resistance to developmentally appropriate educational practice with young children: The real issue. In C. Warger (Ed.), Public school ear/y childhood programs. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. Furth, H. (1980). The world of grown-ups. North Holland: Elsevier. Gordon, B. (1987). Cultural comparisons of schooling. Educarional Reearcher, 16(6), 4-7. Jahoda, G. (1979). The construction of economic reality by some Glaswegian children. European
Journal
of Social
Psychology,
9, 115-127.
Katz, D. (1945). Nyapsykologiska striivfig. [Psychological excursions]. Stockholm: Kooperativa fiirbundets forlag. Marton, F. (1981). Phenomenography-Describing conceptions of the world around us. Instructional Science, IO, 177-200. Marton, F. (1988, April). Revealing educationally critical dgferences in our understanding of the world around us. Invited address presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA. Piaget, J. (1975). The child’s conception of the world. Totowa, NJ: Litterfield, Adams & Co. Piaget, J. (1976). The grasp of consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Piaget, J. (1978). Success and understanding. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Pramling, I. (1983). The child’s conception of /earning (No. 46). Goteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. Pramling, 1. (1986). Meta-inhirning ifdiskolan. Barnsuppfaffningarav inl&ning och inneha”llet i ternat “Afftiien” [Meta-learning in preschool]. (Publikation fr& Institutionen for pedagogik, No. IS) Goteborgs Universitet, Sweden. Pramling, I. (1988). Developing children’s thinking of their own learning. British Journal of Educational
Psychology,
58, 266-278.
Pramling, I. (1989). Learning to learn. A study of Swedish preschool Springer-Verlag. Smith, F. (1986). Insulr IO intelligence. New York: Arbor House.
children.
New
York:
Research Quarterly, 6, 151-166 (1991)
Learning About “The Shop”: An Approach to Learning in Preschool lngrid University
of
Pramling Gothenburg
An approach based on relating to children’s lived experiences in order to change their understanding of particular aspects of the world around them is illustrated. In the example presented, the approach was used in two preschool groups learning about “the shop” and was compared to two groups with traditional teaching of the same theme. In total, 70 children aged 5 to 6 years and their teachers participated in the investigation. The children were interviewed three times about “the shop”: before the teaching started, immediately after, and 3 months later. The results show that children from the experimental groups developed their understanding of relevant aspects of the theme to a far greater extent than children from the control groups.
BACKGROUND A View of Learning According to Marton (1988), there are three aspects to learning: skills, knowledge, and understanding. Skills refers to how we act, and knowledge refers to what we know about phenomena
that are already discerned and
already apprehended one way or another. Understanding, on the other hand, refers to the way in which the phenomena are discerned and apprehended. Let us interpret what these three aspects mean in relation to the topic of “traffic”
in preschool. To teach children traffic
from the point of
view of skills means to work with strategies, like practicing where the safest place to cross the street is in their neighborhood, that one ought to look twice in one direction before crossing, and so on. To teach traffic from the point of view of knowledge means to teach children road signs, right and left, that one is supposed to walk in the opposite direction to traffic when
there is no pavement, relevant vocabulary,
and so forth. Finally, to teach
The preparation of this article was supported by a grant from the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Ingrid Pramling, Department of Education, University of Gothenburg, Box 1010, 431 26 Miilndal, Sweden. n Received June 17, 1989; Revision received July 21, 1989; Accepted June 28, 1990. 151
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traffic from the perspective of understanding means to create opportunities where the child experiences traffic as traffic, that is, as a system of movement in which there must be rules in order for it to function. It is this third perspective, to develop understanding, that is the focus of the present study. Thinking about learning as understanding does not mean that children have to make final scientific insights, but that they should change their conceptions of the phenomenon worked on towards a more advanced level. In the present study, for instance, it is the child’s experiences about the aspects of the shop that are relevant for development, and not how these aspects could be defined “by an economist.” If a child learns, he or she changes his or her way of thinking about a phenomenon to a qualitatively different level, that is, that child can see other relationships or how things are bound together. Whether one level of thinking is regarded as more advanced in comparison with another way of thinking is due to empirical findings (see Jahoda, 1979, p. 3; Pramling, 1986). The goal is not to teach a theoretical notion but to develop children’s understanding of the world around them in some particular aspects. The definition of the aspects of the shop, which will be described later, is not made by the researcher or the teacher but by how children think in qualitatively different ways about advertising and the principle of trade. The assumption of this approach to learning in preschool is that if a teacher knows how children think about the content which is to be taught, then it should be easier for the teacher to develop the children’s understanding. The way of teaching which was proposed to develop the children’s conceptions was that of creating everyday situations (and problems) around which the children would have to think and reflect or, in other words, teaching based on the belief that reflection leads to understanding. But children have to reflect on different levels of generality: about the content and about the structure (connections for understanding). To make use of the potential of children’s different ways of thinking here means paying attention to the fact that they think in qualitatively different ways, without judging their merits. This means that the teachers change the children’s perspectives from thinking about the content itself to thinking about how they themselves and others think about the content, which could be seen as a metacognitive aspect of learning. Easley and Stake’s study (1984) on “problem-solving via dialogue” is an excellent example of this. The idea presented there is that each child solves a problem first by themselves; a problem within mathematics for 6-year-olds might be, for example, to divide 10 cookies between three children. They solve such a problem by drawing it on a piece of paper. The teacher then takes all the different ways of solving the problem from among their solutions and asks children to come up to the blackboard and explain and show how the problem is solved. She never says that something is right or wrong, but that it is “just another
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way of solving the problem.” The idea behind this is that the children should realize in the long run what a better solution is and get the message that the important thing is to think and reflect, because there can often be many ways of solving the problem (Doverborg & Pramling, 1987). According to Gordon (1987), problem solving is an important aspect of education in Japan. Gordon claimed that problems in Japanese schools are often very advanced. But because the children are aware that these problems are at a level far beyond their capability, they also know that it is the effort that counts rather than the result. Figuratively, the ground is children’s way of experiencing the world around them, and the goal is to change children’s thinking about particular aspects of the world from one level to a more advanced one. Elkind (1988) said that it is not what you put into the child, but what the child brings to the task of learning that is critical for education. He also believes that we have to change our paradigm and advocate educational practice that sees the teacher as a learner alongside the child, rather than as a simple conduit of information. Children need to learn how to learn instead of !earning specific information, which in any case might be inadequate by the time the child needs the information in the future (Pramling, 1989). The Content of the Study The main reason for choosing “the shop” as a theme to illustrate the present approach to work in preschool is that it is a common and central content in preschool. Furthermore, Jahoda (1979) showed that most children in the early grades in school have no idea about the function of money in the shop. Many children did not know that the shop had to pay for the articles sold there. And when they began to realize that the shop had to pay, children first thought the money came from somewhere else. Children conceptualize two parallel economic systems, that is, customer-articles and shop-supplier. How these two systems of selling and buying articles are integrated do not become clear to children until around 11 or 12 years of age. Furth (1980) interviewed 195 children between 5 and 11 years of age in order to describe children’s understanding of society as a system, that is, the total life in a society related to its institutions, rules and users, its service and production, its roles and symbols. According to children’s thinking about “selling and buying,” he said that younger children do not have any understanding of why articles have to be paid for. At the next level of development, children understand that articles have to be paid for, but not that the shop owner has to do so. Later, children begin to realize that there is a relation between the customer’s money and the money with which the shop has to pay for the articles delivered. The theme of the shop was also used by Pramling (1988) in an earlier study as a common content in three preschools where one of the teachers
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worked with developing children’s conceptions of their own learning by thematizing and problematizing the aspect of learning while they dealt with the theme of the shop. The content was structured from the customer’s and the shop’s perspectives. Apart from the results about children’s awareness of their own learning, qualitatively different ways of thinking about the functions of money in the shop and the role of advertising were found, among other things. Most 5- to 6-year-olds knew how to shop (they could find articles and the price tickets, they knew that money has to be given to the shop assistant, etc.). The two aspects of the shop as a system that were dealt with in this study are advertising and the principle of trade. These two aspects were chosen because earlier studies have shown that they always are taught when the theme of the shop is dealt with in preschool, but also because the development of the principle of trade is described in research studies (Pramling, 1986). The children were asked a question: “Have you ever heard about an advertisement? Well, tell me about it!” The qualitatively different ways in which children thought about advertising were: 1. Advertisement as a sign (e.g., a picture of something, i.e., the form of the advertisement). 2. Advertisement as information (whether it is wrong or right, e.g., information about a bargain price, about new articles). 3. Advertisement as a function (e.g., children talk about the way the shop tries to entice people to buy). Children’s conceptions of the principle of trade were investigated by asking children, “What happens to the money you give to the shop assistant for the articles you buy?” This question was followed by asking what the shop used the money for. The qualitatively different ideas children expressed about the principle of trade were: 1. Money is kept somewhere (e.g., in the till or safe). 2. Other customers get the money back (e.g., if one does not get money back, one has nothing to spend later). These two conceptions are expressions of what the child has seen, but the act of paying is just a ritual. 3.
Someone else gets the money (e.g., the shop assistant, the owner of the shop, the local authority for building schools, or people in poor countries where they are starving). 4. Money could be used only once (e.g., a truck takes the money to a factory where they make new money out of it).
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5. Money is used for covering costs (e.g., when the shop runs out of milk, they will use it to restock with fresh milk). All these conceptions of advertising and the principle of trade were found among these children, but only one or two children in each group held the most advanced conception about the function of advertising and realized that the money is used for covering the shop’s costs. Most children in the previous study (Pramling, 1986) still held the same conceptions about the shop after being taught about it. It seems as though some aspects of the shop’s function are so obvious that every child of around 5 or 6 years knows everything about how to shop (to be a customer). On the other hand, to understand how the shop functions seems to be very difficult, at least with the traditional teaching methods used in this study (Pramling, 1986). Berti and Bombi (1988) studied children’s constructions of economics and showed some differences in different cultures. They claimed that children’s lack of understanding at a level at which they ought to be capable can be due to the fact that children are kept out of economics in many families and cultures. What about the principle of trade when children are playing? Do children not understand the principle in situations that do not involve money? Observed in the study was a group of children apparently swapping stamps. But on studying them carefully, it is seen that they were not swapping, they either begged them or gave them away. But even after giving them away, it seemed that they still owned them. A child came back and asked, “Can I give away the Japanese stamp I got from you?” “No,” said the other child, but then changed her mind and asked, “Who are you going to give it to?” She was satisfied by the other child’s reply and said, “Well, if Catarina promises not to give it away again, she can have it!” It was obvious that the children had no understanding of the principle of exchange at all. One can, of course, question the importance of developing the idea of trade and say that this is something children will understand sooner or later. But one can also look at it as Katz (1945) did, when he described children’s thinking about economics and pointed out that not even all adults have grasped the fact that there is no value as such in a coin or note, which is the principle of trade! The Aim of the Study
The aim of the present study was to try to develop children’s understanding of particular aspects of the shop by introducing a specific approach to work in preschool. (Preschool in Sweden is up to age 7, so there is an overlap between American primary school and Swedish preschool.) Differences in teaching the theme of the shop in four preschools (with children 5 to 6 years of age) and the outcome in terms of children’s understanding will be de-
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scribed. Although one cannot claim absolute connections between teaching and learning in any way, one can describe carefully the experiences children have and study what possible understanding can take place. It is important to see the present study as a feasibility study and not as a cause-effect study. The design is “experimental-descriptive,” with its focus on describing children’s learning in the light of teaching. METHOD The Children
and the Schools
Four groups of preschoolers (in total, 70 children) worked for 2 to 3 weeks on the theme of the shop. This study was part of a larger project running for the whole school year with all four groups. The goal of the larger project was to try to develop children’s possibilities to learn in general and compare effects of different approaches to learning. Groups A and B were the two experimental groups in which the project leader and the teachers planned together based on the assumptions described earlier. Before the project started, they had read a lot about children’s thinking and discussed the purpose of the present approach which they were expected to apply. These teachers were given all the information about children’s conceptions of the content to be taught, as found in the first interview. Situations, problems, and questions which were supposed to influence children’s understanding were planned in cooperation. The project leader had already made observations once a week for half a year and discussed findings with these teachers when the theme of the shop started. Groups C and D were control groups and worked out the theme in their own ways. They were also observed for half a year, but without intervention by the teachers’ ideas or implementations. All four preschools are located in middle-class areas. The children’s conceptions of their own learning were examined at the beginning of the school year and showed no differences between groups (Pramling, 1989). All teachers had about 15 years of teaching experience. The Interviews
Children were interviewed three times about the shop theme. The interviews were similar to the Piagetian clinical interview, where children’s answers have to be followed and developed as far as it is possible (Piaget, 1975). This means that all children in the previous study were posed the following questions: “Do you know what advertisement is? Tell me about it!“, “What happens to the money you give to the shop assistant for the articles you buy?“, and “What does the shop use the money for?” According to the children’s replies, the interviewer poses follow-up questions or asks the child to say some more about it. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and form the basis of analysis, with the aim of first finding similarities and
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differences in children’s thinking and then describing qualitatively different conceptions (Marton, 1981). The qualitative description is similar to that which Piaget has described in many of his studies (see e.g., Piaget, 1975, 1976, 1978). The main result in studies like this is the description of the qualitatively different conceptions (Marton, 1981). The first interview was carried out before the theme was started. Unfortunately, Group D was not interviewed because they had already started the theme when the first interview was planned to take place, due to a misunderstanding between the teacher and the project leader. The reason for not ignoring that group here is that there would then be only one control group. The second interview was carried out a week after the theme was completed, and the third one 3 months later. The Context
of the Study
Preschools A and B. Teachers from Preschools A and B had the same goal, namely to develop situations in which the phenomena to develop children’s conceptions are clearly illustrated and children have to reflect on different problems or questions raised by the teacher or any of the children. A few situations will illustrate this principle. For example, when they were building a shop to play in, the teacher told the children to throw away the articles from the shop into the waste paper basket in her office after they had played with them. After a while the shelves became empty and the children began to complain that there was nothing left to buy. The teacher then took up the discussion about what happens in a real shop. They decided together that new articles are delivered regularly by a man in a big truck. They discussed when money changed hands in order to pay for the articles. They also discussed and reflected together about where the big trucks came from, and so on. The discussion ended with the teacher introducing a new role into the game, namely a truck driver, who drove his truck from the teacher’s office (now changed into a factory), and of course he was very keen to get money from the shop assistant for the articles he delivered to the shop. This role became very popular and assumed high status. They also worked on telling stories about different pictures with reference to money transformation. They made up a story about a farmer and what he grew, how the farmer’s products were sold, what happened at the factory, how the final product was sold to the shop, and how families came and bought it at a much higher price than the farmer was once paid. They also created their own stories in books, which were later compared, focusing on their different ways of thinking. Advertising was taken up one day when two children were sitting alone in the shop, in the role of shop assistants. The teacher asked them what they could do to get customers to come to the shop. The children suggested shout-
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ing, “Come and buy!” but still no-one came. The teacher took up the question of advertising, and the children made drawings to give to the other children. When they were about to distribute these, the teacher told them to tell the others that the shop was offering surprises that day. She then took out a cake from the freezer and put it in the microwave oven to defrost and mixed a bottle of juice. In a few minutes every child was shopping! Before children left the preschool for the day, the teacher started a discussion about advertising by asking why everybody played shop today. The reason was, of course, that they got cake and juice. “Does this happen in a real shop too?” Children had a lot of ideas about the question. They knew that they had been given balloons, food, sweets, and the like in shops. When they visited a real shop, the teacher took down two boxes of cereal, one with colored pictures on it and one rather plain. She then asked the children which one they would buy. Everybody pointed at the colorful box. “Why would you buy that one?” she asked. Children gave their ideas, such as, “It tastes better,” or “There are small pictures inside the box,” and so forth. After the children had given their ideas, the teacher said, “I would have bought the other one, why do you think I would?” Again children came up with ideas like, “You like it better,” “You have never tasted the other one,” “Maybe that one is less expensive.” The teacher then bought the two boxes and took them with her to preschool where the children had to taste the two cereals without knowing which box they came from. In this way, it became obvious for the children how they had been cheated by the pictures on the box. On another occasion, the teacher found a honey container which looked like a bear. She asked them if they knew what it was. They all did! “But why is the honey in a bear?” asked the teacher. “Because, Winnie the Pooh likes honey,” said someone. “But is he the one who’s going to buy and eat this honey, or who wants it?” They had no idea. The teacher then continued, “I think your fathers want a bear like this on the breakfast table in the morning.” Everybody laughed, and of course they realized that it was they themselves who wanted the bear filled with honey. A lot of similar situations were created by the teachers, sometimes on their own initiative and sometimes as a response to the children’s actions. It was a continuing dialogue and called for cooperation between the teachers and children and between the children themselves. The description of the teaching is anecdotal. The teachers focused on the children’s experiences about these different aspects of the shop in order to facilitate their conceptual development. Their goal was to either capture or create situations about which children could think and reflect. They also tried to make children’s own ideas visible, by drawing their attention to their different ideas, often through drawings, problem solving, drama, play, and so forth. Teachers A and B worked with the same approach, and
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examples above are taken from both groups. The goal and direction were the same in these two groups, although the different teachers planned and conducted experiences for the children in different ways. Preschool C. Teacher C regarded children in terms of maturity, which means that the children had a lot of activities, but there was no component of reflection. Her idea was that by practicing different skills, such as playing in the shop in their own ways, or by visiting real shops, the children who were mature enough would gain insights on their own. The children decided what to talk about during discussion time, and when she tried to teach them about advertising or the principle of trade she posed relevant questions to the whole group. The child who already knew the answers responded. The teacher thought that if a child is mature enough to understand something, he or she will learn by naming it. In other words, concrete activities will lead to children learning about the shop. We can consider a few illustrative examples. One day the teacher asked children to name some different kinds of shops. They suggested toy shops, sweets shops, sports shops, fur shops, shoe shops, greengrocers, bicycle shops, wool shops, paint shops, jewellers, iron mongers, furniture shops, drapers, bakeries, gasoline stations, chemists. For every shop children suggested, the teacher asked what was sold in the shop.
“Today we will make drawings of shop windows,” says the teacher and continues by asking them if they know what a shop window is. They talk about what there might be in a petshop window, in the bicycle shop’s window, and in the toy shop. “Now you have to decide which kind of window you want to make,” says the teacher. Children draw bookstores, clothes shops, and ice-
cream shops, etc. The drawings are put on the wall. A lot of empty boxes are stored in big paperbags, which children use every day for play. The play in the shop is mainly about putting all the boxes on the shelves. There is often a quarrel about who is going to be the shop assistant, which often results in there being more children behind the counter than there are shopping. The play never develops further than buying and selling, just like younger children would have played. “Where does the shop get food from?” asks the teacher. One child answers: “From the farmer,” another says, “From a factory,” and so on. “And how does it get delivered to the shop?” “By big trucks,” says another child. The teacher continues, “Does the shop have to pay for the food?” “Yes,” replies someone else.
To a large extent, the teaching consisted of naming objects in order to expand the children’s vocabulary and encouraging different activities, like drawing a shop window or playing in the shop, by themselves. The teacher
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constructed the shop-window activity to teach the children about advertisement and took it for granted that the children would understand that. Preschool D. Teacher D chose to have small “lectures” during discussion time for which she was very well prepared. She knew all the facts about the shop and shared them with the children. Her lectures were very estended and advanced (for example, she took up the meaning of import and esport). This teaching represented traditional “school teaching,” where the teacher tried to mediate her own knowledge to the children. The reason for playing shop was, from this teacher’s perspective, to develop the meaning of the information she had given them earlier. The following is a few illustrative examples of Group D: One circle-time starts with the teacher saying, “We have been talking about the shop, but not about what we must take with us to be able to buy something. ” “Money.” shouts someone. “Yes. money, or some coins is another way of saying it.” saysthe teacher. A big map with different kinds of coins is on the wall. Children look at it and the teacher points out and talks about different kinds of coins, what they looked like in earlier times, and what the) look like today. Attention is focused on a big coin which weighed 20 kg. She compares the weight of the coin with the children’s weights. They talk about gold coins and begin to look at the pictures of kings on some coins. This continues for a while with the teacher telling all about these different kings. The! then move their attention to the money of today and talk about the variety we have. The circle-time ends with 15 minutes of counting and comparing different notes and coins. Later they have the task of making drawings of what they would buy if they had an unlimited amount of money. Again, when children were taught about the principle of trade, the teacher provided very detailed information and facts: She begins by saying: “Do you remember that we talked about the money we have to pay in the shop the other day?” and continues: “We never talked about what happens to this money.” A child says: “The money is saved in the bank.” “But what happens to it all later on?” Someone says that her mother goes to the bank to get money. The teacher begins to tell them about all the different things the man who owns the shop has to pay with this money, like the stock, paper bags, the shop assistant’s salary, the rent for the building, for someone to clean the shop, and so on. The teacher not only names the things the money is used for, but she also talks a lot about each aspect. For esample, she describeshow the paper for the bags is made from wood in a factory, and the people who work there need wages. and so on. The teacher’s idea is that if children get a lot of information, they store it in their heads and use it in different activities later, for example, when they play shop. In comparing the four groups one could say that the two esperiment groups (A and B) worked on expanding children’s experiences of some
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aspects of how the shop functions by creating situations around which to reflect. The two comparison groups work on naming and doing (Group C) and telling detailed information (Group D). In both control groups, the theoretical notions were kept apart from concrete actions, whereas they were integrated in the two experimental groups. Because the teachers in the esperimental groups had information about children’s thinking, they could better focus on what children did not understand, whereas the other teachers taught a lot about how to shop and so on, which children of this age group seem to know from experience. RESL’LTS
As mentioned earlier, these four groups participated in a larger project running throughout the year which focused on the effects of different approaches to learning in preschool on children’s more general capacity to learn. The results from the total study (Pramling, 1989) are reflected within the results from the present study’s smaller focus, “the shop.” One will, however, notice some differences between the experimental groups and the control groups when this part of the project began, which I consider to be an effect of the general approach employed during the whole project. The project had been running for about 3 months when The shop was implemented. The results will be presented as a comparison between the experimental (A, B) groups and the control (C, D) groups. The reason for adding the two experimental groups together is due partly to the design of the investigation, that is, they both followed the same approach toward working with preschool children; it is also because there was no significant difference between the results in these two groups. The reasons for adding together the two control groups are that they did not follow the same approach as the experimental groups and are representative of preschool teaching in general, and that, here again, there was no significant difference between the results in these two groups. Results in a study like this one are normally to find and categorize qualitatively different conceptions. The qualitatively different ways of thinking about advertising and the principle of trade described earlier are now used for categorizing the children’s conceptions. The categorization is hierarchical, which means that a child is only categorized in the most advanced category he or she expressed. The x2 test is made on the frequencies of answers given as they are described in the categories in Table 1. Advertising
Let us first look at the similarities and differences between the two experiment and control groups. In Table 1 we can see the way children’s conceptions of advertising were expressed in the three different interviews. In the
162
Table 1.
Pramling
Children’s
Conceptions
of Advertisement Interview 2
1 Preschool:
A/B
C
A/B
3 C/D
A/B
C/D
Do not know Sign Information Function
6 13 9 IO
10 4 2 1
2 2 9 25
8 10 3 11
2 1 9 26
5 11 4 12
N
38
17
38
32
38
32
first interview, A and B’s conceptions show that one fourth of the children already had the most advanced idea of advertising, whereas only one child in Group C held this conception. A statistical analysis comparing the experiment groups (A and B) and the control groups (at the first interview only Group C, but from the second interview also Group D) shows that there were already significant differences between these groups on the first interview, x2(2)= 11.12, p = .004, with regard to how children conceptualize advertisement. The most obvious difference is that there were a lot more children in the control group who answered “do not know,” whereas one fourth of the experiment groups held the most advanced conception right from the start. At the second interview, the statistical analysis shows a significant difference between the experimental and control groups, x2(2) = 8.75, p = .013, as well as at the third interview, x2(2) = 7.08, p = .029. In Table 1, we can also look at the changes from the first to the second and from the second to the third interviews, between the experiment and control groups. The greatest change by the second interview is that fewer children from the control group answered “do not know” and that a lot more children from the experimental groups changed their conceptions of advertisement to the most advanced level, that is, to the functional aspect of advertisement. To summarize children’s conceptions of advertisement, there was a significant difference between the experiment and the control groups right from the beginning. The differences remain, but if we look at the content, in terms of children’s understanding, the children in Group A and Group B developed towards a more advanced understanding. The Principle of Trade
What about children’s conceptions of the principle of trade, which according to Jahoda (1979) is not to be seen in children of this age? The conceptions described earlier are used here as well for categorization of children’s ideas. However, the three.categories, “money kept,” “other customers get money back,” and “someone gets the money,” are reduced to “input to the
Learning
About
Table 2.
“The
Children’s
Shop”
163
Conceptions
of the Function
Interview 2
1 Preschool:
A/B
of Money
C
A/B
3 C/D
A/B
C/D
Do not know Input costs
4 27 7
3 14 -
16 22
7 22 3
13 25
4 25 3
N
38
17
38
32
38
32
shop,” that is, the money in all these categories goes from the customers to the shop. In the category of “costs,” children conceptualize that the money is transferred to the deliverer of goods. In Table 2, we can see the similarities and differences between the groups. There were a few children in the experimental groups, but not in Group C, who in the first interview expressed the idea that the money is handed to the deliverer by the shop assistant. Statistical analysis shows however that there is no significant difference between the experimental and control groups, x2(2) = 3.8, p c .15, at the first interview. By the second interview, the difences between the experiment and control groups are significant, x2(2)= 22.04, p < .OOl, as well as at the third interview, x2(2) = 24.73, p< .OOl. At the second interview, as we can see in Table 2, the greatest change was in the experimental groups, where a little more than half of the children expressed the most advanced conception, whereas only a few individuals in the control groups did so. By the third interview, some more children in the experiment groups had further developed their understanding of the function of money, but no one had in the control groups. The difference between the two experimental groups (A and B) and the two control groups (C and D) is obvious in both aspects studied, advertisement, and the function of money in the shop. When discussing different approaches to learning, the tendency rather than the absolute figures is of interest. The children in Groups A and B developed the most. Group C developed very little, and it is difficult to say anything about Group D because of the lack of a first interview. One can, however, remark that few children in this group expressed any kind of understanding after having worked with the theme. DISCUSSION The approach to learning, which this study supports, is that teaching in preschool ought to be a question of developing the child’s understanding of the world around him or her, that is, an experientally oriented education. In the present study it was done by shifting between different levels of generality
164
Pramling
(the concrete situation and what it referred to in reality, and the structure in terms of connections) and also by causing the child to reflect on his or her own way of thinking. Understanding in the perspective described here is the foundation for later learning of strategies or facts (Marton, 1988; Smith, 1986). The goal is to develop children’s conceptions (ideas) and to get them to see (discern), that is, ways of experiencing, different phenomena in the world around them. Examples of this principle might be: for mathematics, develop the idea of number; for reading and writing, these are ways to communicate; for learning, develop the idea of what one learns and how learning comes about; for natural science, develop the idea of the ecological cycle; for social science, develop the ideas of advertisement and the principle of trade as described in this article. We can see, in this study, how the teacher had a clear idea of what possible conceptions to develop in children’s thinking and how she created opportunities for children to act and reflect by presenting to them problems concerning the principle of trade as well as advertising. Over and over again, she tried to make the meaning visible by letting the children express their ideas. Tools for the teacher using the approach to learning advocated in this study are: (a) to encourage children to talk and reflect and to draw on the variation expressed; (b) to be knowledgeable of the ways in which children conceptualize the content one wants to work on; (c) to learn about methodology, such as steps for planning and interview techniques; (d) to create situations and opportunities in which children are confronted with problems related to the goals. The resulting work for the teacher will be to plan themes like “The Shop” which will help the children develop an understanding of the particular content. After having found the children’s existing conceptions from earlier experiences and knowledge (which could be done through interviews, group discussions, making drawings, dramatic activities, problem solving, playing, etc.), the teacher knows what is left to work on with the children; in other words, the teacher knows to what extent the children’s conceptions differ from those which are aimed at, to see relations. What often happens in this process is that teachers realize that some of the planned content is already known by most children. The next step in the process will be to plan situations, events, experiences, about which the children can reflect. These situations must illustrate the internal structure of the phenomenon as a whole, which, for example, can be done by working with analogies (Doverborg & Pramling, 1988). Children’s reflection is the most important part. If we want to develop children’s understanding of the world around them, they have to think! The approach is based neither on concrete manipulation with objects nor on theoretical notions mediated by the teacher. Instead, the approach is
Learning
About
“The
Shop”
165
based on children’s conceptions of the phenomenon worked on, thus they experience something other than concrete acts or the subject matter. For example, as we have seen, the teaching begins with children’s thinking about the shop and the aspects the teacher wants them to learn about. Learning here means to change the child’s way of thinking from one level to a more advanced level (Pramling, 1983). By using children’s lived experiences teaching has a greater potential. But in order to work with a starting point in children’s experiences, it is not enough for the teacher to know in an objective way what experiences the child has had; it would not help the teacher at all to know that the child goes shopping with his or her mother every week or that a child lives next to a shop when she plans the theme. But finding out what influence these experiences have had on the child’s way of thinking about the theme should help. To get this information, how these children think about the phenomena dealt with, the interview technique is very valuable (Doverberg & Pramling, 1985; Piaget, 1975). Tools for children in this approach to learning are: (a) that children learn from each other, which means that focus has to be on differences among children and not similarities; (b) that the teacher has to become familiar with children’s conceptions and use them as content; (c)that children can be engaged in activities and situations which influence them. The conclusion that teachers might draw from the study and approach described here is that there is no simple methodology that can be used in every situation and for all kinds of content. It is more a question of how the teacher relates to the children. Her goals must be to work on how children relate themselves to different phenona in the world. Whatever the teacher wants the child to conceptualize, it is the child’s “what” questions and “how” questions about the phenomenon that have to be dealt with. The teacher then has to create everyday situations-for instance, play, drama, arts and crafts, problem solving-around which children can think and reflect. It is not the information children get or children’s play as such that helps children to develop their conceptions, but rather it is the reflection on different content and context. To use children’s conceptions means to bring to their attention the differences in their drama, arts and crafts, problem solving, and so forth in terms of how they think. This means that the teacher changes focus for children from thinking about a content to how they themselves and others think about their own thinking about a particular theme. This means that there is no simple strategy to be used by teachers, because the kinds of situations to create and the questions to pose to children all depend on the content, the phenomena about which children’s ideas are to be developed. The teacher’s focus must be on how children discern or apprehend these phenomena.
Pramling
166 REFERENCES
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children.
New
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