Theories of Childhood, Second Edition (Carol Garhart Mooney)

The teacher who most affected me in my undergraduate years made a similar comment to Mead’s in his existential philosophy course. “This course,” he was known to say, “attracts those who want a podium. If you have something to say . . . it best be said in a way that my great-aunt Gertrude, who has only a third-grade education, can read it and understand it.” A good rule of thumb for sharing important information is to use simple, direct language.

Raising healthy children is a labor-intensive operation. Contrary to the news from the broader culture, most of what children need, money cannot buy. Children need time and space, attention, affection, guidance, and conversation. They need sheltered places where they can be safe as they learn what they need to know to survive. —Mary Pipher

We spend less time with family and friends. The debates of the 1980s over quality time versus quantity time have disappeared. Today, for many, it is a stretch to find any time together!

Anthropologist and teacher Margaret Mead said in Redbook magazine in 1963, “If one cannot state a matter clearly enough so that an intelligent twelve-year-old can understand it, one should remain within the cloistered walls of the University and laboratory until one gets a better grasp of one’s subject matter.”

“When I hire those college students, they are full of theory but don’t know what to do in the classroom. I’d rather hire someone with no college but a true enjoyment of young children.”

We need teachers who have both a true enjoyment of children and a true understanding of how they grow and learn. It seems that we have not been successful at presenting child development as a usable tool for working with young children more effectively. Perhaps we need to take a different approach to introducing theory and its practice to the beginning student or teacher.

Dewey’s Laboratory School established the University of Chicago as the center of thought on progressive education, the movement toward more democratic and child-centered education. Progressive education was a reaction to the rigid, more formal style of traditional education during the nineteenth century. It was considered genius by many and criticized as too radical by others. Dewey’s involvement with the lab school was relatively short-lived but created, in a few years, a wealth of educational research and theory that continues to drive many of our best practices today.

In 1899 John Dewey gave a talk to the parents of children in his school. The parents were worried about the changing times. On the edge of the industrial age, these parents of one hundred years ago were old enough to remember the “agricultural era” in the United States. They remembered when children were educated at home by watching their parents do meaningful work. They thought the new generation lacked character and values. Dewey agreed with parents that the home was no longer educating children in the way it had in the past, but he gave them good counsel. “We cannot overlook the factors of discipline and of character building involved . . . but it is useless to bemoan the departure of the good old days of children’s modesty, reverence, and implicit obedience, if we expect merely by bemoaning and by exhortation to bring them back” (Dewey 1899, 19, 21).

What Dewey was trying to get his parent group to understand was that change brings new problems but also new opportunities. He urged parents to think of new ways they could all find to help children learn to be socially responsible people, without trying to cling to times gone by.

Dewey played a central role in the development of—and is most associated with—the progressive education movement in the United States. In Europe, Maria Montessori and Jean Piaget were spreading the same message. These early theorists all agreed that children learn from doing and that education should involve real-life material and experiences and should encourage experimentation and independent thinking. These ideas, now quite common, were considered revolutionary in Dewey’s day.

“The child’s own instincts and powers furnish the material and give the starting-point for all education” (6). According to Dewey, children’s interests form the basis for curriculum planning. He believed that the interests and background of each child and group must be considered when teachers plan learning experiences.

“I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living” (8). Dewey believed that education is part of life. He believed that as long as people are alive, they are learning, and education should address what the person needs to know at the time, not prepare them for the future. Dewey thought that curriculum should grow out of real home, work, and other life situations.

Dewey was concerned that many teachers of his time were claiming to be part of progressive education merely because they departed from more traditional approaches. He recognized the danger in moving away from one direction without clearly understanding the new direction one wanted to follow. He also thought this was a very common pattern among educators. He believed there were teachers who were drawn to progressive education because they thought it would be easier. He knew that some teachers used the new ideas as justification for improvising or allowing children to choose their experiences, uninhibited by teacher planning or direction. Dewey believed that the path to quality education is to know the children well, to build their experiences on past learning, to be organized, and to plan well. He also believed that the demands of this new method make observing, documenting, and keeping records of classroom events much more important than when traditional methods are used.

Dewey avoided the either/or discussions so common to educational philosophy. He believed that the real issue is not a matter of new versus old approaches to education but rather what conditions make any experience worthy of being called “educational.” Dewey insisted that education and experience are related but not equal, and that some experiences are not educational at all. He called these mis-educative experiences. Dewey believed that an activity is not a learning activity if it lacks purpose and organization. He criticized the more traditional formal teaching environments of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in which children learned information by rote and spent days reciting facts out of context.

Dewey thought that rather than saying, “The children will enjoy this,” teachers need to ask the following questions when they plan activities for children:          How does this expand on what these children already know?          How will this activity help this child grow?          What skills are being developed?          How will this activity help these children know more about their world?          How does this activity prepare these children to live more fully? From Dewey’s perspective, an experience can only be called educational if it meets these criteria:          It is based on the children’s interests and grows out of their existing knowledge and experience.          It supports the children’s development.          It helps the children develop new skills.          It adds to the children’s understanding of their world.          It prepares the children to live more fully. How can early childhood teachers be guided by Dewey’s criteria for educational experiences? Do not accept “It’s fun” as a justification for curriculum, but ask how an activity will support children’s development and learning. Again, it is not enough for an activity to be “hands on”; it must be “minds on” as well. And

This story is an example of what Dewey would call an educational experience. The teacher observed and asked questions to find out what the children already knew. She set up experiences for them to discover things they didn’t already know. She used her knowledge of child development to plan curriculum that was age appropriate, and she documented the children’s learning to support her understanding of their thinking. The success of the project is measured by the fact that it led into the next area of study. The children were left curious, wanting more, and confident in their ability to dive in and satisfy their curiosity.

John Dewey supported parents at a time when the United States was transitioning from an agricultural to an industrial age. Had someone mentioned “going green” to Dewey, he would have thought we were referencing learning activities for children about color. But as we ponder his important theory about shaping society as we teach young children, we can apply this to the fact that we are transitioning again as a culture. The importance of teaching young children to care for the planet is not only interesting and relevant to the twenty-first century but also absolutely essential to our survival.

Dalton, Thomas C. 2002. Becoming John Dewey: Dilemmas of a Philosopher and Naturalist. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Montessori created a school environment to make up for the impoverished conditions of many of the children’s homes. She determined that to be comfortable, young children need furnishings their own size and tools that fit their small hands. Because such things were not available at the time, Montessori made many of her own materials. She learned from her students. She wrote about her observations and theories and developed an international reputation for her work. By 1913 there were almost one hundred schools in the United States following Montessori’s methods.

She believed children learn best through sensory experiences. She thought that the teacher has a responsibility to provide wonderful sights, textures, sounds, and smells for children. She also believed that part of sensory experience for children is having tools and utensils that fit their small hands and tables and chairs that match their small bodies. Beautiful, orderly, child-sized environments and sensory play are part of Montessori’s legacy.

Montessori understood that it is sometimes much easier to do something for children than it is to take the time and energy to teach them to do it for themselves. But she also believed that for children to grow and develop skills, the adults in their lives need to make opportunities for children to do things for themselves. Fostering independence is part of Montessori’s legacy. Montessori believed that children learn best by doing and through repetition. She thought they do things over and over to make an experience their own, as well as to develop skills. Montessori urged teachers not to interfere with the child’s patterns and pace of learning. She thought it is the teacher’s job to prepare the environment, provide appropriate materials, and then step back and allow the children the time and space to experiment. Open-ended scheduling, with large blocks of time for free work and play, is part of Montessori’s legacy.

Montessori teachers, on the other hand, are trained to teach little and observe much. Teachers, of course, must plan activities and have materials on hand to support the children’s interests, as suggested by Dewey’s ideas in chapter 1. However, it is important to recognize the difference between the kind of aimless activity Dewey spoke out against and purposeful, self-directed activity. When children are engaged in serious work and learning, they are not as likely to be disruptive. Montessori’s theory about young children tells teachers not to pull children away from projects that interest them unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Since Montessori trained as a doctor, she brought the skills of a scientist to the classroom. When she turned her energies toward the education of young children, it seemed only natural to use her scientific skills. She believed that if you are going to teach, you need to know all you can about those you hope to educate. She believed that the way to get to know children is to watch them. Careful observation, to Montessori, is the key to determining what the children are interested in or need to learn. She believed every child could learn. She was convinced that if children are not learning, adults are not listening carefully enough or watching closely enough. Careful observation is part of her legacy. Take time for careful observation and reflection, and use these observations to guide your environment and curriculum planning.

It is clear that Montessori had strong feelings about the tendency of adults to undermine children’s competence by doing too much for them. She used the word serving in her discussions and cautioned teachers that children remain incompetent if adults do for them what they are capable of doing themselves. Today we see a frightening return to this kind of thinking. Teachers frequently complain to me of parents who carry their five-year-olds because they are in a hurry.

she describes the parents who are serving their children in a way that is detrimental to their children’s growth and development. Another contemporary writer, Diana West, goes so far as to warn that this tendency is a threat to western civilization. Her book The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization is a “must read” for today’s concerned parents and teachers. She describes the ways in which many thirty-year-olds in the United States are still functional adolescents. It is a frightening trend.

Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development, which is called the Eight Ages of Man, covers the entire life span of a human being. It is Erikson’s idea that there is a task that must be accomplished at each stage of development. Successful resolution of each stage affects the next stage. As people pass through each stage, they form personality strengths or weaknesses based on their development during that stage. Describing this, Erikson gave us the term identity crisis. He considered it inevitable that young people experience conflict as they grow and change into adults.

He believed it was always possible to go back and renegotiate issues from a previous stage of development. He was convinced that the tasks of each stage continue to present themselves at times of crisis in love and work throughout our lives. Though it is true that basic trust and independence are formed early and affect later actions and attributes, it is also true that people can choose to work toward a better resolution of any of these developmental tasks at any time throughout their lives. Erikson felt that the early childhood years were critical in children’s development of trust, autonomy, and initiative, but he did not believe all was lost if children experienced difficulties in the first three stages. We can refer to these three stages as “windows of opportunity,” or developmental timetables. They signify when the brain is most fertile for taking in specific types of learning.

Erikson’s first stage of psychosocial development, which takes place during the first year of life, is trust versus mistrust. Babies’ task during this time is to develop a sense of trust in themselves, in other people, and in the world around them. Erikson wrote about trust as having two parts, external—belief that significant adults will be present to meet the baby’s needs—and internal—belief in her own power to effect change and cope with a variety of circumstances. Babies who successfully adapt during this first stage approach their second year of life with a sure sense that the world is a good place to be.

This engaging of adults is part of what we call attachment. It is a special bond between babies and the significant adults in their lives. When a securely attached baby is in the presence of these adults, her sense of security and comfort is heightened. The baby uses the adults as a safe place from which to go out and explore the world. When she encounters a threat of any kind, such as unusual sights, sounds, or situations, she needs to be able to return quickly to the arms of a trusted adult for comfort and reassurance. When babies develop a strong sense of trust during their first year, they become attached to the important people in their lives.

Erikson believed that two actions on the part of parents and teachers help babies develop this basic sense of trust: holding babies close and having warm physical contact with them when they are being fed and responding right away to their distress when they cry or fuss. Both of these actions are critical teaching skills for infant care providers.

In every child development course I’ve ever taught, someone has asked about “spoiling” children by responding to them when they cry. Once an infant teacher rolled her eyes at me as she walked with a screaming baby and said, “This child is just too attached to her parents! I’m trying to teach her that we can’t just come running every time she cries!” If teachers provide care based on Erikson’s theories, they accept that babies have few coping skills and that it is therefore up to adults to keep them comfortable. Programs whose staff understand infant development have policies of quickly responding to babies’ tears. In the United States, though, the notion persists that adults “spoil” babies by giving them the attention they cry for.

Current studies (Young-Eisendrath 2008) as well as Montessori’s original work on developing independence and Magda Gerber’s 1997 (among her other) work on competence have all stressed the importance of learning to cope. Babies whose needs are consistently met quickly can learn to cope with small amounts of distress. Parents and teachers need the confidence to let them try to cope in small doses. It’s a matter of balance.

Erikson’s theory says that babies will develop the strongest sense of security if they know that adults will come running when they cry. Then, when they are a little older, they will be able to cope with delayed gratification of their needs. By meeting their needs quickly and consistently throughout their first year of life, adults are doing the opposite of spoiling. With consistent, responsive care, they are laying the foundation that will allow babies to grow into strong, confident toddlers ready to assert their independence.

Erikson’s theory of infant development assures teachers and parents that it is impossible for babies under a year of age to be “too attached” to the special adults in their lives. The teacher in the story above who wanted to teach the baby that adults can’t always be there was missing the central point of providing quality care to infants. Attachment is what developing a sense of trust is all about. It is the teacher’s job to provide as much stability of care as possible.

Like the old adage “It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” Erikson’s theory confirms that strong relationships with a few significant adults in the first year of life are important, even if the babies have to separate later from the people to whom they are attached. The fact that separation from those special adults causes distress for babies and demands the comfort of others is not a good reason, according to Erikson, to try to prevent this attachment. Attachment is essential, even if it is not permanent, and the process of mourning for a special adult and being comforted by other reliable adults is another indication to babies that their needs will be met.

Erikson’s second stage of psychosocial development, which takes place during the second and third year of life, is autonomy versus shame and doubt. The developmental task of this stage is to acquire a sense of autonomy (independence) without suffering extremes of shame and doubt. Children who successfully adapt during this stage of development will acquire a strong sense of self. They will be able to separate confidently, for limited periods of time, from parents and primary caregivers. They will demand that they do things for themselves whenever possible.

Erikson believed that toddlers struggle to achieve balance between appropriate holding on and letting go. Areas for these struggles include sharing with friends, relationships with parents and primary caregivers, independent toileting, and making choices. Erikson thought that one of the main barriers for toddlers in accomplishing this task is overcontrolling behavior from adults who thwart and resist the toddlers’ growing demands for independence. When adults are unable to adjust to a child’s swinging between needs for dependence and independence at this stage, they often shame the child for behavior that is actually developmentally appropriate. For children, the effects of this shaming response are twofold. In the short term, the toddler becomes even more frustrated and resistive. In the long term, the child models the adult behavior, becoming controlling and unyielding herself. In order to develop a strong sense of independence, toddlers need to have reasonable opportunities for choice and control.

At the same time, they need consistent, firm, reassuring limits set by caring adults.

According to Erikson, toddlers need to experience the independence of being able to make some choices for themselves. Toddler programs can support their independence by arranging for self-selection of activities and materials. Rooms should include low shelves for equipment where toddlers can make their choices without help from others. There should be duplicates or multiple copies of favorite toys and books since sharing is not yet a well-developed skill. This makes life easier for teachers and happier for toddlers since it reduces territorial toddler conflict.

Most two-year-olds aren’t ready for “What would you like for lunch today?” But choosing between a cheese sandwich and a peanut butter sandwich offers just the right challenge. Looking at a drawer full of clothing might reduce a toddler to tears or a tantrum because the choices are so overwhelming. Choosing between a red shirt and a yellow shirt offers a toddler enough independence to feel she has control over her life.

Many teachers make the mistake of offering toddlers a choice when there really isn’t one. It’s very confusing for children who are trying to learn how much control they really have to be asked a rhetorical question. Adults and school-age children can understand that “Would you like to do the dishes?” is a request or the polite phrasing of an expectation. Toddlers cannot distinguish between this kind of question and a real choice. For this reason, teachers are sometimes surprised when they ask, “Would you like to go out to play now?” and the child who thought she had a choice wails at being thrust into her jacket against her will. To offer children in this stage the control they need, try phrasing necessary changes in a way that offers a choice of how (not whether) the task will be accomplished. For example, state, “We are going out now. Would you like me to help you put on your jacket, or do you want to do it yourself?” This makes it clear that the doing (going out, coming in, taking a nap, and so on) is not a choice. The choice is whether the child gets ready by himself or receives some adult help.

The third and last stage of Erikson’s theory that addresses the early childhood years is initiative versus guilt. Most four-and five-year-olds are at this stage, which is therefore a key one for preschool and kindergarten teachers to know about. The developmental task of this stage is to acquire a sense of purpose. Erikson describes children of this age as energetic and ready to learn. Typically developing children will forget failures more quickly by four or five. They are more willing to listen and learn from teachers, parents, and other children. At this stage children are growing in ways that make them much more actively focused and less defiant. Children who have negotiated their second stage successfully have established their autonomy, so they act less for the sake of individual control and more to get things done. Children who successfully accomplish the developmental tasks of this stage will emerge confident and competent. They will believe that they can plan and complete a task independently. They will be able to cope with and learn from mistakes without feeling guilty for things that don’t go as planned.

To support children’s development of initiative in the third stage, Erikson says that teachers can          encourage children to be as independent as possible;          focus on gains as children practice new skills, not on the mistakes they make along the way;          set expectations that are in line with children’s individual abilities; and          focus curriculum on real things and on doing.

Although Piaget is frequently referred to as a psychologist, he was really an epistemologist (someone who studies the nature and beginning of knowledge). It is this piece of his work that has made Piaget a major contributor to the knowledge base of educational psychology. While others asked what children know or when they know it, Piaget asked how children arrive at what they know.

Piaget’s work has been a primary influence in preschool programs in the United States since the 1970s. The volumes of Piaget’s work provide an in-depth view of how children create knowledge. Unfortunately, much of his work is difficult to read and can be intimidating to busy teachers. In addition, Piaget’s work has been criticized in recent years for limitations that have been challenged by current research. Specifically, many teachers think he focused too much on thought processes and not enough on children’s feelings and social relationships with teachers and peers. Many also believe his use of unfamiliar terminology confuses the reader. In addition, because much of his observation was done on his own three children, critics say the work is not scientific research.

Nonetheless, Piaget’s stages of cognitive development have created our overall view of how children think in their early years, just as Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development have helped us understand how children develop emotionally.

While others of his time argued that learning is either intrinsic (coming from the child) or extrinsic (imposed by the environment or taught by adults), Piaget thought that neither position by itself explains learning. Rather, he thought that children’s interactions with their environment are what create learning. He claimed that children construct their own knowledge by giving meaning to the people, places, and things in their world. He was fond of the expression “construction is superior to instruction” (Hendrick 1992, 476). By this he meant that children learn best when they are actually doing the work themselves and creating their own understanding of what’s going on instead of being given explanations by adults. He was a student of Montessori’s work and built on her idea that meaningful work is important to children’s cognitive development. Like Montessori, Piaget believed children needed every possible opportunity to do things for themselves. For example, children might be interested in how things grow. If a teacher reads them a finely illustrated book on how things grow, this instruction will increase the children’s knowledge base. But if the children have the opportunity to actually plant a garden at school, the process of digging, watering, observing, and actually experiencing growing things will help them to construct a knowledge of growing things that they cannot ever achieve merely by being read to and looking at pictures.

Piaget believed that children all pass through the same stages when developing their thinking skills. The age at which children accomplish these stages of development can vary. Because of this variation, charts outlining Piaget’s stages may also differ slightly.

Piaget believed that children’s intellectual growth is based partly on physical development. He also believed that it is affected by children’s interactions with the environment. He did not believe that teachers can “teach” young children to understand a concept. He was certain that children build their own understanding of the world by the things they do.

Piaget believed that in the beginning, babies’ reactions to the world are purely reflexive (without thought). He said that intelligence began when the reactions became purposeful. For example, when we watch an infant lying below a crib gym, we notice that initially he shows a startled response if his hand or foot hits a bell or rattle, but that, over time, he hits the bell on purpose. This first stage of cognitive development Piaget calls the sensorimotor stage. During this time the baby relies on his senses and physical activity to learn about the world. Toward the end of this first stage, Piaget says, object permanence occurs. Object permanence means that the baby has come to realize that something exists even when he can’t see it. This is a very important development for children. Before achieving this milestone, babies only think about what is in their view at the time. For example, if we carefully watch babies, we see that before eight or nine months they drop things from the high chair tray without making a fuss. For a young baby, if things are out of sight, they are literally out of mind. From the baby’s point of view, the things no longer exist. Then suddenly, at eight or nine or ten months, when that spoon drops from the tray, the baby leans over pointing and fussing and wanting it back. Often parents and providers are surprised and dismayed when they pick it up and hand it to a smiling baby who tosses it right back down again. This is not the beginning of premeditated attempts to drive adults crazy. This is the first burst of the joy of learning! This is object permanence. This is also the age at which we see separation anxiety in children. They cry when their parents leave them at child care or when their primary caregiver is not present. Now the baby understands that when his parent or provider is not in sight, that person is somewhere else. The caregiver hasn’t just ceased to exist. So the baby makes attempts to bring that important “other” back into view—by crying. To support cognitive development in children under two, Piaget’s theory tells teachers to keep babies safe but interested and to respond reassuringly to separation anxiety.

According to Piaget, after the sensorimotor stage, children’s cognitive development enters the preoperational stage, which extends from the second year of life through age seven or eight. The preoperational stage is when children’s thinking differs most from adult thought patterns. Piaget said that during the preoperational stage, children are egocentric (think of everything only as it relates to them), can focus on only one characteristic of a thing or a person at a time (for example, take words at their exact meaning), gather information from what they experience rather than from what they are told, and overgeneralize from their experience.

Piaget believed that in the preoperational stage, children form ideas from their direct experiences in life. This is why telling children something is less effective than finding a way to help them think their own way through a problem. For example, if a child sees birds fly away when a dog barks, she may decide that barking dogs are the cause of birds’ flight. Even though this is not an accurate idea, the child will be perfectly comfortable with her own reasoning despite any attempt to tell her otherwise. It is only after she has gathered more experience on her own—seeing birds take flight when no dog is around—that she will go through a mental process that challenges her worldview. Piaget calls this process disequilibrium. The child has to change her view and adapt it to her new information. Piaget calls the process of adapting one’s understanding on the basis of new information accommodation. Accommodation returns the child to a more comfortable balanced state that Piaget calls equilibrium.

Because preoperational children tend to believe what they see, they do not yet have a firm grasp of qualities belonging to the objects in their world. For example, they confuse “heavy” with “large.” Due to inexperience, most young children would initially be surprised that a beach ball is lighter than a baseball. Unable to separate height from age, preoperational children will insist that the tallest person is the oldest. Piaget did a classic experiment involving a conservation task to demonstrate this kind of thinking in children. He put two sets of coins on a table in two lines. Both sets had the same small number of coins, but the coins in one line were spread farther apart. When asked which line had more coins in it, preoperational children always said the line in which the coins were spread farther apart had more. They held to this belief even when the coins from the two lines were matched up to show that for each coin from the long line, there was a coin from the short line. Conservation tasks such as this one involving conservation of number show whether a child has grasped the concept that certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same, even though their outward appearance changes. Because children at this stage are dependent on their own experience, they tend to make incorrect generalizations. They base their general belief about something on a single experience, which may cause a false conclusion. One example is the girl above who believed that a dog’s barking made birds fly because she had seen birds flying when a dog barked.

Preoperational children also tend to focus on one attribute of an object or person at a time. It is hard for them to think of their mother as their grandma’s daughter, for instance. This single-focus thinking is revealed in children’s conversations, if adults know how to listen for it. For example, a Head Start teacher tells the story of a little girl in her class whose mom has had a new baby. The teacher shows the children pictures of babies in books. The children discuss how wrinkly and funny-looking babies are when they are born. The teacher tells the children that she heard one boy tell his mother that she should iron the baby. None of the children laugh at this or show any alarm. No one says, “Oh, that is awful. That would hurt the baby.”

Clearly, the children do not make the connection that an iron might be a good tool to use on clothes or curly hair but not on babies. These children are not cruel or limited, but they are incapable of holding several qualities of an object or situation in their minds simultaneously.

They are focusing on one aspect of the baby—the baby has wrinkles, and one aspect of the iron—the iron is used to get wrinkles out. The children do not naturally consider at the same time that the iron is hot, hot enough to hurt, and that a baby has skin like theirs that could be burned.

Piaget’s theory tells us that it will be more effective to ask questions that help children think through the problem on their own than to tell them flat out, “An iron would hurt the baby.” If they construct that knowledge for themselves by puzzling through the teacher’s questions, they are more apt to take it in than if the teacher gives it to them.

Open-ended activities do not have a predetermined result or product. For example, when a teacher plans a science experiment to which she already knows the answer, the experiment is not open-ended. However, when children plant seeds and chart the days until the shoot breaks through the earth, and then measure the seedling every day and keep a graph of how it grows, the project is open-ended. Neither the adult nor the child knows what the result will be. Similarly, open-ended questions do not have a predetermined answer. “What color is your shirt?” is a closed question. There is (probably) only one right answer, and the teacher knows what it is. “How do you think that works?” is an open-ended question. The teacher is asking the child for his reasoning and doesn’t already know the answer.

When children enter Piaget’s stage of concrete operations at about age seven, many changes in their thought patterns are visible. At this age (usually from about seven through eleven or twelve) children possess the characteristic of reversibility, which allows them to reverse the direction of their thought. For example, a child at this stage can retrace her steps on the school yard looking for a forgotten lunch box. Children no longer count on their fingers because they are beginning to be able to think abstractly. They begin to notice differences in classes of objects. For instance, at four every dog is a “doggie,” but at eight or nine there are differences between a collie and a poodle. The concrete-operational child can hold several qualities in mind, knowing that a boat is large, red, and a sailboat. She knows and really understands that her mother is also the daughter of her grandmother. With this new flexibility of thought, children can add, subtract, and multiply “in their heads.”

The final stage Piaget outlined is formal operations. This stage begins around age eleven or twelve and is marked by the ability to think logically and in hypothetical terms. According to Piaget, once this stage is reached, young people can wrestle with such questions as “Is it wrong to steal food for your starving children?” or “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”

More recently, many early childhood educators in the United States and other countries have turned their attention to the preschools in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Discussion of the educational theories implemented there has brought about a new focus on Vygotsky’s work. Vygotsky’s sociocultural perspective, for example, provides a theoretical basis for the Reggio-inspired approach to early childhood education.

For years, early educators, schooled in Piaget’s theories, viewed children’s knowledge as being constructed from personal experiences. Although Vygotsky also believed this, he thought that personal and social experience cannot be separated. The world children inhabit is shaped by their families, communities, socioeconomic status, education, and culture. Their understanding of this world comes, in part, from the values and beliefs of the adults and other children in their lives.

Like Piaget, Vygotsky believed that much learning takes place when children play. He believed that language and development build on each other. When children play, they constantly use language. They determine the conditions of the make-believe. They discuss roles and objects and directions. They correct each other. They learn about situations and ideas not yet tried. Vygotsky believed that this interaction contributes to children’s construction of knowledge—to their learning.

One of the most important concepts of Vygotsky’s theory is that of the zone of proximal development, or ZPD. Vygotsky defined this as the distance between the most difficult task a child can do alone and the most difficult task a child can do with help. He believed that a child on the edge of learning a new concept can benefit from the interaction with a teacher or a classmate.

Vygotsky referred to the assistance a teacher or peer offers a child as scaffolding. A house painter working on a house uses a scaffold to reach parts of the house that would otherwise be out of reach. In the same way, adults and peers can help a child “reach” a new concept or skill by giving supporting information. Vygotsky believed this could be done not only by the teacher but also by the child’s peers who already possess the desired skill. Vygotsky believed that in order to scaffold well for children, teachers need to be keen observers.

Curriculum planning is perhaps the area most affected by Vygotsky’s theory. Unlike Piaget, who thought children’s cognitive learning was more internal than interactive, Vygotsky believed that interaction had a huge impact on cognitive development. Until Vygotsky’s work became better known in the United States, educators here who understood Piaget’s theory hesitated to “push” children. Piaget believed that stages of cognitive development are tied to physical development. He thought that children at a particular stage of development are incapable of the reasoning that they will grow into at the next stage. This led teachers to plan curriculum that supported children at their current level of expected development without stretching their developmental limits. Vygotsky, on the other hand, showed that children’s cognitive development is affected not only by their physical development but also by their social surroundings and interactions. His idea of developmental readiness is more flexible than Piaget’s because it encompasses the skills or ideas that children have not yet come to on their own but which they can acquire from the example of peers or adults. This theory encourages teachers to plan curriculum that extends children’s knowledge and to scaffold their learning by putting them in situations where their competence is stretched.

There is growing evidence today that suggests that a preschool-age child’s ability to apply cognitive control, also called executive function, is a better predictor of later school success than any academic learning acquired during the preschool years. Executive function encompasses self-regulation skills, including social skills, self-discipline, and mental flexibility. Children who lack these skills, or mental tools, do not know how to learn in a deliberate manner—they are “unable to focus their minds on purpose, and consequently their learning is less effective and efficient” (Bodrova and Leong 2007, 5).

In addition, research shows that children develop the foundational skills for self-regulation in the first five years of life. These findings have many implications for early childhood education and highlight the important role teachers play in helping young children develop the critical skills associated with executive function. Two of Vygotsky’s concepts are thought to be especially helpful in fostering self-regulation skills among young children: the zone of proximal development and scaffolding. Because self-regulation skills develop over time, it is important that teachers keep in mind each child’s zone of proximal development and offer learning experiences that are in keeping with what each child is ready to learn (scaffolding), including experiences the child can practice with teachers and able peers. Teaching techniques that foster self-regulation skills include modeling appropriate behavior and providing hints and cues about how and when children should regulate their behavior. Only after a child has consistently demonstrated self-regulation skills on his or her own, or has internalized those skills, should teachers begin withdrawing support.

While much is known about the positive effects of make-believe play on children’s social, early literacy, and early mathematical development, research has shown that make-believe play also has positive effects on the development of self-regulation skills in young children (Singer, Golinkoff, and Hirsh-Pasek 2006). Inherent in make-believe play is the zone of proximal development, because it is during this type of social play that children frequently behave beyond their years and above their everyday behavior. As children participate in make-believe play, they are practicing regulating behavior naturally—they regulate other children by telling them what to do; they regulate themselves by staying in their roles and trying not to do anything that might interrupt the flow of the play; and they are regulated by other children when they agree to roles and rules that may not be the ones they had in mind.

Vygotsky, Lev. 1978. Mind in Society. Edited by Michael Cole et al. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.