This means that gestures or “hand work” have an important role in teaching and learning. A recent study asked: Is non-verbal communication used in similar ways in culturally different communities?

The study examined the way children and their parents in two cultures – a Native American culture and a non-Native American culture – combine speech and gesture.

The Menominee children spoke more than their non-Native American counterparts.

Researchers watched how 4-year-olds used gesture and speech when playing with their mother or father. The pairs (17 child-mother pairs and 4 child-father pairs) were from the Menominee community in Wisconsin (one of 574 federally recognized Native Nations in the United States). The 4,000-5,000 Menominee people live on much-reduced ancestral lands in northeastern Wisconsin. The other 18 child-parent pairs (3 fathers, 15 mothers) in the study were from a non-Native American community in Chicago.

In the study, the pairs played with a forest diorama, consisting of both fixed landscape items and moveable trees and animals. This toy was developed by a collaboration between researchers and Menominee community members. The Menominee reservation is highly forested; hunting and fishing are important activities in the community.

The researchers observed videos of the pairs’ play and coded speech, gestures, and actions. (Actions could be placing an animal into the diorama, while gestures were hand signals and did not involve picking up anything.) Three categories of play were identified: verbal utterances on their own, gestures/actions on their own, and verbal utterances combined with a gesture or action. The researchers also measured how much the child and parent spoke – the number of utterances per minute.

The Menominee children spoke more than their non-Native American counterparts – 11.6 utterances per minute compared to 9.8. There is a widespread idea that Native American children are quieter, but this is clearly not the case when they are feeling secure with a parent and playing with something with which they identify.

For children in both communities, about 70% of all verbal utterances were accompanied by a gesture or an action. Gestures were more likely than actions to be accompanied by speech, to the same extent in both communities. Parents combined speech and gesture/action less than their children: About 45% of utterances of the Menominee parents and 40% of non-Native American parents were accompanied by actions or gestures.

The study provides a more culturally inclusive foundation for building on the cultural and community strengths of children in their education. It also highlights the important role of hand work in teaching and learning.

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Yet fear is often conceived of as an emotion to be avoided and a feeling that exists to keep humans and other animals away from experiences that could be dangerous. Often, people think children should experience this emotion as rarely as possible. How then do we explain the paradox of horror? How do we explain why we are drawn to fear and why we enjoy certain forms of such experiences, even when we are children?

In our Recreational Fear Lab in Denmark, we have conducted research that aims to answer these questions. In our work, we also explored whether carefully regulated scaring of young children may be happening in preschool and child care settings, sometimes even before children have learned to walk.

‘There seems to be a sweet spot when it comes to recreational fear … where delight is related to a manageable amount of fearful surprise that a person can deal with and ultimately learn from.’

In our study, we found that Danish nurseries commonly engage in scary activities. A singing game about a sleeping bear ends with all the children roaring “Rrrrrrr” at each other and collapsing into laughter. In another game, a child sits on an adult’s lap as if riding on a horse and then, at the end of the game, the adult pulls his or her legs apart and the child falls through the middle. Again, there are squeals of surprise and laughter.

Getting scariness right for toddlers

In these scary games, the adults are being careful. They do not frighten the children mindlessly. They try to get the level just right – not too much, not too little. And they choose the time for such play carefully – early in the day, when the children are well fed and rested and able to handle it. Even though this process is not part of their formal training, educators are committed to it and when asked, they are eager to discuss it.

The game and the surprise are not always the same. Sometimes, the children hear the story of the “Three Billy Goats Gruff” in which an ogre controls a bridge across which three goats must pass; the story is animated with dolls. Each time a goat tries to cross, the ogre declares in a deep, scary voice, “I’m going to eat you,” and the goat responds, “No, no, you should wait to eat my brother. He’s bigger!” The story ends with the third and largest brother crossing the bridge and beating up the troll.

If the teachers see that children are enjoying this tale, they sometimes take the story to the next level. They might add a bit of theatre, dressing up and acting out the scene on the bridge to make it a bit scarier, a little more real. But they do this only if they feel the children are ready for an added dose of scariness.

Learning to handle scares is key to brain development

Most of these games share a common feature – a predictable pattern of suspense. They are trying to teach children that, in a moment, they are going to be given a scare. The children are learning to anticipate – and manage – a soft jump in their fear, similar to what they may encounter at points in their lives.

Many Danish nursery and preschool teachers see it almost as an obligation to expose children to these types of experiences because children need to learn to deal with the unexpected and the scary. It is a way to counteract “helicopter parenting” or what Danes call “curling culture,” in which parents sometimes anticipate and sweep away difficulties in their children’s lives, leaving them possibly less able to deal with future problems by themselves.

We believe that children have fun and feel good during these scary experiences because, in the process, they are making something unpredictable more predictable. This exercise fits some of the main cognitive principles about the brain, which works like an advanced prediction machine, constantly trying to predict or guess what the future will bring (see Play in Predictive Minds: A Cognitive Theory of Play).

How to spot the right level of scariness

In general, play appears to be a deliberate quest for measured doses of unpredictability. When we play, we explore the borderlands of our sphere of knowledge. Totally unpredictable play is not much fun. It can feel chaotic. And predictable play is not fun either – it can be boring. The trick is finding the sweet spot, the perfect path through our personal borderlands.

‘A moderate scare can be good because it gives us an opportunity to learn how our bodies respond in certain ways to certain experiences.’

This theory of play applies to scary experiences, too, when they happen at the right level for children and are playful. Children often give signals when they are at their sweet spot – a shriek of laughter and surprise, signs that they are having fun, not being traumatized. Parents should be guided by signals that their child is handling the experience well, learning, and figuring out how to predict what will happen next.

Such sweet-spot moments have also been identified in reports of scary experiences by older children and adults. They have even been observed physiologically. We conducted a study of adults and children over age 12 who visited a haunted attraction. They completed questionnaires about how they experienced various moments and we mapped those answers against variations in their heart rates, which were monitored during the frightening experience.

The physiology of scary play

We found that enjoyment in the haunted attraction was related to just-right fluctuations in participants’ heart rate. In other words, “fun” coincided with moderate whoops and deviations in the heart’s fluctuations. In contrast, participants who reported that they did not enjoy the scary experiences either had larger variations in their heart rates, suggesting an overwhelming experience, or showed no change in heart rate, suggesting that they may have disassociated from or become bored by the experience.

Photo: Shutterstock.

We should not be surprised that joy springs from such an apparently negative emotion as fear. Nearly 300 years ago, David Hume, the Scottish philosopher, observed in his essay “Of Tragedy” that there is “an unaccountable pleasure, which the spectators of a well written tragedy receive from sorrow, terror . . . and other passions, which are in themselves disagreeable and uneasy. The more they are touched and affected, the more are they delighted with the spectacle.”

Paul Bloom, the esteemed Yale psychologist who is now a professor at Toronto University, underscores Hume’s observations and was among the first to suggest that many enjoyable experiences are also typically characterized by hitting a sweet spot. For example, a hug should be neither too hard nor too soft, and coffee should be neither too hot nor too cold. Similarly, there seems to be a sweet spot when it comes to recreational fear – those occasions when individuals derive pleasure out of fear – where delight is related to a manageable amount of fearful surprise that a person can deal with and ultimately learn from.

Overall, this is reasonable. It makes sense that a successful organism, such as a human being, should have a reward mechanism associated with learning so it can adapt to more circumstances and enhance its capacities to survive and thrive.

Bodily experience of playful fear

The haunted attraction experiment may highlight how we sometimes learn not only about phenomena outside of ourselves, but also about our own physiological responses. A moderate scare can be good because it gives us an opportunity to learn how our bodies respond in certain ways to certain experiences. We may then be more prepared to manage those responses in a better way if they happen again. We suspect that this is one reason children – and adults – repeat scary experiences, so they can go through the physiological impact again and learn how to recover more effectively.

‘The children are learning to anticipate – and manage – a soft jump in their fear, similar to what they may encounter at points in their lives.’

Some researchers argue that anxiety is epidemic among young people today not only because we are better at diagnosing it. They suggest that the increase might also be linked to the decline in the incidence of risky play, in part because of urbanization, less outside space for play, a focus on preventing children from getting hurt, and increased technology for play in the home. Taken together, these factors are reducing forms of risky play that are often the very circumstances in which children seek out appropriately scary experiences for themselves. So people today may be less experienced at being scared in a safe way, which may, in turn, contribute to the overall increase in general anxiety.

In summary, it is important not to misunderstand the fun derived from recreational fear. This is not a suggestion that parents hide in the closet and jump out to scare their kids. Rather, it is a reminder to look for those times when children squeal and laugh and shriek with delight. There is a good chance that these are signs that they are learning.

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Research has shown that harsh physical parenting has a negative effect on children’s behavior and potential educational achievements.

Research has consistently shown that children who are physically disciplined by their parents, such as getting hit or slapped, have more externalizing problems (like aggression) and more disruptive behaviors in the classroom. Their academic performance is also lower than that of children who are not physically disciplined. Even in studies that do not focus on physical punishment, children who behave in problematic ways in the classroom tend to do less well academically, in general, than their peers.

However, this research raises the proverbial chicken-and-egg question: Does disruptive behavior in the classroom interfere with the learning process? Or do learning challenges lead children to act out? For example, when children act out in school, they are sometimes separated from other children and removed from the classroom, which may give them  fewer opportunities to learn. Under this scenario, which has been referred to as the adjustment erosion hypothesis, negative behavior comes first, followed by academic challenges. An alternative idea, called the academic incompetence hypothesis, suggests that when children have difficulties learning, they can become disruptive, perhaps out of frustration.

“We found that children who were physically  disciplined by their parents in kindergarten had more externalizing problems in first grade, slower rates of literacy learning from K-8, and ultimately, lower overall literacy skills by eighth grade.”

Many studies lack the data to determine when problems start, how children’s behavior changes over time, or even if these challenges start as a result of disciplining practices at home. To examine these questions, my colleagues and I conducted a study, focusing on children’s literacy as an important indicator of academic performance. Literacy is the foundation for acquiring knowledge, especially as children shift from learning to read to reading to learn.

We analyzed data from a large U.S. sample that tracked children from kindergarten through eighth grade. While controlling for factors that have also been associated with children’s behavior and learning, such as socioeconomic status and parents’ education, we found that children who were physically disciplined more frequently by their parents in kindergarten had more externalizing problems in first grade, slower rates of literacy learning from K-8, and ultimately, lower overall literacy skills by eighth grade when compared to children whose parents did not use physical discipline early on. Our findings  support the adjustment erosion hypothesis and show that parents’ physical discipline practices have long-lasting, cascading effects on children’s behavior and learning.

Why might physical discipline in early childhood lead to children’s problem behavior and lower literacy over time? As children transition into a new educational system, as they do when they start kindergarten, they may be particularly vulnerable to the challenges at home. We know from a number of studies that in times of stress or change, children need support. If parents are sensitive to their children’s needs, and offer a supportive and predictable caregiving environment, children feel comforted, safe, and less stressed.

They also regulate their feelings better, meaning that when a child gets distressed, as all children do, they are better at recovering from their negative feelings. However, if children are parented harshly or inconsistently, they can feel unsettled, and this adds to the stresses they are already experiencing. When some children feel heightened levels of stress, they act out. Moreover, when children are hit by their parents, it signals to them, even unintentionally, that aggression is a way to control others. So harsh discipline in the home may set up children to struggle with getting along in the classroom environment and ultimately, with learning important skills such as reading.

We also know from our research that promoting a positive environment at home should start as early as possible. Early in infancy, when children are so dependent on support, they need a safe and responsive caregiving environment. For example, when babies are very young and cry, they are signaling that something does not feel right. Caregivers need to respond by picking them up and trying to figure out what they need. Babies cannot be spoiled by caregivers responding their needs.

“Promoting a positive environment at home should start as early as possible.”

As children get older, they start to test limits and boundaries. Sometimes they engage in behaviors that could harm themselves or others. Parents can learn strategies that are more authoritative in which they set clear boundaries (e.g., telling that that “it is not okay to push your sibling”), teach them better ways to regulate their feelings (e.g., using words, not physical force), and provide comfort when children are distressed. Using more authoritarian methods such as hitting a child to “teach them the rules” may work in the short term but does not work over time.

Early parenting behaviors are important for children to help them feel safe, learn how to explore safely, and regulate their feelings so they do not resort to acting out at home or in the classroom. Promoting better ways for children to manage their behavior can also help them in the learning environment, which can set them up for success.

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About 33 million children worldwide are displaced or in refugee camps, and many lack any form of education due to the pandemic.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many children in the United States are struggling with remote learning and emotionally distressed by the absence of social interactions. But significant numbers of children in the world do not have access to the Internet or to any education during the pandemic.

Children are our future. Yet about 33 million children worldwide are displaced and most of them are out of school. Refugee children are a case in point. More than 92% of refugee children live in developing countries. Lack of education during COVID-19 has the potential to become an even more destructive pandemic.

Rohingya children are receiving no education during the pandemic

In August 2017, more than 742,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar. More than 800,0000 Rohingya refugees now live in Cox’s Bazar in the largest and most crowded refugee camp in the world, and more than half are children and adolescents. Prior to the pandemic, children in Rohingya refugee camps were not allowed to receive education in local schools, barring them from opportunities to integrate into the local community in Bangladesh.

As a result of the lockdown due to the pandemic, about 315,000 Rohingya children and adolescents lost access to education in the camps’ more than 6,000 learning institutions, which closed in mid-March 2020. In January 2020, the government of Bangladesh promised to give Rohingya children access to education and skills training, but we know little about the fine points of the pledge because the pandemic has stalled any progress, creating an education gap ever since.

“They are neglected, lack proper nutrition and health care, do not have access to any education, and are caught in a limbo of an uncertain future, from which there seems no apparent escape. It is time to give these children a fair chance at life.”

What is being done to close the education gap?

For many decades, Rohingya parents in the Rakhine state of Myanmar have seen their children being killed, maimed, violated, abducted, attacked in schools and hospitals, and denied a chance at a decent life. The situation was so bad for these and other refugee children worldwide that in 1999, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1261 to protect children in conflict regions for the first time. But Rohingyas in Bangladesh continue to live in danger. The lack of access to education is likely to result in parents marrying their children off at an early age or losing them to human trafficking. This means that generations of children will not realize their potential.

Considering these issues, the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner of Bangladesh agreed that “it will definitely help” to educate children in the camp. Yet despite similar language from policymakers, a government directive in 2019 banned Internet access in the camp, so during the pandemic, even remote learning is not an option for children there, worsening the education gap.

Photo: taken at a learning center by Fatima Zahra in October 2019 (before the lockdown). It shows two siblings – getting ready to go home after school. Location: Ukhiya, Cox’s Bazar.

The violence against children affects not only the refugees in the camp but also the social architecture of the host community. Refugee children in Bangladesh are a big part of the future of the country’s political economy and national security. Many fear that the inequalities and violence in the camps already contribute to enhanced violence in the host communities surrounding the camps.

How to right the wrong against refugee children in three steps

Sadly, the fate of Rohingya children in Bangladesh is similar to that of most refugee children in the world. They are neglected, lack proper nutrition and health care, lack access to any education, and are caught in a limbo of an uncertain future from which there seems no apparent escape. It is time to give these children a fair chance at life through three steps.

1. Access to high-quality education

First, children need access to high-quality education that is in both the children’s mother tongue and the language of the host country.

Language of instruction determines the effectiveness of education. It also determines how children perceive their future (in the host country) and how they are accepted as people from another country (their home country). Rohingya children were allowed some form of education in the Rohingya language before the pandemic in the informal learning institutes in the camps, but the host community looks down on Rohingya culture and language so the children did not learn about their home country.

“We often forget that refugee children are just like our children – and that they are in our space because they have nowhere to go. Governments,including the newly elected U.S. government, the private sector, and donors can step up their game and play a major role in supporting the future of refugee children.”

Bangladesh should give refugee children access to the curriculum in public schools in the country. This will create a cultural bridge between refugee and host community children. The Bangladeshi government has been very clear from the start that they do not want to do this. While learning one’s first language has tremendous benefits, it also helps facilitate learning another language (such as Bangla and English) when the children are living in Bangladesh. Children who speak the Rohingya language can build on the language and literacy they know to acquire another language.

2. Access to mental health support

Second, children in the camp need mental health support. Many children and adults in the camp are suffering from acute depression and anxiety. These children need teachers who are trained to support the learning of children who have experienced severe trauma, anxiety, and depression, and who continue to live with constant uncertainty.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the camps are invested in supporting children’s education – assistance from the local and national governments will mean they can scale their efforts in training teachers to extend high-quality education to the children in order to close the education gap.

3. Access to high-speed internet

Finally, people in the camp need access to high-speed Internet. The first two steps that are needed to improve education are possible only if refugee children have access to the outside world.

Using the Internet is crucial for children to access both education and mental health support. NGOs and companies can set up Wifi hotspots throughout the camp, as has been done in the past in other camps. Once that happens, children can access remote learning programs. Parents also need access to the relevant technologies (such as smartphones and the Internet) so they can oversee their children’s learning, which is instinctive for most parents.

As leading post-colonial scholarHomi Bhabha said, “the refugee condition makes the most stringent and severe demands on the national community or the ‘world community’ to recognize the global right of hospitality which is at the heart of human survival itself … for a ‘good life lived with others.'” We often forget that refugee children are just like our children – and that they are in our space because they have nowhere to go. Governments (including the newly elected U.S. government), the private sector, and donors can step up their game and play a major role in supporting the future of refugee children.

Closing the education gap for refugee children will move us one step closer to building a strong and diverse leadership for the world.

Header photo: taken during a focused group discussion with Rohingya children and adolescents about their learning preferences and aspirations as part of a research study at the South Asia Institute at Harvard University. The picture shows a child solving some basic math problems to demonstrate what he learned back in his school in Myanmar. Location: Ukhiya, Cox’s Bazar.

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Children combine familiar elements to solve problems. Parents and teachers can nurture curiosity and invention, which leads to innovation.

In December 2020, Gitanjali Rao, a 15-year-old inventor from Colorado, was named Kid of the Year by Newsweek. Showered with accolades, children like Rao are often treated as if they are unicorns, completely different than others their age. But that need not be the case. Virtually everyone begins life with the necessary building blocks to construct new ideas (defined here as a solution to a problem or an explanation for phenomena). However, by age five, only some children are still on a path to become adept at such thinking, while most leave it farther and farther behind. But such a fate is not inevitable.

“What would it take to help all children be able and eager to pursue ideas?  The answer lies in two processes that begin during the early years: inquiry and invention.”

What would it take to help all children be able and eager to pursue ideas? The answer lies in two processes that begin during the early years: inquiry and invention. If you have ever watched three-year-olds at play, you have seen how children first pursue ideas. It usually begins with a problem: A child wants to fashion a tent out of blankets and pillows, understand why some bugs fly and others do not, or figure out how far the stars extend in the sky.

Parents and teachers can fan the flames of children’s natural drive to think things through. To do so, adults should give children plenty of opportunities to solve the problems that grab them, spend time talking with them about the intellectual puzzles that haunt them, and guide them to test their speculations and revise their ideas. Parents and teachers should also be willing to talk with children about things that are unfamiliar, unknown, and perhaps even uncomfortable. By building on children’s powerful drive to inquire, invent, and mull over complex problems, adults can help them become avid, supple, and astute thinkers.

In this article, we will discuss nurturing curiosity in four steps:

1. Learning from the start
2. The power of specific interests
3. The role of invention
4. Understanding the idea of ideas

1. Learning from the start

Babies are born curious, equipped with antenna for detecting novelty. From early on, they notice when a new object or event comes within view or earshot. Research suggests that infants become familiar with their mothers’ tone and cadence while in utero. Soon after birth, most babies respond differently when someone other than their caregiver talks to them. Within months, whenever they see something different from what they have seen before, their heartbeat slows, their breath quickens, and their skin produces more moisture — all signs that they have taken notice.

Visual patterns and images

Watching visual patterns or images projected onto a screen, babies look longer at the one they have never seen before. They absorb the new phenomena, looking and listening until they see something that is no longer surprising. But they quickly go beyond using just their ears and eyes. Soon enough, babies expand their investigative repertoire to include touching, grasping, licking, and mouthing. By two-and-a-half years, they have acquired an explosively more powerful tool for investigating the world: questions. Toddlers can ask about items around them, but also about the past, the future, and the unseen. Since so much of their daily lives brings them face to face with new sights and sounds, their novelty detectors go off all day long, leading to a day crammed with investigation.

“Adults should give children plenty of opportunities to solve the problems that grab them, spend time talking with them about the intellectual puzzles that haunt them, and guide them to test their speculations and revise their ideas.”

Compared to other mammals, human newborns seem helpless; after all, other mammals walk and nourish themselves within hours of life. Yet by their third year, humans have learned a dazzling array of information and skills never available to the smartest dog, horse, or pig. The newborn cries and makes vegetative noises, but the three-year-old talks in full sentences; can carry on complex conversations; refers to the past and the future; and can tell intricate stories that include characters, plots, and surprise endings.

Children’s urge to investigate explains how helpless infants, who merely burp, gurgle, kick, and cry, become savvy members of the community in just three years. Curiosity is the psychological foundation that explains the vast terrain of knowledge and skills acquired, apparently effortlessly, by all typically developing children.

Photo: Difei Li. Creative Commons.

 2. The power of specific interests

But the endless barrage of surprises and mysteries does not last forever. By the time children are three, they have a huge working knowledge of their everyday routines and environments. They know what will be on the breakfast table, the kinds of things their family members typically do and say, and what will happen on a trip to the grocery store. The everyday world becomes the familiar background to more distinctive events and objects, which call out for further explanation and mastery.

Using initiative in early years

At this point, children are ready to be somewhat choosier. They begin to play a more active role in deciding what aspects of daily life they can skim over and which to zero in on. While virtually all 18-month-olds seem inquisitive most of their waking days, four-year-olds are likely to seem blasé about many aspects of daily life: the trip to school, a visit from a neighbour, or the pigeons out the window. During this period, when daily life becomes mundane, most children develop specific interests. One becomes fascinated with bugs, another intent on watching to see what makes people laugh, and a third absorbed by small gadgets.

Grasping information about the invisible

But not all children focus on objects or creatures. Some collect information about the invisible or ungraspable, for instance, god, death, or infinity. In an examination of a large database of two-five year olds talking at home, children often asked many questions about such topics across relatively long periods.

Photo:
Pixabay. Pexels.

For example, in the following exchange, a mother had just explained to her four-year-old daughter Laura that their pet bird had died. “He took his nest down and he knew he was dying and he got himself ready,” the mother said. At various points throughout the day, Laura said:

“He knew he was dying?”
“How did he know he was dying?”
“I don’t want to die.”
“I wonder what it feels like to be dead.”

To sum up, although it is often invisible to adults, young children collect information about a wide variety of topics, and such knowledge lays the groundwork for future ideas. However, inquiry tells only part of the story.

3. The role of invention

Spend 15 minutes watching four-year-olds at play and you quickly notice that they don’t spend all their time investigating. Just as often, they are devising new objects out of various small items (e.g., string, silverware, blocks), planning imaginary scenarios, or mapping out the rules for new games. In other words, they are busy inventing. Just think of the child who fashions an airplane out of a small cardboard box, uses shoelaces to lock a sibling inside the bathroom as a prank, or lays bath towels over an upside-down chair to create a fort.

All these actions are simple inventions. Meanwhile, children are engaging in other more intangible inventions — stories that recreate an upsetting experience, charts of made-up superheroes, and explanations of zero. These, too, involve new combinations of familiar elements to achieve a goal. But that is just the first stage of inventing.

The road that leads from the earliest and simplest constructions to the more complex solutions of older children and adults is somewhat circuitous. Research has shown that very young children are stumped by some aspects of innovation. In one study, young children were invited to retrieve an attractive sticker from a small basket placed far down a narrow plastic tube. Offered various materials, including pipe cleaners, to reach the sticker, four-years-olds did not think to bend the pipe cleaner and use it as a hook. They could perform all the requisite actions, such as bending the pipe cleaner or selecting the correction solution when asked to choose from several options. But they could not seem to coordinate all the elements needed to solve the problem.

What about more sophisticated thinking?

Researchers describe this as a difficulty with ill-defined problems, a skill essential for more sophisticated thinking. Some new data suggest that young children are more adept than previously thought when solving problems that they find imaginatively compelling. In our lab, when children had to get a small character across some water to rescue another character, even four-year-olds readily used available materials to devise bridges, catapults, air balloons, and stilts.

“Helping children become capable of and interested in developing ideas requires concerted effort from adults. And here the pandemic has, ironically, provided an opportunity.”

Meanwhile, just as children get better at orchestrating many elements of invention, they appear to lose a valuable asset. They become more rigid at using familiar objects in new ways, often stuck on whatever purpose they think an object was intended for. While the developmental picture of invention is complex, it points to one clear conclusion: When children invent, whether a fort, a story, or a new game, they use most of the tools required for more sophisticated problem solving; they use or combine familiar elements in new ways, thinking of different ways to achieve a goal, imagining future outcomes, and revising their plans.

4. Understanding the idea of ideas

During the early years, inquiry and invention develop separately. Before these concepts can be harnessed together to pursue more formal ideas and solve challenging problems, children need one more thing: the ability to treat one’s thoughts as an object — a mental representation that can be examined, revised, or reconsidered. We now have evidence that between the ages of five and six, children begin to understand the idea of ideas. When experimenters asked children to explain what an idea is, four-year-olds cast it in concrete terms: a plan of action or an object they made. For example:

Child: “You could make anything you want, if you have one .”
Experimenter: “So, what is your idea?”
Child:  “To make a knot and it close.”

But by the time children are six, most understand that an idea is a product of the mind and that there are many kinds of ideas. For example:

Child: “Oh, an idea is something that you think!”
Experimenter: “It’s something that you think?”
Child: “It’s amazing, or it can be kind of scary.”

Offering complex explanations

The skills required to come up with illuminating explanations of puzzling phenomena and novel solutions to knotty problems are within reach of most children. But this capacity is not inevitable, nor is it simply the natural result of learning to spell, add, or write book reports. Helping children become capable of and interested in developing ideas requires concerted effort from adults. And here the pandemic has, ironically, provided an opportunity.

Thrust into extended proximity with their children while they play, do school work, and even attend classes remotely, parents are in a good position to notice what and how children are thinking. When children gather information to answer their own questions (however unacademic or odd those questions may seem), mull over perplexing mysteries, speculate, outline probable or impossible outcomes, or consider alternative perspectives, they are practicing the skills essential to forming ideas. If parents and teachers learn to deliberately nurture curiosity and invention, many more children than Gitanjali Rao will be on the path to innovation.

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What are child development scientists advising parents to do about learning at home during COVID-19 lockdowns?

With no advance notice, children and teachers were thrust into using online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis that is far from over. Those who are self-isolating face the prospect of distance learning for the foreseeable future; for others, positive COVID-19 test results or COVID-19 symptoms combined with the absence of testing will mean significant periods of time away from school. And as we face a second wave of the disease, many schools could close for long periods yet again.

What do child development scientists have to say to parents who are tackling the issue of learning at home? We asked members of the Scientists’ Alliance for Communicating Child Development Knowledge, who provided a wealth of insights.

Parents are the main influence on learning, but the pressures are great

Parents are the main influence on learning, writes Jennifer Lansford on the Child & Family Blog. “Demonstrate to your children the value of education – that’s one of the most important ways a parent can encourage their learning.” But, as Suniya Luthar writes on our blog, the pressures on children at home are great. “In our research, by far the most important factor predicting anxiety and depression in children was low quality of relationship with parents. Following this was lack of structure to the day (separating time for leisure or fun), and high levels of distraction or inability to focus on schoolwork.”

Communicating with your child and allowing them space to feel at ease whilst studying at home has shown to increase academic performance – Photo: ADR. Creative Commons.

Children learn through play and curiosity: an opportunity for parents

During the COVID-19 pandemic, parents may feel pressure to teach children in traditional school-based ways. Yet there is nothing wrong with learning in playful ways that keep children’s interest and invite them to have fun at the same time. Numerous studies suggest that learning is a fundamental part of what occurs during play: Playing and learning are inextricably linked. For children, playing with adults is likely to be even more enriching.

Play helps children explore a wide variety of emotions, and not just pleasant ones like excitement and joy. These experiences help children grow emotionally and cognitively. What’s more, children are aware that they are learning through play, and a study of 400 children showed that many of them thought the worlds of play and learning overlap in many ways.

Lockdown learning through play can help build on children’s natural ways of learning by building on their curiosity and self-direction. Play with family members could also be essential for mitigating the loss of learning related to the pandemic, particularly for disadvantaged children.

At the same time, playing with children is important for reducing stress and improving mental health among parents and caregivers.

Playing with their parents and caregivers outdoors has shown to relieve stress for children and allows them to form a closer relationship – Photo: Zach Lucero. Unsplash.

Top tips for parents on home learning

The Internet features great material advising parents what to do. Below is a guide to it all. Another good place to start is asking children what was good and bad about the lockdown from March to June because, as Roberta Golinkoff and Marcia Halperin explain, children have insights on the benefits and challenges of remote learning: Just ask them.

One of our favorite resources is Jelena Obradović’s tip sheet for parents supporting online learning at home. The sheet covers the themes of learning spaces, daily schedules, routines, goals and progress, as well as managing frustrations and ensuring closeness and connection. We have reproduced this sheet here:

You can download the tip sheet in English, Arabic, Cantonese, Filipino, Mandarin, Portuguese, Spanish, Urdu, and Vietnamese here.

Online devices have allowed children to access numerous learning resources at home which has revolutionised home schooling – Photo: David Brookes. Creative Commons.

 Another great on-line resource is from Mental Health America,  How to cope with the stress of home schooling (for parents). This recommends three steps:

1. Adjust your mindset – get support from other parents and homeschool teachers, remind yourself why you’re homeschooling in the first place, practice gratitude on a daily basis with your household, adjust your expectations on a day-to-day basis, and switch up your teaching style if your kids aren’t interested.
2. Reduce stress with a routine – outline a rough schedule for each day, divide the day into large blocks instead of specific classes, give yourself more time than you actually need for lessons, multi-task if you’re caring for more than one child, be flexible with your daily routine, and set aside time to unwind.
3. Plan for rough days – identify the root of your children’s problems as they arise, write a list of calming activities for yourself and your children, calm your child down before disciplining them, practice mindfulness as you go through the week, ask friends and family for support if you need it.

Our search found other good top tips on-line.

Learning space 

If possible, dedicate a specific device to learning. (NPR, How to turn your home into a school without losing your sanity)

Schedule and routine

Plan the day together, including when to do activities. Engaging children in creating a schedule helps build their self-awareness and motivation. (Catherine Tamis-LeMonda & Erin Bogan, The science of learning and teaching at home during Covid-19)

Have a good shake at the end of the day! (NPR, How To Turn Your Home Into A School Without Losing Your Sanity)

Be a good role model: Parents should stick to their own routine, too! (Catherine Tamis-LeMonda & Erin Bogan, The science of learning and teaching at home during Covid-19)

Managing frustrations 

When children aren’t motivated to learn, parents and caregivers can make it more fun by incorporating documentaries, or changing the topic and giving children the choice to return to the work later. (Catherine Tamis-Lemonda & Erin Bogan, The science of learning and teaching at home during Covid-19)

It is important for parents to manage their own emotions because children can’t learn in high-stress environments. In doing this, adults provide the conditions necessary to learn. (Catherine Tamis-Lemonda & Erin Bogan, The science of learning and teaching at home during Covid-19)

Working with teachers

Schedule time with teachers, both to clarify what is expected of your child and to make use of available teaching resources. (Catherine Tamis-LeMonda & Erin Bogan, The science of learning and teaching at home during Covid-19)

Consider if your child can join meetings with the teacher. This can help children feel more motivated and closer to the teacher. (Catherine Tamis-LeMonda & Erin Bogan, The science of learning and teaching at home during Covid-19)

Be specific with questions when meeting with teachers. (Catherine Tamis-LeMonda & Erin Bogan, The science of learning and teaching at home during Covid-19)

Doing things with your child

Break down tasks into bite-sized pieces. (APA, Recommendations on starting school during the COVID-19 pandemic)

Friends and family can help with teaching, especially if parents don’t feel comfortable with certain topics. (Catherine Tamis-Lemonda & Erin Bogan, The science of learning and teaching at home during Covid-19)

When parents aren’t sure about something, they can model problem solving with their children. By working out something together, they help improve children’s practical problem-solving skills, which shapes the way they approach future challenges. (Catherine Tamis-Lemonda & Erin Bogan, The science of learning and teaching at home during Covid-19)

Make learning meaningful. If children don’t understand why they’re learning something or why it’s important or useful, they can easily disengage from the material. Other ways to make information applicable to students’ lives are to include material relevant to students’ race, culture, and ethnicity. (APA, Recommendations on Starting School during the COVID-19 pandemic)

Learning style

Allow children to use a variety of approaches for completing tasks and solving problems. The strategies they have been taught may not be the only or best ways to answer a specific question or solve a particular problem. (APA, Recommendations on starting school during the COVID-19 pandemic)

By asking your child to teach you the content he or she has just learned, it will be easier to identify gaps. Parents can then work with teachers on these gaps. (Catherine Tamis-LeMonda & Erin Bogan, The science of learning and teaching at home during Covid-19)

Computers provide children with unlimited learning potential as they can practice their literary skills as well as access learning materials – Photo: Annie Spratt. Unsplash.

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The greatest influence occurs at home, but there remains a lot to understand about harnessing parents’ – and particularly fathers’ – potential to help.

Demonstrate to your children the value of education – that’s one of the most important ways a parent can encourage their learning. This is true the world over, although parents have various ways to highlight this value. If parents succeed in convincing their children of the importance of education and can mobilize the resources to provide support, children typically stay in school and do well.

Many of the important contributions from parents do not require money or qualifications. Support can begin with a simple question: “What are you learning about at school?” Parents can bring an extra perspective to what children are studying: “I don’t know if you have heard about this…?” can open a discussion. For example, parents might mention climate change and ask how it fits in with, say, science at school. They can extend what the child is doing in class and bring it home: “What do you think we can do? Can we recycle?” These conversations express that parents value education and support their children.

“Parental involvement in children’s education is important in every country. However, the way that involvement takes place varies greatly.”

Parents also set an example. They can let children see them reading for themselves, so parents are not always on their phones and do not leave a television on constantly in the background. Reading with children, especially in the early years, is highly beneficial. But if parents have low literacy skills, just talking with children and telling them stories, even if not from a book, help build language skills.

Parental involvement varies globally

Parental involvement in children’s education is important in every country. However, the way that involvement takes place varies greatly. In some low-income countries, where even low school fees for uniforms, books, or transport can break the family budget, parents show their commitment to their children’s learning by making considerable sacrifices to meet the costs. Sometimes, they manage it only for some members of the family: Perhaps the younger siblings are sent to school while the older ones work to pay the expenses. In Kenya, the best schools tend to be boarding, with children living away from home for many months. If they can, parents show how they value education by paying the fees even though that means losing out on face-to-face childrearing.

In the United States, one of the most important parental contributions to children’s learning is choosing where the family lives. There are thousands of individual school systems, with different books, curricula, and pedagogical strategies; Americans with financial resources often decide where to make their homes based on the school system they want for their children. The location of a school matters much less in China, where schools are more standardized, and where there is a national curriculum and national pedagogical strategies and textbooks. Parents in China and other Asian countries such as the Philippines and Thailand tend to focus more on home support, helping with homework and making sure that children have a designated time and place to study.

Photo: Pass the Torch. Creative Commons.

Mobilizing parents’ educational input

How can formal education use parents effectively – harness their social capital – for learning? Cultural norms vary. In some places, such as the United States, parents are  expected to volunteer in their children’s classrooms, work at book fairs or other events, or help with fundraising. Jordan has mandatory parents’ councils, which involve parents directly with administrators and teachers. Many countries have variations of this concept. Sometimes the goal is for teachers to communicate what is happening in the classroom and guide parents on how they can support their children’s learning. These initiatives generally work better if they are universally available and non-stigmatizing, rather than focusing solely on parents of children who are struggling. However, some countries (e.g., China) have eschewed these models and generally, parents are not seen in classrooms or at schools there.

Few models harness the support fathers can bring to their children’s education – in fact, much of the research and practice related to parental involvement focuses on mothers. But some countries have recognized the potential of involving fathers. In Jordan, when organizers of a parenting program saw that success mainly involved mothers, imams were recruited to spread messages about parenting to dads at Friday prayers.

The greatest influence is at home 

Home is typically where parents make the most difference in their children’s education. Parents often ask how much help they should give with homework. It is good to lend a hand if children are struggling at school, with the parent acting like a tutor to help children understand or practice reading with text support. But some parents go too far and take over, making children feel that they cannot do it on their own. Children need to feel efficacious.

School learning systems can clash with family and cultural systems. This is true where schools adopt, for example, English or French as the language of instruction, when children are fluent in different mother tongues and much less able to communicate in these other languages. In the Philippines, for example, new laws require instruction during primary school in mother tongue languages because many parents were uncomfortable with the main languages being English or Filipino, which prevented them from being involved in their children’s education. In many countries, language policy has disconnected learning at school from interactions at home and hindered parents’ ability to be involved in their children’s education.

“A major issue in education – which parents can influence considerably – is maintaining children’s mental health and well-being.”

Parents can support mental health

A major issue in education – which parents can influence considerably – is maintaining children’s mental health and well-being. Placing a high emphasis on academic achievement can lead to anxiety and symptoms of depression in children. This often occurs where high-stakes examinations provide a narrow gateway to further opportunities, perhaps because a country has limited resources for funding education or elite institutions cherry-pick students.

High-stakes testing, particularly in Asian countries, fosters concerns that academic success is achieved at the expense of children’s mental health. Sweden offers a contrasting example, thanks partly to its wealth, with a good intersection between family values and the school system: Both support students having varied paths of study that reflect their individual interests. And Sweden does not have the barriers to higher education found in some countries, which generate so much examination anxiety.

It is much easier to highlight parental practices – such as physical punishment – that are universally bad for children than it is to identify evidence on which practices are universally good. But the level of variation suggests that parents and education systems should look elsewhere and ask: “Should we try that here?”

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With the end of lockdowns approaching, many parents of school-age children will breathe a collective sigh of relief. No longer will they have to monitor their children’s virtual assignments or worry about how to manage the Zoom classroom for their kids. The pandemic and the executive orders to close schools have challenged teachers, parents, and children. The stress of making sure that children are learning what they should be learning has added an extra layer of pressure on both parents and teachers.

We hope that by fall, school personnel will have figured out a way for students and faculty to return safely to school. But the reality of COVID-19 is that many students may start the fall with some version of online instruction. Even if children go in person, at some point during the year, schools may have to revert to virtual learning.

How can parents best support their children if they have to rely on virtual instruction again? What we know from informal observation is that some children have managed better than others this spring. Some children adapted easily to the Zoom classroom and video interactions. Other children had more difficulty managing the work presented mostly through screen instructions.

Photo: Wilmington Friends School.

One of us, Roberta, interviewed her seven-year-old granddaughter, Lilah, to gain insight into the experience of online learning – what worked, what was harder, what she liked about online learning and what she missed about not being in her classroom. Lilah has a long single braid running down her back and a mouth full of gaping holes where she has lost baby teeth. She is just finishing first grade and was happy to answer questions. We recognize that this is just one child’s view, but she provided some great input on the merits and drawbacks of online learning – answers that help us understand this experience through the eyes of a child who has been thrust out of the classroom and onto the computer.

Asked if she liked online learning, Lilah said, “Yes, because when I am done with learning I can play. I don’t have to wait for everyone else.” Each day, she watches the videos her teachers make for her, and when she completes them, she gets to play. She also observed that “in school, kids can be loud and teachers have to pause in the middle and wait. At home, no one else is making it loud.” This child is clearly a self-regulated learner; she has the insight to recognize that when kids talk, it gets in the way of her understanding the teacher. Lilah is a child who likes working at her own pace and prefers a quiet environment. Most children learn more efficiently when there are fewer distractions. However, every child learns differently, and this is one area parents could explore with their children.

Lilah disliked several things about learning online. She noted that getting help was harder. “In school, the teacher knows what we are working on together. At home, I have to explain to Mom or Dad what we are working on before they can help me.” Also, she noted that when her teacher gives instructions in class, she uses props, which are more difficult to see online. Lilah added, “Real school is easier because you can ask for help and you don’t have to figure things out alone.” Finally, online instruction has the usual internet glitches. “Sometimes the screen flickers and makes weird noises.” And sometimes, she added, “Online instruction is boring.” We can feel that way too after endless Zoom calls.

We are not suggesting that Lilah’s experience is universal. Rather, we are encouraging parents to take a few moments to talk with their own children regarding their online classroom experience this spring. By understanding how your children manage online instruction, you may be able to partner with them to create a more effective personal learning environment when schools reopen in the fall.

The post Children Have Insights on the Benefits and Challenges of Remote Learning: Just Ask Them appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Lockdown learning highlights how schools fail to build on children’s natural ways of learning; through their independent curiosity and learning approaches.

Many parents are recognising a disturbing truth revealed by the COVID-19 crisis: school is often regimented and boring, and it doesn’t fit the way that their children learn naturally. Peering through the window of home education, parents see that schools’ approaches often provide poor ways for their children to learn.

Moms and dads are spending their days encouraging their children to do activities that schools require to be completed at home: filling in dull worksheets and completing internet-based tasks, as computers replace teachers in ordering, providing, and grading children’s activities. Many families dislike this tedious regime, but neither parents nor children have much idea of what they might do instead. Families have gotten used to a certain way of learning, and they may struggle to take a different approach.

Some just give up. As one frustrated parent announced on Twitter: “This is my Kindergartener’s home school curriculum. And nearly everything requires a printer, which we don’t have. We quit.” Are such parental reactions a harbinger of a more general revolt that we might expect against conventional educational approaches that have been embedded in school systems for nearly two centuries, and from which a big change is long overdue?

Some children thrive during lockdown learning

On the plus-side, COVID-19 is also highlighting how education might change for the better. Lockdown learning has proved more fruitful for some households than others. Some children are more accustomed to independent study that engages with what is around them: they are better able to thrive while in lockdown. For example, children have walked around their neighbourhoods to spot and count the colours of people’s front doors and then made bar graphs. Others have surveyed signs of spring, noticing dirt softening, birds singing, and buds emerging, and they’ve compiled the information into reports. Others went looking for symmetrical and asymmetrical shapes in their homes and neighbourhoods and reported back. They are not staring at computer screens or filling in worksheets all day.

“We don’t set up a blackboard and tell children at 12 months that it’s time to walk.”

This difference in experience is highlighting to parents a gulf between how many children are taught in schools and how learning might change if education were based more on what we know about child development. Alternative approaches recognise that children build understanding through active interaction more than by listening; by ‘constructing’ what they learn rather than being told.

In this “constructivist approach”—found, for example, in Montessori education—student questions drive the learning, interactive teachers create an environment fitting children’s developmental level, and lessons are built on student understanding with continuous assessment and collaborative student work. Such methods can fail when delivered without structure. But with sufficient structure, children thrive.

Teacher-text-centered model of education

Conventional schooling relies much more on a teacher-text-centered model of education. For over 150 years, much of the world has used this model, which depends primarily on teachers (helped by textbooks and computers) telling children what others think they need to know. This approach has been widely adopted because it makes sense to adults, who seem to learn in a linear fashion from what they are told or read. Teachers are also quite knowledgeable, so it stands to reason that they should tell children what they need to know. Children are often framed as ‘blank slates’, which fits with a model of teachers transforming children by giving them information and making them learn it. Many parents, with school direction, are now trying to follow this model at home.

Children learn by self-direction

But this conventional approach is fundamentally flawed. We can see how children naturally develop. No one instructs babies on how to form syllables. Six-month-olds start to get ready to speak by closely watching other people’s mouths as they talk, and thereby gleaning the information they need to form phonemes. We also know from research, such as Celeste Kidd’s, that children focus their attention during play on what they believe to be achievable levels of learning. They know what is within their grasp, and they can often work out the next stage of learning themselves, particularly in a supportive, well-equipped environment.

Photo: Nenad Stojkovic. Creative Commons.

Outside of school, young children actively teach themselves. We don’t set up a blackboard and tell children at 12 months that it’s time to walk. They pull themselves up, mastering the task through repetition and with a clear goal in their minds.

Student teachers know all of this. They study how children develop and are trained to deliver child-centered education. However, once they reach the school environment, they typically find few supports for this approach and have little option but to conform to more traditional methods.

Teacher-text-centered learning has survived its own inadequacies thanks to the introduction of incremental changes that prevent its collapse. These include grading and examinations to stimulate the flagging interest that children have in this unnatural type of learning. More recently, high stakes testing of whole schools has further pushed teachers to conform to the model.

However, outcomes have not improved. The worst hit are the lower-income schools which, under the demands of stricter testing regimes, double down on didactic instruction. Research shows that this has resulted in less time spent on non-tested (but often enriching) material, increased stress in children, higher dropout rates and education reduced to filling out bubble sheets. Taking these effects together, the school achievement gap, which testing was meant to address, has actually increased.

Use COVID-19 to change how your child learns

COVID-19 and the meagre gruel often served up as lockdown learning at home has highlighted the problem to parents. It has also removed the incentives that usually maintain the system – grading and standardised exams have been dropped this year for many children. Mom and dad are really stumped for ways to persuade children to stay focussed. Having been educated conventionally themselves, they may find it just as difficult as their children do to develop more self-directed ways of learning at home.

“In this relatively short lockdown period, make a start at organising children’s environments so they can learn more independently.”

My advice to parents in this lockdown is to make a start at organising children’s environments so they can learn more independently. Is your child old enough to plan meals or prepare portions of a meal, with some adult support? If so, then build that into every day, and set up the kitchen to enable it. Think of useful activities your children can do on their own. These can be as simple as making their beds or washing some dishes. Play a counting game, and then send the children off to do some counting on their own. Try to set them up with independent activities, be it with paints and brushes or building blocks. Expect them to put things back and tidy up afterwards. It can take a while for them to work like this, so you’ll need love, compassion and patience, taking one step at a time. New York Times columnist Michaeleen Doucleff described coming to this realization with her four-year-old at home. Given the opportunity, children love being involved in real life activities.

You’ll find resources for parents at the Association Montessori Internationale and distance learning resources at Aid to Life. We have a brief opportunity within the lockdown to change the way our children learn so that it fits what comes naturally to them. If enough of us do it, conventional education may also begin to think again. The new normal doesn’t have to be the old normal.

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