Young children reflecting on their learning: teachers’ conversation strategies

Abstract

A two-year research project with teachers in nine different early childhood centres was designed to explore and extend opportunities for young children to reflect on their learning. This was described as children becoming ‘wise’ about their learning journeys; the aim was to find ways to assist them to articulate their understanding of what they had learned and how they had learned it. The location for extending these abilities and dispositions was children and teachers talking together as they revisited and reviewed documented learning events. This paper highlights the strategies that worked well for thoughtful conversations, and comments on those strategies that did not. It argues for the value of children as co-authors in conversations about their learning; these conversations can contribute to their developing views about how they learn and assist them to construct continuities of the learning that is valued in this place.