LISTENING TO CHILDREN’S IDEAS TO IMPROVE IN LEARNING AND DEVELOPING HIGHER-ORDER THINKING SKILLS THROUGH REFLECTION WITH DAILY DOCUMENTATION
Resource type
Authors/contributors
- Ae, Young Choi (Author)
- Ho, Ka Lee Carrie (Author)
- University of Saint Joseph (Contributor)
Title
LISTENING TO CHILDREN’S IDEAS TO IMPROVE IN LEARNING AND DEVELOPING HIGHER-ORDER THINKING SKILLS THROUGH REFLECTION WITH DAILY DOCUMENTATION
Abstract
Listening to children’s voices is still not considered an essential part of
education in some schools, including many in Asian countries. The authority of
schools and teachers is still highly valued under the continued influence of Confucian
Heritage Culture in many Asian schools, including a significant number in Macao.
Teachers in international schools in Asian countries often experience some difficulties
when communicating with young children because of their low English proficiency
and the traditional views supported by many parents who grew up with the Confucian
Heritage Culture, which encourages children to be quiet in the classroom to be good
listeners. This Action research took fifteen months between two school years, 2018-
2019 and 2019-2020, with two groups of four and five-year-old students in a
kindergarten classroom. Documentation posters were created for young children to
use the next morning to reflect on their learning. The pedagogy of listening and
pedagogical documentation from the Reggio Emilia approach were implemented to
discover and record young children’s ideas and interests, work with daily
documentation posters, and help them reflect on documentation posters to improve
their learning and develop their higher-order thinking skills. Photos and videos,
observation notes with the children’s comments, documentation posters, and
reflective discussions were used as interventions to collect the children’s ideas and
record their learning activities. The children learned to use documentation posters to
remember, think, share, and improve their learning. The children’s comments from
Learning Centres, recess, and reflective discussions were used to examine their
understanding of learning and higher-order thinking skills. During one Pilot Cycle
and three structured data collection cycles, the children demonstrated improvement in
learning for each learning project and development of their thinking skills both with
and without the teacher’s support. The children demonstrated higher-order thinking
skills more often from Learning Centres and recess when they had to solve problems.
They also demonstrated higher-order thinking skills more often during the whole
group reflective discussions than in small group reflections, when a bigger number of
children joined or when they had enough time to think. The thinking skills when
children were reflecting were observed to concentrate on remembering and
understanding as they focused on remembering and sharing the previous day’s work.
The children’s other higher-order thinking skills did not show an increase in
frequency during reflective discussions. However, the children demonstrated active
engagement and a range of higher-order thinking skills when the teacher asked openended
questions and provided support and comments to help them to connect their
learning to their past experiences. Findings indicated that the children’s learning from
each Learning Centre showed change and improvement during their play over time
according to their interests, indicated by their material use and comments. The
research was limited by its small number of participants within their age group due to
convenience sampling and the children’s relatively limited ability to demonstrate
higher-order thinking skills. This study has shown how teachers could help children
use daily documentation posters to develop their learning and thinking skills by
visualizing their ideas and the teacher’s important role in supporting children’s
learning with active listening and support in the classroom
University
University of Saint Joseph
Place
Macau
Date
2022
# of Pages
457
Language
eng
Library Catalog
Library Catalog (Koha)
Call Number
D-SE 2022 AE,CHO
Notes
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master in Education in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Education, University of Saint Joseph, December 2022Supervisor : Carrie Ho, Stewart Martin
Citation
Ae, Y. C., & Ho, K. L. C. (2022). LISTENING TO CHILDREN’S IDEAS TO IMPROVE IN LEARNING AND DEVELOPING HIGHER-ORDER THINKING SKILLS THROUGH REFLECTION WITH DAILY DOCUMENTATION [University of Saint Joseph]. https://library-opac.usj.edu.mo/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=209183
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