Young Children's Working Theories

Ways children make sense of their lives in their families, communities, and cultures are of immense interest to parents, teachers, and researchers internationally. “Working theories” originated as an holistic outcome of Te Whāriki, the Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) early childhood curriculum (Ministry of Education 1996, Ministry of Education 2017). The term describes the provisional and exploratory ideas and understandings children—and adults—develop as they participate in learning. Working theories help children and adults with meaning making, explanation, prediction, and problem solving. The term therefore has wide educational relevance beyond NZ. Working theories have connections with, but are not the same as, knowledge development or a focus on learning academic concepts. Developing accurate knowledge is not necessarily a goal for young children. In contrast, theories frequently persist in the face of contrary evidence and involve both progression and retrogression in understandings as children attempt to meld new ideas and experiences with their prior, albeit limited, knowledge and experience—rather curiosity and inquiry into personally interesting and meaningful understandings motivates children. More than a focus on cognitive and knowledge development, working theories include all of children’s embodied, linguistic, communicative, and social efforts to learn. The goal of such efforts is to participate and contribute more effectively and competently in their families, communities, and cultures. Consequently, there is an expectation that adults will engage with and support children’s working theory development in respectful, reciprocal, and responsive interactions. Most related literature is at present from NZ; international interest is more recent and growing. Scope for future research includes specific topics of children’s theorizing, especially topics adults might struggle to understand or respond to; ways to document working theories and working theory development over time; exploration and application of Māori concepts and examples given the bicultural aim of Te Whāriki; and ways curriculum might be designed around working theories. The following bibliography has four sections. The first section is literature that has worked on Understanding the Concept of Working Theories. The second section offers examples of working theories from research undertaken with children, adults in teaching roles, and families. The third section describes teacher understandings of the concept of working theories and ways these might drive curriculum, and the fourth section has examples of pedagogical strategies and responses. Naturally there are overlaps between sections 2 through 4 and section assignment does not mean the selected literature does not address material in other sections.