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Promoting a Culture of Thinking in the Young Child

Article  in  Early Childhood Education Journal · April 2008

DOI: 10.1007/s10643-007-0227-y

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Early Childhood Educ J (2008) 35:457–461
DOI 10.1007/s10643-007-0227-y
Promoting a Culture of Thinking in the Young Child
Angela K. Salmon
Published online: 15 December 2007
Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007
Abstract Conscious of the interplay between nature and
nurture in determining a child’s individuality and success
in life, the author embarked a group of teachers in an action
research project towards nurturing a culture of thinking in
young children. Considering the positive effects of routines
in early learning experiences, the research consisted in
implementing thinking routines to engage young children’s
minds in thinking activities. The study took place in two
Reggio-inspired schools where participating teachers doc-
umented children’s work as part of their teaching. The
documentation was a key element to make children’s
thinking visible as they installed the culture and language
of thinking in their classrooms. The study found that
thinking routines build up positive attitudes about thinking
and learning. By re-visiting their documented work chil-
dren developed metacognitive and critical thinking skills
which make them more alert to situations that call for
thinking.
Keywords Nature & nurture
Thinking

Thinking routines
Culture of thinking
Visible thinking

Routines
Thinking dispositions
Metacognition

Critical thinking
Documentation
Reggio Emilia

Early childhood
Social environment

Developmentally appropriate practices
Action research

Connections
Scaffold
Engagement
Children’s literature
The importance of creating a culture of thinking in the
young child should be part of an early childhood agenda.
A. K. Salmon (&)
Florida International University, 10981 NW 59 St., Doral,
FL 33178, USA
e-mail: salmona@fiu.edu
Although children share developmental characteristics,
each child is unique and his or her individuality is a product
of the interplay of nature and nurture. For Shonkoff and
Phillips (2000), nature and nurture are inseparable and
complementary. Instead of making the distinction between
nature versus nurture, the latter scientists rather think of
nature through nurture. Thus, the social environment plays
an important role in nurturing a culture of thinking in
children as they construct their understandings about the
world.
Working from a developmentally age appropriate per-
spective, this paper reports the adult’s role in cultivating a
culture of thinking in young children while implementing
Harvard Project Zero’s (Project Zero 2007; Ritchhart 2002)
thinking routines and engaging teachers in an action
research project. The thinking routines promote children’s
construction of knowledge by respecting the child’s curi-
osity, needs, interests and prior experiences and building
upon them (Fig. 1).
The study participants were two early childhood faculty
members, six pre-K-to first grade teachers from two Reg-
gio-inspired schools, a doctoral candidate and 70 children,
ranging from 3½ to 6 years of age. The purpose of action
research is for teachers to improve their practices as they
reflect on events that happen in the classroom (Hendricks
2006).
The goals of the study were to adapt several thinking
routines (Ritchhart 2002; PZ 2007) to young children and
explore the inner workings of children’s minds as they
were engaged in these routines and make their thinking
visible. As a result, the following questions led the research
team focus: How can teachers make thinking more visible
in their classrooms so that children can see their own
thinking? And, how can teachers see thinking at work so
they can understand it and improve it?
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Fig. 1 Children using ‘‘See/Think/Wonder’’ routine
Making Thinking Visible
Although thinking is invisible, using the language of
thinking and documenting children’s work are two pow-
erful venues to make children’s thinking visible. For
Rinaldi (2006), the use of documentation in the educational
context is interpreted as a tool for recalling and reflecting.
In Reggio-inspired schools, teachers continuously docu-
ment the work, providing a direct venue for making
children’s thinking visible (PZ and Reggio Children 2001).
For this reason, the participating teachers continuously
documented their students at work and met with the
research team on a weekly basis to revisit the documen-
tation. The children were also invited to revisit their work
using thinking routines. Thinking becomes visible when
children are aware of their thinking and teachers chart
progress by recalling events and evidence of children’s
thinking. Visible thinking is any kind of observable rep-
resentation that documents and supports the development
of an individual’s or group’s thoughts and questions
(Ritchhart et al. 2006).
Creating a Culture of Thinking
Culture influences all aspects of human development and it
is characterized by a set of values and beliefs shared by a
social group. For Ritchhart (2002), cultures of thinking are
places in which a group’s collective, as well as individual,
thinking is valued, visible, and actively promoted as part of
the regular, day-to-day experience of all the group mem-
bers. A culture of thinking comes from social practices that
create thinking dispositions. Thinking dispositions are
inclinations and habits of mind that benefit productive
thinking and are teachable over time across diverse think-
ing situations (Tishman et al. 1995; Ritchhart 2002; Project
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Early Childhood Educ J (2008) 35:457–461
Zero 2007). Preparing teachers to teach thinking disposi-
tions is essential to cultivate a culture of thinking in
children. Accordingly, thinking dispositions are developed
through the use of thinking routines-short, easy-to-learn
mental guidance.
Before embarking in this journey, the adult participants
began to explore their own definition, values, and beliefs
about thinking. This was a good jump start for them to
understand children’s culture of thinking. Ritchhart and
Perkins (2004) stress that any program that aspires to teach
thinking needs to define positive thinking, not necessarily
in an ultimate or comprehensive sense but at least in a
practical operational sense. This is exactly how the think-
ing routines worked in this study. The teachers decided to
use few routines during different activities and soon both
teachers and children began to use a language of thinking
throughout the day. For example, while writing their
journal and listening to background music, one of the
Kindergarten teachers asked the children to illustrate their
ideas about thinking. Some of the children responses were:
Thinking is when your brain starts going crazy and
you can dream on clouds.
This is a plane. I drew this because the music made
me think of the sky and clouds.
The music had waves, so I drew the ocean and doors.
The same teacher continued the experience by asking
the children to illustrate a routine. Amazingly their
responses were connected to sequencing and cause-and-
effect. For example:
The rain comes out and then the rain stops and the
sun come out and that is a routine.
A routine happens in an order, like the alphabet, it
always starts with A.
A baby T-Rex first comes an egg, then out of the egg
comes a T-Rex baby, and it is a routine.
This is a routine, first you are a baby, then a boy, then
a man.
In these two activities, the teacher introduced the Con-
nect/Extend/Challenge routine to the children. This routine
is appropriate for connecting new ideas to prior knowledge.
From this routine, children incorporated the word con-
nection to their vocabulary and future classroom activities.
Thinking routines are tools for thinking that support the
development of students as self-directed learners and pro-
mote learning for understanding. In the study, it was
evident that while teachers and children gained ownership
and awareness of thinking processes, they began to shape
their own culture of thinking. The thinking routines also
support early childhood goals of providing children with
developmentally age appropriate practices (Bredekamp and
Copple 1997) as they engage children in making personal
Early Childhood Educ J (2008) 35:457–461
connections and expanding on those. In the study children
responded to the thinking routines, the teachers docu-
mented using videos, writing field notes, and collecting
children’s work.
Targeting Thinking Routines
Routines are recurring events that are part of any class-
room. Activities assume the feature of routine when they
happen over and over. Teachers set greeting routines, math
exploration routines and more. During play, children also
reflect the routines that are familiar to them. Routines
benefit learning because they build a sense of trust and
confidence in students when they begin to identify patterns
that help them predict what is going to happen. When
teachers establish good learning routines, students create
patterns of learning.
With all these ideas in mind, the teachers encounter the
challenge of exploring how children incorporate thinking
routines in their daily school and life experiences. Under-
standing the concept of thinking is a critical step towards
engaging children in thinking routines. Take a moment to
write down what you think about thinking. Now categorize
your results. Some people organize their thoughts around
how they plan things, concentrate, or make connections. As
an adult this is not an easy task, but adults can express
abstract thoughts using oral or written language.
What about a young child? How can you help a young
child think about thinking? Young children often express
themselves in drawings. Drawing a tree, a house or a windy
day is something a child can do, but drawing in abstract
concepts such as thinking is not always easy because one
simple problem with thinking is that it is invisible and our
job is to find ways to make thinking of young children
visible (Perkins 2003) (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2 Making young children’s thinking visible
459
Confronting thinking from a young child’s perspective
is not an easy job because young children are concrete
thinkers, consequently the thinking routines are a good
resource for teachers not only because they are easy to
learn, but because they are goal-oriented. Research (Katz
and Chard 2000) recognizes the importance of purposeful
activities involving routines as a way to evoke scripts or a
memory of an event to engage young minds to strengthen
their intellectual dispositions. In order to engage children
in thinking and talking about thinking, the participating
teachers had to create intellectual environments where
children could develop their ability to think, discuss and
explore ideas (Ritchhart 2002). In the classroom, the chil-
dren’s first responses to the question, ‘‘What is thinking?’’
were related to concrete objects or memories. For example,
some children said that thinking was a pizza or a particular
toy, while other children said that they were thinking about
their mom, a brother who is fighting in Iraq or a party.
Natural ways of making sense of the world actually stand
in the way of more effective ways of thinking (Ritchhart
and Perkins 2004). Adults learn about their children as they
interact with them in daily routines. This interaction gives
the adult the clues to nurture children’s natural thinking
towards what is often referred to as high-end thinking or
critical and creative thinking.
The thinking routines do not require a particular set of
materials. An Art work can easily engage children in
thinking routines. One of the pre-kindergarten teachers
used the Think/Puzzle/Explore routine (PZ 2007) to ana-
lyze Rousseau’s Notre Dame painting. This routine
encourages questioning and inquiry. Children were asked
to consider the art work focusing on three questions: (1)
what do you think you know about this artwork, (2) what
questions do you have? And (3) what does the artwork
make you want to explore? It was evident that children
made personal connections that were a great venue for
teachers to identify the children’s zone of proximal
development (Vygotsky 1978) and scaffold their thinking
and language. By using this routine, children began to talk
about customs, housing and weather. It was noteworthy
that this thinking routine engaged children in thinking
activities that resulted in their desire to express their
thoughts using oral language and drawings. Interestingly,
since most of the children in the study speak Spanish as
their first language, the use of this thinking routine
encouraged them to use their native and English language,
like findings reported by President and Fellows of Harvard
(2006). This routine helped these three and four-year olds
express their thinking in their first language, giving the
teacher a notion of what the children knew, and allowing
her to scaffold their language and thoughts. A follow-up
activity consisted of drawing what they saw from inside the
classroom while the next day what they saw from outside.
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With the use of transparencies and markers the children
drew what they perceived. Several days later, the teacher
invited the children to re-visit their artwork using the
overhead projector. The drawings revealed their thinking.
For example, one child drew the street and the lake next to
his classroom. In the projection, the street was on the right
side instead of the left side. The thinking routine helped the
child revisit his drawing and put it in the right position.
This example shows evidence that the child was becoming
a better observer. While sharing his drawing he showed
signs of understanding the difference between left and
right.
One of the kindergarten teachers was frustrated with the
poor responses of her students on any topic because their
common responses were, ‘‘I don’t know’’ when asked to
draw or write what thinking was all about. She said, ‘‘What
can I do if I ask them to draw what they are thinking and
they always say, ‘I don’t know’?’’ The study group decided
to look for tools that might help this teacher cope with
these vague responses.
Children’s books are excellent aids for multiple situa-
tions, so we began our search. The first powerful book that
we found was The Dot by Peter Reynolds (2003). It is
about Vashti, a frustrated artist who thinks that he can’t
draw, but his teacher asked him to draw a mark and see
where it would take him. The teacher in the story cele-
brated those first attempts to draw at least a dot. This was
the venue that sets this child on a journey of self-expres-
sion, artistic experimentation, and success. Research (Katz
and Chard 2000) suggests that children learn by interacting
with their own first hand experiences and true environ-
ment. After reading this book, the children began to see the
world from a dot’s perspective, which means that they
instigated a search for dots in the environment; the chil-
dren were able to transfer the notion of dot from one
context to another. The children took pictures of their
findings. This dot awoke the children’s curiosity and
learning desire as they played with ideas around a dot.
While searching for dots in nature, their friends, classroom
and toys they began to use the See/Think/Wonder routine
(PZ 2007) which consists of shaping their thinking with the
following questions: What do you see? What do you think
about that? What does it make you wonder? This routine
engaged children in conversations that reflected their
understanding about science and math concepts. After this
experience, the teacher never complained again about the
‘I don’t know’ response from the children. This routine
provided students with a model and pattern of behaviors
that permitted them to explore, observe, look below the
surface, visualize, clarify ideas or perceptions, and make
connections (Fig. 3).
Likewise, when the first grade teacher noticed that her
students’ responses to ‘‘What is thinking?’’ were narrow,
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Early Childhood Educ J (2008) 35:457–461
Fig. 3 Children searching for dots
she decided to introduce concept thinking by reading to
children Oh the Thinks You Can Think by Dr. Seuss (1975).
This book provoked much positive conversation in the
class. Thinking became an inquiry in this classroom;
children began to talk about thinking frequently. Amaz-
ingly, each time that I (one of the university faculty
members) arrived at the school, the children commented
among themselves that the ‘‘Thinking Lady’’ was there.
Their conversations guided some of them to associate
thinking with the brain. In an effort to talk about thinking,
the children represented their thoughts with sophisticated
drawings, some related to brain functions. Some children
wrote complex stories using imagery. While trying to find
out what thinking is, the children decided to draw a face
with a thinking bubble, placing their ideas into it. One child
said that there should be two faces, one for boys and
another for girls because boys and girls think differently.
The use of Oh the Thinks We Can Think led the students to
work on the Point of View routine (PZ 2007). This routine
consisted in brainstorming a list of different perspectives
and then using this script skeleton to explore each one with
questions such as: (1) I am thinking of...the topic...from the
point of view of...the viewpoint they’ve chosen. (2) I
think...describe the topic from your viewpoint. Be an
actor...take on the character of your viewpoint. (3) A
question I have from this viewpoint is...ask a question from
this viewpoint. What new ideas do you have about the topic
that you didn’t have before? What new questions do you
have? According to the teacher, this routine was perfect in
order to eliminate children’s worry of being wrong or right.
It opened their minds because it helped them make
appropriate connections. The teacher frequently used this
routine for her language arts class. The children’s respon-
ses to children’s books showed evidence that they were
making good and strong connections between the reading
and their thinking.
Early Childhood Educ J (2008) 35:457–461
Conclusions and Future Explorations
The interplay of nature and nurture determines the child’s
individuality and uniqueness. The adult’s role is to nurture
the child’s natural disposition to learn by engaging his/her
mind in thinking dispositions towards cultivating a culture
of thinking. When teachers install the culture of thinking in
their classrooms, children get used to seeing the world
below the surface and from different perspectives such as
the children who began a whole journey to explore a dot in
their environment.
The study found that when thinking is part of the daily
routine, children become alert to situations that call for
thinking, and, as a result, they build up positive attitudes
toward thinking and learning. A few of the thinking rou-
tines developed by Project Zero researchers (PZ 2007;
Ritchhart et al. 2006) were implemented in young children
across disciplines and during various activities, including
play. The use of thinking routines promoted thinking dis-
positions in children favoring their desire to think out of the
box and build a culture of thinking. The teachers were able
to engage their students’ minds in ways that strengthened
their thinking dispositions by respecting their interests,
needs and developmental characteristics.
When children revisited their work, they became better
observers and sought clarification. When children are aware
of their thinking processes, they develop dispositions of
good thinking and become more critical and able to expand
their expressive repertoire (writing, drawing, dancing, and
singing). Developing dispositions of good thinking results
in a better understanding of the world, allowing children to
learn more and perform better in school.
Experiencing the potential of thinking routines in early
childhood, teachers should explore venues to adapt Project
Zero (2007) thinking routines to young children from a
developmental age appropriate perspective.
View publication stats
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