Portugal
Brief description of the project (general purpose/objectives, number and dates of the meetings, timeline, proposed activities, starting points for discussion selected in each of the meetings, etc.)
The EACH project aimed to foster critical thinking by collaborative practices while introducing digital technologies in the classroom by focusing on climate change issues and environmental awareness more generally. The school applied it in three different classes (two of four years old and one of five years old). There were ten sessions which were done by either Dina Mendonça (facilitator NOVA University), Aléxis Trindade (Facilitator of School) or by the kindergarten teacher. The P4C methodology grounded the promotion of dialogue. Observation of each session was done by either Dina or Aléxis, or by the kindergarten teacher (Carla Gomes, Liliana Carvalho) or by Susana Cadilha, the other member of NOVA.
The sequence of the sessions was thought and decided along the way by the team (Aléxis, Dina and kindergarten teachers) in light of the children reaction and aiming to test as much material as possible from the portfolio.
Sessions lasted 1/1,5 hours, on a weekly basis.
With ten sessions it is hard to recognize the progression of collaborative thinking habits. The class of 5 years old had different characteristic and needed a separate description.
The two four years old classes followed more and less the same sequence of session topics (only with slight variation on one or two sessions – see power point description for details).
One of the sessions was to go outside to a park and take photos and this was notoriously very important for the children of all classes. Importantly, activities outside of the classroom were crucially vital for collaborative behaviour.
Perhaps the most important illustration is the way in which the two classes of four years old were capable of collaboratively manage sharing the digital tools to take photos without adult supervision. First the activity itself was engaging for all, second going outside to the park made them happy, and finally seeing their own photos after they had taken them provided a sense of recognition of the accomplishments.
The children showed that the visits were important for them, and they expressed disappointment when they were reminded the 10th session was the last and reacted with enthusiasm at the suggestion that Dina would come one last bonus time to do a session in each class (after Easter).
In all classes the Google Earth observation, drawing the playground by imagining, after observation and after seeing it on Google earth was a very important session. Importantly the comparison of various ways of experience (by imagination, by observation and by observation in a technological tool) was hard for 4 years old and difference in drawing was only visible in some of the children. Perhaps the explanation can be found in how the literature confirms that. They did the drawing of their school playground but having seen it from the google maps perspective didn’t seem to sink in. So there was a resistance of perspective shifting, even though Alexis insisted that it was drawing the playground seen from a bird’s perspective. At this age they don´t all pass the false belief test (The litmus test for the development of a metarepresentational Theory of Mind is the false belief (FB) task in which children have to represent how another agent misrepresents the world. Children typically start mastering this task around age four. See https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.797246/full)
There is also difficulty in perspective taking spatially. See:
Despite a large body of research on perspective taking, our knowledge of the individual and task factors affecting the emergence of Level 2 perspective taking is still very limited. One relevant factor was suggested by Fishbein et al. (1972), who found that children from 3–9 years performed better in picture selection tasks if only one object was involved, compared to when an array of three objects was presented (see also Gzesh and Surber 1985). Tasks with only one object may be spatially less complex as no array-internal relations have to be encoded and coordinated with the position (or line of sight) of the observer. Consistent with this notion, Ives (1980) found that responses of children as young as 3 years old were about 90% correct if they were asked whether they would see the front, side, or back of a single fronted object (e.g., a horse) from a specified position. However, several other studies with children from kindergarten to 6th grade have failed to find an effect of number of objects in the array (Brodzinky et al. 1972; Minnigerode and Carey 1974, Nigl and Fishbein 1974).
Another important factor affecting the emergence of perspective taking lies in the nature of the dependent variable and whether it requires the suppression of conflicting frames of reference. Piaget and Inhelder (1956) used picture selection or model building tasks, in which children sat within the frame of reference of a room while attempting to imagine an array from a different vantage point. Huttenlocher and Presson (1973, 1979) found that 8- or 9-year-olds did much better when asked about particular items from a different vantage point (e.g., if you sat over there, what would be closest to you?), and argued that such questions were easier because they suggested a frame of reference other than the surrounding room (i.e., the child’s body in an imagined position served as the reference point). Even preschoolers succeed on tasks in which responses are not influenced by conflicting frames of reference (Newcombe and Huttenlocher 1992). Importantly, however, such questions are not easier in general; they are harder when children are asked to imagine the array rotating (Huttenlocherand presson 1973, 1979). […] Taken together, a great deal of research tells us that, on tasks that minimize spatial and representational complexity, the basic ability to take someone else’s perspective is present from infancy, and may provide the foundation for social cognitive abilities, such as theory of mind (Sodian et al. 2007). However, from a spatial cognition point of view, the spatially rich Level 2 perspective-taking tasks with conflicting frames of reference are interesting because they concern the ability to represent and coordinate multiple perspectives in one coherent spatial framework. This ability may be ecologically meaningful and predictive of real-world spatial performance, as suggested by research in adults (Hegarty and Walter 2004, 2005). For example, Hegarty and Walter (2004) found that perspective taking was correlated with participants’ self-reported sense of direction, which in turn had predictive validity as a measure of spatial cognition in large-scale environments (Sholl 1988, Hegarty et al. 2002). One of the very few developmental studies showed that perspective taking (measured by a modified Three Mountains Task) correlated with performance in a mapping task (Liben and Downs 1993).
One reason why individual differences in Level 2 perspective taking and their correlates are little investigated in children may be that there is no simple and easy-to-administer test of the ability.
SEE for details
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00386/full
Nevertheless, the use of drawing indicated that it might be the best way to confirm when some progress in awareness has been achieved.
The focus on environment information diminished the reflection mode at times and was often only recovered by providing a specific mental task (comparing, voicing an opinion on a specific subject); also, some digital technologies took up the space of the activity making it hard to do anything else. Without comparison and follow up sessions to build upon the introduction of technological tools it feels impossible to build critical attitude towards the digital world, suggesting continuity might be key to ensure critical attitude for the digital transformation.
Though there was no time nor the space to focus on how to overcome the gap between saying it and doing it, the issues appeared when talking about how to take care of the planet. In general, the children were already very knowledgeable about what to do in terms of recommended behaviours (recycle, avoid car, don’t waste water)
Having the collaboration of the school staff (facilitator and kindergarten teachers) was decisive for the success of the sessions and the project. Alexis and Rita did a dissemination board for parents to show the activities the children had done in the sessions, and some activities made part of the classroom life (paintings and drawing were put up on the walls; planted seeds and watching the change was a daily focus after the session on putting seeds in pots to observe the change in nature).
Also, the children seemed to have really enjoyed visits from outsiders of the school (Susana and Dina) expressing their appreciation often.
Some concluding remarks:
How have the children participated? How (if) has their participation changed throughout the sessions?
Yes, but participation was not always the same. One effect of P4C methodology is to provide an environment in which people who normally do not verbalize reveal their ability to participate intelligently in an activity. And this was visible and noted by the kindergarten (Liliana 4 years old class) in one of the sessions where the teacher shared that she was surprised on how this person participated often and spoke so well.
Some children were drawn to engage in conversation (one to one; or smaller group to adult) after sessions or when sessions enabled walking. One of these issues will be used for the bonus session to take place after Easter (with the topic of “How to talk people into not littering the Park?”)
What was the role and the activities of the adult/guide/facilitator?
By selecting an activity from the portfolio, the facilitator would design the best way to present it to the children given what had happened. The facilitator varied and thus the approach also changed. When the kindergarten teacher did the sessions there was less promotion of collaborative dialogue (and more guided interventions), when the facilitator (Dina) guided the sessions there were some moments in which the other facilitator (Aléxis) helped to encourage the children’s participation by offering ways to think about the issues (once by comparison – instead of “what is it like to be an ant?” The guiding question “Is it different or similar to be like a Butterfly and be like an ant?”; another time on discussing the way nature is connected (web of life activity) by promoting comparisons for children, too).
If different from the practitioner, what role did the class teacher play?
Often the kindergarten teachers helped children’s behaviour for them to be able to focus on session subject matter either by direct verbal suggestions, or by using the rituals (songs, saying, etc.) of common practice in the classroom
What fostered the collaborative-participative process? Which were the factors impacting on social, critical thinking and meta-cognitive skills?
What might have hindered the collaborative-participative process?
Dealing with misbehave conduct. Children have different abilities of self-control and rarely opportunities to put those self-control abilities in practice (and to practice them to get better at it). Some children are constantly behaving disruptively, and they don’t know why. As one of them told me (Dina) when asked “I don’t know, my mind is constantly going on and then I do something”.
Have children generated a shared knowledge about environmental issues? What was the process?
Yes, the focus on nature in the ten sessions and the activities they experienced made them much more aware of bugs in the playground and they wanted to digitally record the life they saw like they hadn’t done before.
Conversations also seemed to highlight the importance of experience and observation in experience.
What fostered children's environmental awareness and the promotion of their active role in addressing climate change issues and promoting environmental sustainability?
The activities which help them verbalize what they already knew about taking care of the environment.
Fostering environmental awareness is now an ongoing concern of schools, and very present in school we worked at. This means the subject in itself was not new.
What might have hindered children's environmental awareness and their active role in addressing climate change issues and promoting environmental sustainability?
After saying all the things (recycling, helping others, taking care of planet, etc.) the children (5 years old was very visible) did not know what else they could do, and the observer felt both kindergarten teachers and children were trying to find other things to name for promoting the active role and could not say more than what they had been told before the project.
It might be useful to know ahead of time what has already been done regarding environmental awareness as to engage in deepening their understanding of the issues they already know.
How have children used Digital Technologies?
The children took pictures with digital cameras (or phones and I-pads), explored as a group Google earth, looked at the photos they took in a power point presentation in the big screen of the class (that was visibly important in all classes), had several discussions prompted by digital power point presentation of images.
What fostered a critical approach to digital technologies?
What might have hindered a critical approach to digital technologies?
Too much information. Sometimes the digital experience had so much information for the children that it made it difficult for them to engage in any kind of conversation and often they asked to draw when they realized it was also a possibility.
Also, each session focused on a new item of the portfolio. Even though there was an effort not to rush and some tasks of the portfolio took up two sessions, exploring the material in the portfolio showed that ten sessions are too short to promote a durable critical stance for digital technologies.
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