Vygotsky's phases of everyday concept development and the notion of
children's working theories
Helen Hedges Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, New Zealand a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Received 12 January 2012 Received in revised form 20 June 2012 Accepted 20 June 2012 Available online 17 July 2012 The impact of Vygotsky's theorising about culture, development, learning and education continues into the 21st century. This paper focuses on teachers' understandings of elements of young children's thinking. Young children have been described as life theorizers, keenly motivated to make meaning about their worlds during interactions with others. This paper discusses working theories, one of two indicative learning outcomes of the New Zealand early childhood curriculum, Te Whriki. Working theories occur in children's thinking and sense-making as they attempt to make connections between prior and new experiences and understandings. Specifically, the paper explores the Vygotskian notion of the development of everyday concepts as one theoretical underpinning for the notion of working theories. The concept of working theories is argued as a mediating mechanism that young children employ to progress through Vygotsky's three phases of everyday concept formation. It may also be a strategy that children utilise as they begin to develop and connect everyday and scientific knowledge. Working theories therefore provide a way teachers might recognise and build on children's everyday and early conceptual knowledge. To substantiate this argument, examples of children's working theories and associated pedagogical issues from a qualitative study in two early childhood education settings are provided. Some implications for teachers' knowledge and practice and future research are described. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Working theories Everyday and scientific concepts Early childhood Children's learning Children's thinking 1. Introduction Vygotsky's cultural-historical theoretical legacy is immense. This paper will add weight to Vygotsky's (1986) perspective that everyday learning is a foundation for scientific learning. Specifically, it develops recent ideas that consider childrenas life-theorizers (Inagaki & Hatano, 2002, p. 126), active agents in their own learning and inquiry into understanding the world they live in and the cultures and communities they participate in. The paper therefore argues that children's working theories act as both a mechanism for developing everyday knowledge and a potential later mediating link between everyday and scientific knowledge. Sensitive mediation in terms of both curricular and pedagogical approaches from knowledgeable teachers within children's zones of proximal development (ZPDs) can assist this early meaning making. This paper first describes the curriculum document and context in which working theories have become a pedagogical consideration. Vygotskian theories of everyday and scientific knowledge are discussed as they are significant to developing and extending understandings of this concept. Examples of young children's working theories and pedagogical issues related to phases of everyday concept formation from a qualitative study of children's working theories are provided to exemplify the concept. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 1 (2012) 143152 Private Bag 92601, Symonds St, Auckland 1150, New Zealand. Tel.: +64 9 6238899x48606. E-mail address: h.hedges@auckland.ac.nz. 2210-6561/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.lcsi.2012.06.001 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Learning, Culture and Social Interaction j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er . com/ l ocat e/ l csi 1.1. Curriculum in Aotearoa/New Zealand Te Whriki (Ministry of Education, 1996), the curriculum policy document in Aotearoa/New Zealand, is designed for children aged from birth to 5 years and values children as competent learners. Te Whriki's two indicative learning outcomes are dispositions and working theories, described as combinations of knowledge, skills and attitudes. While the notion of dispositions from a sociocultural theoretical perspective has been developed (e.g., Carr, 2001; Claxton & Carr, 2004), the parallel and interdependent concept of working theories has remained less well-understood. Although a few projects have included consideration of working theories (e.g., Peters & Davis, 2011), there has been little progress so far in defining the concept beyond Claxton's (1990) notion of minitheories to underpin studies theoretically. In outlining the notion of working theories, Te Whriki states: In early childhood, children are developing more elaborate and useful working theories about themselves and the people, places, and things in their lives. These working theories contain a combination of knowledge about the world, skills and strategies, attitudes, and expectations. Children develop working theories through observing, listening, doing, participating, discussing, and representing within the topics and activities provided in the programme. As children gain greater experience, knowledge, and skills, the theories they develop will become more widely applicable and have more connecting links between them. Working theories become increasingly useful for making sense of the world, for giving the child control over what happens, for problem-solving, and for further learning. Many of these theories retain a magical and creative quality, and for many communities, theories about the world are infused with a spiritual dimension (Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 44). The term working theories is also included in one of the goals for the strand of exploration: [children] develop working theories for making sense of the natural, social, physical, and material worlds (p. 82), including theories about social relationships and social concepts, such as friendship, authority, and social rules and understandings, and working theories about the living world and how to care for it (p. 90). However, these descriptions and examples describe what working theories do, how they might arise and develop during social interactions and what they might be about, rather than providing a clear definition of what a working theory is as a notion. Further examples that researchers and teachers can relate to and develop in order to better understand children's thinking and concept development provides a useful contribution to the literature. 1.2. Working theories Children are motivated to explore their experiences from the viewpoint of prior, possibly limited, understandings. Within cultural-historical approaches, temporality, motive, culturally-valued knowledge and pursuits are central to understanding children's thinking. During children's inquiry into their worlds, their thinking is dynamic and involves theorising and developing ideas, often in creative ways that relate to their current, albeit limited, experiences. In general, theories are viewed as ways to seek patterns, meanings and explanations about phenomena. While working theories do not have the same status as grand theories, as a form of inquiry and hypothesising they are a way to acknowledge the serious nature of children's knowledge seeking about their worlds. Working theories might be considered the manifestation of this inquiry into meaning seeking, either implicitly, in children's internal cognitive processes, or explicitly, as children express their thoughts to others (Hedges, in press). The overall goal therefore that concurrent sets of working theories are working towards is children's meaning making and knowledge building. A definition-in-progress of the notion that is being tested in the present research is: Working theories are present from childhood to adulthood. They represent the tentative, evolving ideas and understandings formulated by children as they engage with others to think, ponder, wonder, learn and make sense of the world in order to participate more effectively within it. Adults cannot assume or intuit children's motivations and understandings, therefore they need to know children and their lives well, and listen to and observe children's behaviours closely to interpret actions and understandings. Hence, a number of theories related to children's participation in everyday learning and inquiry are likely to be pertinent to the development of the construct (see Hedges & Cullen, 2012). This paper focuses on Vygotsky's notions on everyday and scientific concepts and potential links to the construct of working theories. 2. Theoretical informants to the notion of working theories Claxton's (1990) concept of minitheories was noted in the draft of Te Whriki (Ministry of Education, 1993) as the theoretical basis of working theories. Claxton argued that in the early years of life, through gradual editing and improvement, minitheories become more effective, comprehensive, appropriate and connected. However, Claxton's theory alone is insufficient almost 20 years later to describe the complexities of the construct, as they are more multifaceted than the somewhat discrete explanations of minitheories he described. Claxton stated that the theoretical foundation of minitheories was constructivist because of their personal nature. Yet, the ways he described the effects of emotions and motivation on learning, and the roles of people, cultural tools and experiences and educational contexts in the origins, development and utilisation of minitheories lead to theoretical considerations 144 H. Hedges / Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 1 (2012) 143152 that are more broadly sociocultural in approach. As the definition-in-progress states, children need opportunities to think, inquire, participate and discuss ideas with others. This paper specifically focuses on Vygotsky's (1986) theories of everyday and scientific knowledge. Therefore, explanations of these ideas and their potential relevance to the notion of working theories are now described. 2.1. Vygotskian concepts: everyday and scientic concepts Vygotsky (1986) argued that development is shaped by cultural-historical inheritances. Vygotsky valued children's early experiences in families and communities, viewing these as a foundation for later cognitive development. Therefore his theories were not confined to consideration of cognitive development per se, but were in keeping with his belief that development involves affective and cognitive components. Of significance, he also believed that learning involved much more than domain knowledge and included knowledge about becoming a contributing member of a community, culture and society. One central idea in Vygotskian theorising is the reciprocal relationship between everyday (i.e., spontaneous, experiential) and scientific (i.e., formal, conceptual) concepts. During the early childhood years, Vygotsky believed that everyday concepts were most prominent. Everyday concepts emerged from children's thinking about their daily experiences, that is, they occur spontaneously in the context of normal participation in family and community practices and activities. Conversely, scientific concepts were regarded as situated within coherent knowledge systems and are therefore taught in more structured ways using academic models in specialised educational settings. During schooling, scientific concepts become dominant, but can usefully draw upon prior everyday knowledge and experience to understand related scientific concepts. Moreover, while scientific concepts represent theoretical principles and do not rely on practical experiences for their understanding, practical experiences of everyday concepts can feed intuitively into theoretical understandings. Further, if viewed as a continuum of conceptual development, everyday concepts develop upwards towards abstractness and scientific concepts ascend from abstract to concrete in processes of contextualisation that rely on specific academic input rather than occurring spontaneously (Davydov, 1988). The relationship between the two types of concepts is therefore rich and complex. This paper focuses on children's spontaneous development of everyday concepts. When a child uses the same concept in different contexts, perhaps experimentally, inconsistently or inappropriately, working theories about the concept might be viewed as developing. When the concept is used appropriately consistently, the child might be perceived as now at least intuitively understanding the concept. Experience and understanding of concepts therefore first occur on the social plane as children express, test out and revise working theories and are later internalised to the cognitive plane through complex processes of working through levels and relationships of understandings. Vygotsky based his associated research on the assumption therefore that concepts could not be assimilated by a child, but needed to undergo a process of dynamic, creative and complex development during social and cultural interactions. Vygotsky identified three phases of everyday concept development. First, the collection of syncretic ideas in heaps occurs, that is ideas and objects vaguely linked through a child's perspective. In other words, a collection of experiences and associated ideas develop that seemto have no linking conceptual principles and may even be illogical and inconsistent froman adult perspective. The second phase involves the development from thinking in complexes, using approaches such as functional connections and direct experiences to establish similarities, albeit often inconsistent ones, between objects, to the chain complex where meanings are recognisably connected and organised but still ill-formed. This phase then moves finally to pseudoconcepts where generalisations are formed that resemble adult understandings but remain unsophisticated in relation to scientific concepts. The third phase is the abstractionof elements of concepts in a formof analysis and synthesis, developing potential concepts where understandings remain fairly consistent and applied inappropriately less often than pseudoconcepts. However, these understandings are still intuitive and likely unable to be clearly articulated by children. Moreover, the ways that complexes and concepts develop are predetermined by the meaning each associated word has in the adult language/s the child is immersed in. Vygotsky's double-stimulation method used contrived research protocols to establish children's understandings derived from everyday activities. Therefore it is possible that the processes of considering children's understandings were not as naturalistic as many modern-day studies that observe children participating naturally in family and community activities. Further, he focused on children giving verbal labels to concepts that linked perceptual traits. The present study suggests that these labels may be linked in intuitive, nave ways to form working theories about everyday events and situations. In relation to everyday and scientific concepts, Vygotsky was keen that future research might further clarify their interdependence, and we anticipate an extension of the study of development and instruction to lower age levels (1986, pp. 208209). Early childhood for Vygotsky meant children aged 37 years. Vygotsky could not have foreseen the recent burgeoning of early childhood institutions for children from birth to 7 years in response to global historical, cultural and economic conditions. These settings may therefore provide the earlier opportunities he alluded to for researching the ways children develop concurrently various concepts through the phases of everyday concept development. Further, these enable such research to occur in more spontaneous ways than adopting experimental approaches. In this way the working nature of children's thinking, evidenced in their spontaneous actions, behaviours and conversations, may be more visible. Children might also perhaps begin to link everyday and early conceptual knowledge through play and language. I argue in this paper that ways everyday knowledge develops, and later, ways everyday and scientific knowledge might develop and merge in children's thinking and learning, may involve the notion of working theories. 145 H. Hedges / Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 1 (2012) 143152 2.2. The zone of proximal development and mediation Two further Vygotskian concepts are relevant to the development of understandings of working theories as a concept: the zone of proximal development (ZPD) and mediation. Vygotsky (1986) described the ZPD as developing psychological capabilities in children. Vygotsky's aim for education was to provide experiences for children within their ZPDs, activities that are challenging but attainable, that support and transition their learning. In addition, Chaiklin (2003) explained Vygotsky's ZPD as a metaphor to represent a zone where children's everyday understandings interact with conceptual knowledge provided by mediators of learning, such as teachers. Further, the ZPD can be viewed as a dynamic, creative zone during mediated interactions (Lidz & Gindis, 2003) that may not be confined to academic concepts (Rogoff, 2003). In this way, the zone can be viewed also as a zone of potential development where opportunities for teachers to observe and mediate children's implicit thinking and knowledge building in action occur. Mediation is a relational concept that describes tools and processes used in meaning making in implicit and explicit ways. Explicit mediation refers to the constraints and affordances of ideas and activities frompeople or cultural tools to human thinking; implicit mediation refers to the role of social and inner speech as communication that assists learning (Wertsch, 2007). Mediation might then be considered the working mechanism or aspect of working theories; processes of creating conscious awareness of concepts through various implicit and explicit strategies. Mediation also connects societal and cultural processes with human cognition. The importance of pedagogical relationships, in which teachers recognise and respond to children's attempts to think and theorise about their lives and worlds, are therefore vital in using a concept such as working theories as a tool for learning. Thus, children might employ working theories to make sense of new experiences or to test connections between objects and concepts during their ongoing theorising about their everyday lives and worlds. Working theories might first then be viewed as acting as implicit mediators within children's active attempts in their own minds to extend and challenge their thinking. Second, working theories become a way for children to express, represent, explore, connect, extend and/or review and reject their understandings in pedagogical relationships. Further, when exposed to explicit mediation that incorporates conceptual knowledge, development through the phases of everyday concept development and, later, links between everyday and scientific concepts may begin to occur. While children may not be conscious of these mediational strategies, teachers may be able to recognise these and utilise them to stretch children's thinking and concept development. Therefore it is vital that teachers have understandings of the concept of working theories, and be able to describe both examples of these and ways teachers might encourage and support the editing, connecting and revising of early concept development in children's thinking. 2.3. Rationale for study While Chaiklin and Hedegaard (2009) and Hedegaard (2007) continued to study ways educational practices can lead concept development through structured research protocols as Vygotsky did, they also attended to the notions of motives in learning, that is, the child's attitudes and orientations in relation to the particular practices of their societal life (Chaiklin & Hedegaard, 2009, p. 190). Chaiklin and Hedegaard (2009) also described a concept of radical-local teaching and learning to emphasise combining intellectual concepts with the local content and conditions in children's families, communities and cultures. They state that: Core conceptual relations within subject-matter areas have to be related specically to children's life situations so that this academic knowledge can become integrated with local knowledge, thereby qualitatively transforming children's everyday concepts and the possibility to use this knowledge in the local practice (p. 192). These ideas are of significance to the present paper as they confer a prominent position to children's existing personal knowledge and interests, ways these might be influenced by family and community experiences, and strategies that might assist children to develop everyday and early scientific concepts during their play and inquiry in a range of family and community settings. Working theories may be one of these strategies. 3. Methodology Settings such as contemporary Western early childhood education services provide opportunities to research natural ways in which children might build personal, everyday knowledge and begin to develop early conceptual knowledge. In taking up this challenge, sociocultural methodologies provide rich, contextualised understandings of teachers' and children's thinking and learning. This paper draws on findings from a qualitative, interpretivist case study. The study took place in two settings providing all-day education and care in Auckland, New Zealand. Both centres catered for children aged 6 months to 5 years who mixed freely together throughout the learning and teaching environments. Myers Park Kindergartens NZ (KiNZ) Early Learning Centre was located in the central city area and Small Kauri Early Childhood Education Centre (SK) was located in South Auckland. Fifteen teachers took part in the study, 13 fully qualified and two studying for a qualification. Three of the teachers had qualified well before the introduction of Te Whriki, while the rest had graduated in the years since 1996 from a variety of teacher education providers nationwide. The study investigated teachers' understandings of the notion of working theories and generated examples of children's working theories. The main data generation techniques involved first, group interviews with teachers on three occasions during 146 H. Hedges / Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 1 (2012) 143152 the study to ascertain their initial and later understandings of the construct of working theories and their ability to describe examples (reported in Hedges, 2011). Secondly, a research assistant spent 6 weeks (4 h per day) immersed in participant observation in each setting. Field notes and photographs about children's interests and inquiries and teachers' engagement with these were generated in order to analyse this data for examples of working theories. Additional sources of data were teachers' curriculum documentation, parent journals of children's interests, questions and ideas, and photos taken by children related to these, over a three-week period. Near the end of the data generation period, each research assistant undertook individual stimulated recall interviews with children of sufficient verbal capacity in an attempt to ascertain the veracity of the data generated on each child fromthe child's perspective. Thus, multiple sources of data over a period of time assisted deep knowledge of the children and interpretations of their words and behaviours to develop among the teachers and researchers involved. Once data generation was complete, descriptive and thematic analysis occurred first through continuous reading of the data in a constant comparative technique (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Miles & Huberman, 1994) to establish teachers' understandings of the concept of working theories. These understandings were particularly illustrated by the examples of children's learning they described in interviews that they recognised during their interactions with children or in their curriculum documentation. This paper draws on the teacher interview data, using the name of the centre, number of the group interview and page of the transcript as a code (e.g., SK/1/12) in describing and discussing the findings and the child interview data noted as child's name and interview page number (e.g., Isabella/3), in describing and discussing the findings. 4. Findings: connecting children's everyday knowledge, working theories and early conceptual knowledge Teachers had intuitive understandings of the concept of working theories as snippets of knowledge that children were attempting to connect (Hedges, 2011). While they had similar conceptions of what constituted a working theory, they differed on theoretical underpinnings for these, initially favouring constructivist explanations consistent with Piagetian views and Claxton's notions. The teachers revealed their understandings through stories of children's exploration and engagement in learning and/or by recalling examples of children's thinking that had appeared interesting. The importance of working theories as a complex intuitive construct that may link related everyday and scientific concepts was expressed by one teacher, Daniel: I just remember thinking there's some things that you learn especially at high school and they just click and I've found that especially with physics. There's some things that I could just get straight away and I didn't really have to think about it and I wonder if that's from my working theories developed as a child? I think of hitting that tennis ball. You start to work out theories about trajectory and power and also about levers then at high school you actually learn exactly why that happens. You're shown a formula and for me stuff like that just really clicked. But as a child you can't explain it, you do it without actually knowing. (SK/2/1) This acknowledgement of intuitive understandings and of their assistance in developing conceptual understandings appears intrapersonal, but relies on extensive experiences in social and cultural contexts, including engagement in interpersonal dialogue with others, in order for complex knowledge to develop. Therefore this study sought to move explanations of working theories forward, consistent with present sociocultural interpretations of Te Whriki. 4.1. Children's working theories and everyday concept formation This paper now takes up Vygotsky's challenge of considering how ideas about everyday concepts, specifically in the three phases of concept formation from random and spontaneous thinking to the early consideration of more abstract concepts in coherent patterns might be observed in children aged from one to five years, an age range including those younger than Vygotsky considered. The concepts represent those children explored during the opportunities afforded by activities and interactions with peers and teachers in their early childhood centres. Examples accompanied the teachers' discussions of what constituted working theories over the course of the research. While these findings did relate to the phases of Vygotsky's everyday concept development, there also appeared to be a necessary precursor stage to the development of thinking: infants' (children under the age of 2 years) exploratory play with objects in the teaching and learning environment. 4.1.1. Exploratory play prior to the rst phase In the context of technology, Napper (1991) proposed a two-stage model for capability development. Napper identified that an exploratory phase was vital as preparation for a problem-solving stage. Similarly, in the present study, hands-on exploration and manipulation of objects and materials such as water, sand, paper and balls were of apparent importance in pre-verbal infants' play experiences prior to the development of everyday understandings. The following examples of exploratory play with objects all relate to infants, indicating that this phase of engaging in practical experiences might indeed represent a common aspect of early cognition. Although no examples were offered in relation to toddlers and young children, this may simply mean that teachers were more focused on noticing aspects of children's thinking that were more recognisable verbally. Kirsten, a teacher of infants and toddlers, described one girl's exploration with materials as: She was holding it up and she was exploring it, she was scrunching it and just kind of guring out what this piece of paper or thing was [A few weeks later] I had put out some different material in our room, material that you can look through that was quite sheer in different colours, she was doing the same thing, looking through it, scrunching it up, so I made a link 147 H. Hedges / Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 1 (2012) 143152 to that because she was just exploring the different materials that were around her in the environment, but she might not have made a link between the two yet. (KiNZ/3/34) During this phase, the main issue that arose for teachers was how to try to understand what pre-verbal children are thinking and theorising. You can't work it out at that age, you've just got to keep observing them in order to nd that out as you go along, especially at that age, you can't question them, you've really got to observe. (Kirsten/KiNZ/3/4) Teachers commonly responded to these kinds of explorations/investigations by offering more materials and different experiences with the same kinds of ideas and concepts to help children move towards the next phase of attempting to make some early connections, even if these were quite child-specific and/or idiosyncratic. Teachers also let childrenexperience difficulties during these explorations. As Kirsten suggested, allowing children to experience frustration during strategies such as trial and error may be vital in developing dispositions such as persistence and resilience that may be vital to the encouragement of working theory development. Here the parallel nature of the two outcomes of Te Whriki (dispositions and working theories) was apparent. 4.1.2. Phase one: syncretic heaps The syncretic heaps phase is the way that children indicate some understandings about ideas through objects that are linked from their perspective. Several examples were narrated where there appeared to be no connection between the ideas children were expressing. One teacher, Anna, described an example she had observed: I think when children express themselves they're making their own sense of things [T]he other day in the sandpit someone said oh the volcano that we made is milk and we're giving the milk to our cow and it can't make its own and it needs to feed its babies so they'd just taken two different things and linked them together and that was their knowledge of the world. It doesn't have to be right; it's just piecing together all the parts I guess and working it out. (KiNZ/1/10) It is possible to see a link here to Chaiklin and Hedegaard's (2009) concept of radical-local teaching and learning that emphasises teachers can build intellectual concepts using the local content and conditions in children's families, communities and cultures. New Zealand has a strong history of an agricultural economy and its geography is replete with volcanoes. In this way, it may not be so difficult to understand children trying to make sense of experiences utilising familiar ideas and representing these in their play. Nevertheless, teachers expressed some pedagogical difficulties related to this phase. One was that some theories were outrageous (Nadine/KiNZ/1/15), foreign (Anna/KiNZ/1/10) and totally ridiculous but great to hear (Daniel/SK/1/8). The examples illustrated that in this phase the task of connecting and transferring, editing and/or revising two seemingly-relatedpieces of knowledge from children's perspectives was not yet possible. Yet, participating with adults and peers assists the development of experiences and opportunities that illustrate the intuitive nature of connections that are accurate fromtheir perspectives, but may be situation-specific for very young children. These ideas can contribute to later, more sophisticated theorising if teachers respond positively and encouragingly to children's initial thinking and can drawon conceptual frameworks such as Chaiklin and Hedegaard's. 4.1.3. Phase two: thinking in complexes In this phase, Vygotsky suggested that children are actively trying to make connections between objects and to extrapolate understandings about ideas that may result in unsophisticated generalisations. Simply through age, maturity and experience, these connections are often inconsistent or nave. Jia Mei described children observing parents and teachers planting gardens and children's linked assumption that the act of planting something in soil will lead to growth. This assumption is supported by Inagaki and Hatano's (2002) conception of nave biology, whereby children make unsophisticated generalisations based on limited experience. As Jia Mei explains, such situations provide opportunities for teachers to engage in conversations that may lead to more mature understandings. [The adults] put the seeds inthe soil the plant will come upandthe childwill maybe one day he pick upa stick but it's just a stick he put it in the soil, in the ground, he thought the thing will come up but actually the thing is dead so that time like a teacher or anybody can support him or explain him why the stick not growing That's a working theory for the child. (KiNZ/1/26) Two pedagogical issues arose in this phase. First, this kind of teaching and learning situation created a dilemma for teachers in relation to valuing the theorising that children engage with and deciding when the introduction of conceptual language and knowledge might be useful, to introduce ideas and contribute to eventual scientific understandings. Daniel (teacher) noted that: Facts are cheap so it's not necessarily about correcting somebody; it's about helping them to develop working theories, whether they're right or wrong. (SK/2/6) We tell children don't pick [a tomato] until it's turned red. Well I've got green tomatoes growing at home now that don't turn red so a fact, I always thought you never pick a tomato until they're red, that's from childhood. Actually that's turned over on its head now and you can get yellow ones with stripes [T]he world is changing and facts aren't facts anymore. (SK/2/16) 148 H. Hedges / Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 1 (2012) 143152 Vygotsky (1986) clearly supports Daniel's thinking: [D]irect teaching of concepts is impossible and fruitless (p. 150), as do Chaiklin and Hedegaard (2009): Facts alone are not sufficient. Children need some way to make sense of these facts (p. 192). Furthermore, introducing concepts too early and without relevance to children's context and experiences may cause confusion so that children reject the new information and continue to use their own experiences to make meaning anyway (Hannust & Kikkas, 2007). However, it may also be important for teachers to introduce language to support children's theorising, use accurate terminology and attempt to challenge and extend children's thinking in order for learning to (eventually) lead development in the way Vygotsky envisaged. The importance of language within a domain suggests that one should not cheat on vocabulary; terms such as respiration, nutrients, and the concepts to which they apply belong in the preschool classroom, both because children learn words at an astonishing rate during these years and because proper vocabulary is part and parcel of conceptual growth (Gelman & Brenneman, 2004, p. 152). Moreover, repeated experiences where children are exposed to incongruous information make conceptual change more likely to occur subsequently (Inagaki & Hatano, 2002). The second main pedagogical dilemma related to this phase of thinking in complexes was the ways teachers might value and respect children's partial and developing theories. Teachers were keen to find ways to respond to and document working theories so that parents understood and were not critical of teaching approaches that did not necessarily correct children's conceptual understandings. I think as a teaching profession we need to know that you can identify a working theory, write a learning story about it and the working theory can be completely wrong [conceptually] but you can feel comfortable [Name] was trying to work out about her ears and why they were stiff and she ended up saying they had bones in them and I left it at that actually and I didn't start talking about cartilage [But] I wouldn't want to write that because I would see that as a slight on me that the parents would think You're not doing your job. You haven't taught them the right way. (Daniel/SK1//2021) This lack of documentation of working theories (influenced also by the dominance of efforts towards documenting dispositions that has occurred in New Zealand) was countered later in the research by growing confidence in understanding and explaining these kinds of examples of children's thinking and theorising. With this increased confidence and understanding, teachers may begin sharing children's working theories more often with parents, which in turn will enable parents to further mediate the development of children's understandings with new information and experiences. Where children are able to make connections with their previous learning in multiple social and cultural contexts, they might refine their working theories in an effort to understand their lives and world. However, where children's knowledge is limited due to experience and/or maturity and/or opportunities to make connections across contexts, they may only be able to make functional connections. In that instance, the inconsistent information is likely to remain as discrete knowledge within chain complexes though it may later be recalled and eventually integrated into early abstraction to potential concepts. While much of children's learning may involve unexpected, haphazard and spontaneous opportunities, the potential is nonetheless evident for implicit and explicit mediation within children's ZPDs to purposefully precipitate working theories and early concept development. 4.1.4. Phase three: abstraction to potential concepts Few examples of this phase were found through the examination of all data (interviews, participant observation field notes and curriculum documentation). Perhaps it is an indication that in attempting to apply Vygotsky's theory of everyday concept development to younger children, that those aged less than 5 years may rarely reach this phase of development. Alternatively, it may also be that there were simply few examples in this particular data of children with islands of expertise (Crowley & Jacobs, 2002, p. 333); that is, children who may have an interest in a topic that inspires them to develop rich early conceptual knowledge in that one specific area. One such example was four-year-old Peter, who had developed expertise in planning and building. He was able to draw detailed plans of what he wanted to construct, determine the tools and materials necessary, and carry out sustained and complex projects. This interest, and the conceptual knowledge that went with it, was strongly fostered by the adults around him, including Peter's father, who was a builder, and by one of the teachers at the centre, Daniel, who was once an electrician and had a background in engineering and an interest in home maintenance. This interplay was very evident in a long-running project to build a tree-house at the centre, which was an amalgamation of Peter's ideas and plans, implemented with materials provided by Peter's father and with the help of Peter's teacher who was able to help him execute his ideas and develop the conceptual knowledge and skills he needed. Therefore some early intuitive scientific concepts that Peter displayed were related to planning, designing, implementing, executing and evaluating technological processes. From the present small study, the findings could only support that some appropriate abstractions to potential concepts were being made by a number of children in one important area, that of knowing about significant developmental characteristics of infants and of caring for younger citizens. Chaiklin and Hedegaard's (2009) work on the local content and conditions in children's families, communities and cultures related specifically to children's life situations (p. 192) became particularly apparent. It is likely that some children with younger siblings and cousins have had a number of everyday experiences in these areas. Children 149 H. Hedges / Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 1 (2012) 143152 aged less than 5 years are perhaps less likely to be developing potential scientific concepts that relate to discipline-specific academic knowledge and more likely to have relatively sophisticated knowledge about matters such as caring for other human beings. For instance, four-year-old Isabella had a strong interest in taking care of younger children at the centre, particularly her younger brother. She was very involved in helping the younger children with everyday tasks and with getting help for them from teachers when they were upset. Isabella commented: I look after all the little kids tell the teachers when they're crying I help the little kids with a lot of things, do puzzles and wash their hands, get the towels and get their lunchbox and bottles. (Isabella/3) She had a relatively sophisticated conceptual understanding of the developmental characteristics of infants and their behaviours and care needs, to the extent of being able to explain what and how infants learn through putting objects into their mouths. Further, she knew this was something that was less appropriate once a child was older. The field researcher (Lisa) asked Isabella about the conversation she had with a teacher about why infants put things in their mouths. Lisa: Do you remember what you said?Isabella: So they can grow up. And so they can learn. Lisa: How do they learn by putting things in their mouth? Isabella: Because they can feel it, so they learn. So when they grow up they don't put things in their mouth. Sometimes big kids still put things in their mouth like [name] because he still puts things in his mouth. But when you are big you are not supposed to. Babies can put sand in their mouth so they just put sand in their mouth and learn that they can't put sand in their mouth and they are just learn[ing] all the time. (Isabella/23) This focus on culturally-valued knowledge related to knowing about and caring for infants and social well-being is in keeping with Vygotsky's (1986) belief that development involves learning much more than discipline knowledge and includes knowledge related to becoming a contributing member of a community and society. It is also consistent with the exploration goal from Te Whriki related to theories about social relationships and social concepts and social rules and understandings (1996, p. 90) and with Te Whriki's overall aspiration for children: To grow up as competent and condent learners and communicators, healthy in mind, body, and spirit, secure in their sense of belonging and in the knowledge that they make a valued contribution to society (Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 9). In summary, working theories appeared to act first as an implicit and explicit mediating mechanism in children's ZPDs to progress through the phases of everyday concept development. Second, working theories may eventually lead children to the beginning of the development of formal and coherent bodies of conceptual knowledge that are vital in the adult world, such as literacy and science, and knowledge pertinent to the multiple identities, roles and responsibilities they will enact as responsible adults in their families and cultures. Growing understandings occur when children's learning and thinking are supported by the mediation of peers and knowledgeable and sensitive adults. 5. Discussion 5.1. The importance of motivation in working theories Children's curiosity and exploration as expressions of their eagerness to learn are present in the examples of children's thinking and theorising described in this paper. These can be utilised as motivation for thinking and knowledge construction. Children are first learning through their experiences related to their lives in families, communities and cultures. These experiences lead to intuitive knowledge that can be drawn on as a cognitive and cultural resource for learning, in what Daniel (teacher) described as a breakthrough moment. Young children [have] lots and lots of working theories which are all over the place and thinking and reasoning and problem solving sometimes links in, and then it's like a breakthrough moment for that child, suddenly something has happened and two working theories, you know a whole thing might just suddenly t. It's because they've thought and they've problem solved and reasoned, but maybe not all the time. Maybe sometimes they've just seen something happen and that's linked those two theories together, it's like oh okay! (SK/1/1617) Early childhood settings are an important example of community learning facilities that can support working theory and everyday concept development and introduce interesting experiences, language and concepts to children. Children will later gain conceptual information through access to books and in collaborative conversations again with knowledgeable others. This will eventually result in more complex understandings, moving from pseudoconcepts to potential concepts and later, at school, coherent bodies of knowledge that represent scientific knowledge. Meantime, they use strategies such as questioning, observing, puzzling and creative and imaginative thinking to associate, dissociate and re-associate pieces of knowledge (Fleer, 2010) in the form of ever-evolving working theories. Repeated opportunities to participate with others (adults and children) to develop theories and knowledge and practice related skills in an early childhood setting are valuable. 150 H. Hedges / Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 1 (2012) 143152 5.2. Teacher knowledge and practice Vygotskian and post-Vygotskian theories serve to highlight early childhood pedagogical emphases as comprising a responsive, knowledgeable role for teachers to lead learning. Conceptual learning can then potentially be co-constructed between teachers and children (Fleer, 2010). Teacher professional knowledge building can then incorporate learning to use conceptual language that treats children as capable young learners (see Gelman & Brenneman, 2004). Teachers can also consider interactional strategies that support children to reflect on their learning (Carr, 2011) and promote complex and sustained learning (Simmons, Schimanski, McGarva, Cullen, & Haworth, 2005). Hedegaard (2007) notes that the ways children's personal knowledge might be related to conceptual knowledge depends on the situational conditions, that is, the affordances and constraints of early childhood institutional environment. The situational conditions include the way curiosity is stimulated, provided for and responded to. Working theories might become recognised as a significant strategy within children's thinking and cognition strategies. Working theories place an onus on a teacher to have the knowledge and skill to foster understandings, particularly to highlight conceptual knowledge embedded in children's play more consciously (Fleer, 2010). Teachers' subject content knowledge and knowledge of pedagogical strategies appropriate to early childhood education may need to be re-thought within an inquiry approach built on sociocultural perspectives, particularly when teachers attempt to connect conceptual pathways and foster curiosity. 6. Conclusion This paper has developed Vygotskian ideas related to the constructs of everyday and scientific knowledge in relation to the concept of working theories, a learning outcome from Te Whriki. Children are motivated intrinsically to develop their understandings of their worlds. The construct of working theories appears to have a considerable appeal as an implicit and explicit strategy, mechanism and tool to explain both the content and processes of children's early thinking and knowledge development. I have also suggested that early exploratory play with a range of equipment, materials and resources may be an important experiential precursor set of practical experiences to inform early everyday concept formation. The paper has provided examples of children's thinking from teachers that illustrate intuitive connections between ideas that may be evidence of everyday knowledge and working theories in action, even when children themselves have not expressed these verbally. Further, I have argued that children's working theories may act as a construct that represents children's inquiries and efforts at life theorising, assists children to progress through the phases of everyday concept development and forms a potential mediating link between everyday and conceptual knowledge. Sensitive mediation in terms of both curricular and pedagogical approaches from knowledgeable teachers can assist cognitive thinking processes and knowledge creation. Future research is necessary to progress understandings of the construct of working theories more rigorously in order to distinguish it from more general ideas about children's cognition, thinking and concept development and consider to what extent each working element constitutes a theory. Further research can also develop connections between dispositions and working theories and develop further insight into children's thinking and knowledge building processes across teaching and learning in differing contexts and cultures. Acknowledgements Sincere thanks is due to the participating teachers, parents and children of KiNZ Myers Park Early Learning Centre and Small Kauri Early Childhood Education Centre, November 2010February 2011, for generously allowing the research team to share in their lives for the duration of the project. The study was reviewed and approved by the University of Auckland Human Ethics Committee (reference 2010/446). In addition, approval was granted by the Auckland Kindergarten Association Research Access and Ethics Committee on November 9, 2010 for KiNZ's participation in the project. Ethical considerations occurred throughout, including at the end of each study when the principle of credit was appliedteachers' and children's real names are used to acknowledge participation. The School of Teaching, Learning and Development provided funding for the fieldwork costs of the study. The University of Auckland's provision of summer research scholarships enabled Lisa Guest and Nadila Roslee to undertake the fieldwork with teachers and children. A scholarship the following year to Sarah Jones is also acknowledged. Sarah assisted with the investigation of the literature and preparation of this paper. I am also appreciative of my graduate students, particularly Daniel Lovatt and Jude Knight, for their interest in this concept, contributing to my thinking about children's working theories and encouraging me to venture further into the unknown in attempting to see inside children's minds and motivations. 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