This book examines a preschool didactic approach to learning in which children become better learners than those enrolled in more traditional preschool programs. Seventy-six children in four groups were observed and interviewed over one year, during periods of ordinary teaching as well as during three teaching experiments. Two groups of children were taught according to the new didactic approach, where teachers were asked to plan their teaching according to what kind of understanding they wanted the children to develop, to find out what the children's conceptions were of the theme in question, to create situations around which children had to reflect, to make children reflect at different levels of generality, and to point out to the children the various ways of thinking around a theme. Two groups were subject to ordinary teaching. Children from the program were the better learners, i. e. they changed their way of thinking about several phenomena to a more advanced level of thinking. The conclusion is that teaching children must relate to the way reality is experienced by the children, and it must create situations where children have to think about their own learning and thinking. This is the first time a metacognitive approach has been developed for this age-group (5-6 year olds) in order to influence children's understanding of their own learning as well as their thinking about different aspects of reality. This book will be most useful to researchers, students and teachers in the field of early childhood education. TOC:Contents: Introduction.- General Theoretical Starting-Points.- Methodological Approach.- Children`s Conceptions of Learning in Preschool.- The Story About the Red Apple.- The Story: The Other Side of the River.- Children`s Understanding of an Ecological Cycle.- Summary and Conclusions.- References.- Appendix.- Index.
