Abstract
Despite the growing interest in differences in thinking, much less is known about differences in how children think and how they come to think. The aim of this scoping review is to map out the key concepts underpinning the conceptual boundaries of children’s (5–12 years of age) individual differences in thinking. The scoping review identified eight papers for analysis; all of which were set in an educational context. The findings presented inconclusive results regarding learning and thinking differences related to students’ academic achievement. This review has identified two main drawbacks with this research area. Firstly, there is little consensus between the models employed to understand the different ways children think. To further place these findings into context we look at conceptualisations of individual differences, where individuality is considered a process of stable characteristics interacting with more dynamic structures. This analysis highlights the second drawback, previous research has solely focused on exploring thinking characteristics that are not stable and are therefore subject to change depending on the context. The review found that there is little to no research which explores thinking preferences in children that are consistent across contexts and time. Moreover, there was no research identified that explored the impact of differences in thinking outside the educational domain, such as children’s wellbeing. Further research is required to identify the more stable characteristics that reflect and capture children’s different ways of thinking.
Highlights
Despite the growing interest in differences in thinking [1], much less is known about individual differences in the way children choose to think about and understand the world around them.From a development perspective, as a child grows so does their ability to think and reason
All of the eight studies were set in an educational setting and the majority aimed to investigate the relationship between learning styles and academic achievement
The results are presented by grouping the studies according to their aim: Three papers focused on learning styles and academic achievement, three papers explored the role of matching students’ learning styles to the classroom practices, one paper compared students’ perceived with reported learning preferences and one paper developed their own learning style measure
Summary
Despite the growing interest in differences in thinking [1], much less is known about individual differences in the way children choose to think about and understand the world around them.From a development perspective, as a child grows so does their ability to think and reason. Despite the growing interest in differences in thinking [1], much less is known about individual differences in the way children choose to think about and understand the world around them. In middle to late childhood (6–12 years of age) children develop the ability to reason about concrete experience, they become more systematic, objective and scientific in their thinking [2]. These stages outline how children’s capacity to think develops to understand the world around them but these norms reflect what is typical; they describe expected characteristics of thought at a specific age of development. Individuals show great diversity in development, such that maturation can be conceptualised as a collaboration between developmental stages and individual differences; for a review see Fischer and Silverman [3]
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