"Even when we're big we'll still be friends": Working theories in children's learning

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Te Whariki Te Whariki (Ministry of Education, 1996) has been widely acclaimed as a curriculum document intended to cater for children from birth to five years. It has been noted for its progressive and nonprescriptive bases, emphasis on learning processes and orientations rather than knowledge outcomes, and bicultural content (see, for example, Soler & Miller, 2003). Instead of knowledge outcomes, common indicators of achievement in traditional curricula documents, Te Whariki's two indicative learning outcomes are described as dispositions and working theories: In early childhood, holistic, active learning and the total process of learning are emphasised. Knowledge, skills, and attitudes are closely linked. These three aspects combine together to form a child's 'working theory' and help the child develop dispositions that encourage learning. (Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 44) Interpreting Te Whariki from a sociocultural perspective, the notion of dispositions has been explored extensively over the past few years in learning stories developed as an assessment technique (see, for example, Carr, 1997, 2001a, 2001b; Carr & Claxton, 2002; Claxton & Carr, 2004; Ministry of Education, 2004, 2007). The concept of working theories has, however, been largely unexplored and remains nebulous. It is likely that there are two reasons for this: lack of teacher knowledge (and insufficient professional learning programmes or time to investigate the notion) and a lack of theoretical explanation included in Te Whariki. Working theories The concept of working theories is introduced in this way in Te Whariki: 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 ... 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 ... (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). Perhaps due to the Ministry of Education's decision to remove the theoretical endnotes that were included in the draft version of Te Whariki (Ministry of Education, 1993) from the final document, the concept of working theories is not explicated further. Nor was it defined in a recent article in Early Childhood Folio about children's working theories (Simmons, Schimanski, McGarva, Cullen, & Haworth, 2005). During the second action research cycle of their work as a Centre of Innovation, Simmons et al. researched how children's working theories were developed through complex and sustained teaching and learning. As one type of data, teachers utilised a learning-story format to record children's working theories, adding a category of adult-child interactions to augment a sociocultural perspective of the context of learning. Findings reported teaching strategies that enhanced children's learning rather than reporting on children's working theories per se. However, examples were provided of how the notion might be interpreted through the data presented. To unpack the concept of working theories from a sociocultural perspective, we need to return to the draft version of Te Whariki, where reference is made to Claxton (1990) as the source of the notion of working theories. …