Children as meaning makers and theory builders
With the rise of constructivist theories the child has been conceived in more active terminologies. For example, children are considered active seekers of meaning, wanting to explore, study, and understand the world around them. It was Piaget who originally studied children as theory builders in a systematic and scientific way. In his book The Child Conception of the World (1973), Piaget set out to explore how children perceive reality. He and his colleagues interviewed children ages two to fourteen, asking them questions such as, do you know what it means to think, what is it to be alive, where clouds come from, why it rains, what is the moon, the starts, and more.
In the following interview examples from Piaget’s book the children had been asked about the concept of thought, in particular, they were asked what they think with.
Barb (5 1/2 year old)
· -You know what it means to think of something?
· -Yes
· -Think of your house
· -Yes
· -What do you think with?
· -With the ears
Ceres (7 year old)
· -What do you think with?
· -I don’t know
· -Where do you think?
· -Where
· -In the mouth inside the head
From these types of interviews Piaget concluded that children in the preoperational stage are magical thinkers (i.e. they often contribute human characteristics to objects in order to explain their behaviour. For example, rain can be explained as tears coming from sad clouds). From a developmental perspective, differences in thinking reflect differences in children intuitive theories about the world. However, Piaget saw children’s thinking as primitive; he focused on children’s cognitive processes and on what they do not understand or grasp in order to explain their theories. While constructivism acknowledges the role that children play in their own learning, knowledge proposed and held by children is often considered “less than” adult knowledge in terms of its quality; child’s knowledge is considered as incomplete.