Children Solving Problems (eBook)

Stephanie THORNTON (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2009
143 Seiten
Harvard University Press (Verlag)
978-0-674-04434-0 (ISBN)

Infos

A one-year-old attempting to build a tower of blocks may bring the pile crashing down, yet her five-year-old sister accomplishes this task with ease. Why do young children have difficulty with problems that present no real challenge to older children? How do problem-solving skills develop? In Children Solving Problems, Stephanie Thornton surveys recent research from a broad range of perspectives in order to explore this important question.What Thornton finds may come as a surprise: successful problem-solving depends less on how smart we are-or, as the pioneering psychologist Jean Piaget claimed, how advanced our skill in logical reasoning is-and more on the factual knowledge we acquire as we learn and interpret cues from the world around us.Problem-solving skills evolve through experience and dynamic interaction with a problem. But equally important-as the Russian psychologist L. S. Vygotsky proposed-is social interaction. Successful problem-solving is a social process. Sharing problem-solving tasks-with skilled adults and with other children-is vital to a child's growth in expertise and confidence. In problem-solving, confidence can be more important than skill.In a real sense, problem-solving lies at the heart of what we mean by intelligence. The ability to identify a goal, to work out how to achieve it, and to carry out that plan is the essence of every intelligent activity. Could it be, Thornton suggests, that problem-solving processes provide the fundamental machinery for cognitive development? In Children Solving Problems she synthesizes the dramatic insights and findings of post-Piagetian research and sets the agenda for the next stage in understanding the varied phenomena of children's problem-solving.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.7.2009
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Allgemeine Psychologie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Entwicklungspsychologie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Verhaltenstherapie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• ISBN-10: 0-674-04434-7 / 0674044347
• ISBN-13: 978-0-674-04434-0 / 9780674044340