ABSTRACT

 This ground-breaking handbook provides a much-needed, contemporary and authoritative reference text on young children’s thinking. The different perspectives represented in the thirty-nine chapters contribute to a vibrant picture of young children, their ways of thinking and their efforts at understanding, constructing and navigating the world.

The Routledge International Handbook of Young Children’s Thinking and Understanding brings together commissioned pieces by a range of hand-picked influential, international authors from a variety of disciplines who share a high public profile for their specific developments in the theories of children’s thinking, learning and understanding.

The handbook is organised into four complementary parts:

• How can we think about young children’s thinking?: Concepts and contexts

• Knowing about the brain and knowing about the mind

• Making sense of the world

• Documenting and developing children’s thinking

Supported throughout with relevant research and case studies, this handbook is an international insight into the many ways there are to understand children and childhood paired with the knowledge that young children have a strong, vital, and creative ability to think and to understand, and to create and contend with the world around them.

part I|120 pages

How can we think about young children's thinking? Concepts and contexts

chapter 5|11 pages

The organisation of memory and thought

Where the boundaries of now meet the boundaries of me

chapter 8|9 pages

The clinical interview

The child as a partner in conversations versus the child as an object of research

chapter 9|13 pages

Young children's narrative abilities

Links to syntax comprehension and reading

part II|128 pages

Knowing about the brain and knowing about the mind

chapter 12|17 pages

Executive functions and school readiness

Identifying multiple pathways for school success

chapter 15|10 pages

Mind-mindedness

Forms, features and implications for infant-toddler pedagogy

chapter 16|10 pages

Metacognitive experiences

Taking account of feelings in early years education

chapter 17|16 pages

Making learning visible

The role of language in the development of metacognition and self-regulation in young children

chapter 19|9 pages

Embodied cognition in children

Developing mental representations for action

chapter 20|11 pages

Sensitive periods

part III|115 pages

Making sense of the world

chapter 21|11 pages

Babies, boys, boats and beyond

Children's working theories in the early years

chapter 26|12 pages

Recognising ‘the sacred spark of wonder’ 1

Scribbling and related talk as evidence of how young children's thinking may be identified

part IV|126 pages

Documenting and developing children's thinking

chapter 31|10 pages

The development of learning power

A new perspective on child development and early education

chapter 35|17 pages

Possibility thinking

From what is to what might be

chapter 36|15 pages

Whose activity is it?

The role of child- and adult-initiated activity in young children's creative thinking

chapter 37|15 pages

Young children drawing

Providing a supportive environment

chapter 38|13 pages

Already equal and able to speak

Practising philosophical enquiry with young children

chapter 39|15 pages

What preschool is like

Children's interviews, photographs, and picture selections from two different contexts