ABSTRACT
One of the most obvious forms of communication that affects children’s cognition is teaching. Children experience teaching as a common sociocultural activity. If defines school and, to some degree, preschool, but is not restricted to those settings. Teaching frequently occurs at home and on the playground. Parents, siblings and peers teach children numerous things from academic skills to household chores to sports. Although we can justifiably claim to know much about the knowledge and skills that can be learned through teaching, it is less clear what makes this sociocultural practice possible. When do children recognize teaching as an identifiable activity, especially when a “teaching moment” may be inserted without ceremony into the ongoing flow of behavior? When do they have the cognitive prerequisites to understand teaching, given that the objective of the activity is to convey knowledge, and hence may require theory of mind? And, once they do understand what teaching is, does that change how they can participate in and benefit from it?
