The Development of Teaching in Young Children : Observational Study at Nursery School.

Abstract

The main purpose of the present study was to examine young children's ways of teaching peers something. Four-year-old, younger five-year-old children and older five-year-old children were observed in natural settings at nursery school. We collected 123 episodes of peer teaching and analyzed them in three aspects. First, the children were inclined to teach before they were requested to teach by others. Second, many of which they taught peers were the skills with physical and manual activities. And they often told peers to follow social norms and rules. Third, 5-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, used indirect teaching strategy to prompt others to acquire the knowledge and skills by themselves. We propose that we could distinguish between two kinds of teaching depending on whether the teaching children may have the intention to improve other's knowledge, skill, and social norm, and discuss the developmental roots of teaching.