Building the Cognitive Bridge: Children, Information Technology and Thinking

In the UK, approaches to developing, encouraging and extending children’s’ thinking are of considerable professional interest. Teachers and researchers have explored a number of different strategies. These are categorized in recent Department for Education and Skills (DFES) guidance into three broad areas: philosophical, cognitive intervention, and brain-based learning approaches. Within all these approaches, spoken language has been identified as essential for collaborative learning of any kind and in some, information technology is also seen as a potentially supportive collaborative medium (McGuiness, 1999).This paper takes the form of a case study of children aged 10–11, from two Primary schools and considers the place of diagrammatic software in supporting children’s’ exploration and representation of ideas. The case study provides some concrete examples of ways in which the children made links between their discussion of ideas and their visual record. Children were recorded as they worked together to produce their map and as they reported to their peers on its completion.Data were collected over a six week period using observational schedules, field notes, and pupil feedback. The analysis of maps themselves was a central concern as this as techniques for this are not yet fully established, although some significant work is available (e.g. Mavers et al., 2002) The study showed the ease with which all pupils adapted to the use of the software.

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