Over the past twenty years, I have had many different roles working with children and families. I have been a toddler teacher, a parent and teacher educator, worked in family literacy and child care center programs and traveled to hundreds of child care centers for what used to be called the Office of Child Care Policy. Currently, I work in collaboration with a number of early learning programs to prepare future infant-toddler, preschool and early primary teachers in college courses which include many observations, practicums and internships.
When I read Ellen Galinsky’s second chapter about the importance of facilitating the learning of the second life skill, perspective taking, I couldn’t help but think of the “intersection activity” I learned from my colleague, Barbara Yasui, Shoreline Community College Parent Education, and the Early R.E.A.C.H. program (Respecting Ethnic and Cultural Heritage). In this activity, participants are assigned different roles and asked to imagine they are witnesses to a car accident from several different vantage points or roads coming out of an intersection. The ensuing discussion highlights the very different ways we all see the same event. This exercise is then used as a metaphor for recognizing the need to respect cultural perspectives and other aspects of our diverse stations. Chapter Two of Mind in the Making helped remind me that before we can teach young children about perspective taking, we need to remember to sometimes put our own ideas aside in order to better understand the values and points of view of the families who give us their children to care and educate.
Ellen Galinsky helps readers see that perspective taking is also a skill needed for success in the social, emotional and intellectual areas of both school and life. She details brain research by Amanda Woodward that shows the complexities of how babies develop “people sense.” By as early as five months, babies will look longer at novel events and will notice when a caregiver is acting toward a new goal such as reaching for new objects (79). In addition, they are beginning to have a rudimentary sense of the perspectives of their caregivers - their goals, intentions, feelings and likes/dislikes (80).
When I am out observing my students in their program placements, I am most impressed by teachers who help adults understand that they need to support and expand on the interests of the young child through responsive interactions. In my infant-toddler practicum and seminar, my students learn to become a “dance partner” rather than a director of learning with the youngest children. Galinsky encourages us to watch for “the dance” and celebrate when children increase their skills of interdependence with others. As teachers, we may notice the “I did it!” moments of the young child, but an equal focus on the “We did it together!” moments is also central to learning how to interact and understand others.
A beautiful outcome of facilitating the gradual development of perspective taking is cognitive or intellectual growth. When we focus on the process of learning, especially when children take on different roles in play, rather than just on the recall of facts, we provide young children with opportunities to strengthen their:
- Inhibitory Control – taking on another’s views requires we stop thinking only from our point of view,
- Cognitive Flexibility – seeing something in different ways, and
- Reflection – pondering both our thinking and that of others.
These are the ABC’s of perspective taking, which is an essential skill for children. After reading Galinsky’s book, I am reminded of how this skill is related to supporting a strong identity, which is facilitated by early childhood educators who work with children and families. Perspective taking helps children become more aware of themselves and others, to notice what is fair and unfair, and gives them the confidence to create a classroom community that is a safe and nurturing place that allows for many ways of seeing the world!
The goal of this learning community is to discuss and engage with each other about this topic. What do you do that supports the development of perspective taking in young children?
Blog post written by: Marilyn Chu, EdD
Early Childhood Teacher Educator,
Early Childhood Teacher Educator,
Western Washington University
Marilyn: Thanks for your great thoughts on perspective taking. Since graduate school I have been intrigued by the ways that when engaged in pretend play, children have wonderful opportunities to take perspective. They can see an object from a different perspective, making a block a phone to pretend to call grandmother, or see their friends become entirely different characters. Pretend play is such a critical tool for children's cogntive develop and ability to take a different perspective, a different point of view! I hope we don't forget about the importance of this activity that children so naturally engage in.
ReplyDeleteI keep thinking about the question from the first webinar about whether kids who live in stressful environments have more difficulty with focus and self-control. As I'm re-reading this second chapter on perspective taking, it's reminding me what a huge impact living in stressful situations has on all areas of children's development. In this second chapter, Galinsky reports on some research done by Ross Thompson from UC-Davis. She quotes him, "how children gain insight into "what goes on in people's hearts and minds" depends on how parents interpret "the everyday events of their lives." I think this is such a powerful statement about what is really important to kids and parents - sharing and communicating richly about those "small moments" that, often from an adult's perspective, don't seem that important. Unfortunately, when parents are stressed, they don't remember to take the time to enjoy those everyday routines and experiences and to talk with their child to help them make sense of them and to put them in context of everything else they are learning about the world. A stressed parent for one day wouldn't make that much difference for a child, but when parents are living with high levels of stress every day, one day becomes another and then another, and before too long, the impact on the child becomes very noticeable. I think as we go through the chapters of this book, we will see this impact on the development of all seven of the life skills. The "achievement gap" is definitely about more than a difference in academic achievement. Those of us who work with vulnerable children and families have a HUGE job to do, not only with the children, but also with their families, the school system, and some of our culture's wide-spread belief systems.
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