Supporting Children’s Problem Solving
As discussed in the previous section on theory, very young children encounter all kinds of activities in a day that they are trying to figure out. Through encountering these activities, they are engaging with others, the world, and their own internal processes.
For Vygotsky, problem-solving through interaction with others is central to how thinking develops.
Before discussing more perspectives, let’s think about how to support young children in their problem solving in an early learning environment through the scenario below.
Storybook Scenario
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Scaffolding
Other socioculturalists have shared Vygotsky’s view that problem solving is central to children’s thinking. They have built on his approach and collaborated with researchers around the world to discover the many ways in which children engage in problem-solving.
One such theorist and researcher was Jerome Bruner, who coined the term scaffolding, which we know so well in education. Most people think that Vygotsky coined it, but in fact, it was in a study from 1976 that Bruner used the term to specify how the development occurred in social interaction among young children (Wood, Bruner and Ross, 1976).
Bruner outlines how solving concrete problems leads to an abstraction of ideas that enables children to pull together commonalities across different problems and solve increasingly complex problems. A major process by which this happens is when an older, more experienced child or adult breaks down tasks into their constituent parts, enabling a sort of step-by-step approach that more easily integrates a young child’s participation and understanding of a task.
Bruner used a wooden stacking puzzle that formed a pyramid to test this idea, whereby an adult supported young children’s (aged three, four and five) building through explanation and breaking down the task into manageable chunks. He found that the children were able to arrive at solutions and do so with less frustration than when engaged alone!
Barbara Rogoff is another socioculturalist who has explored problem-solving extensively in social interactions. Later in this chapter, we consider several of her cross-cultural collaborations that provide some examples of young children collaborating with people in their daily lives through collaborating in problem solving.
