Young Children's Evaluation of Teachers' Instructions

• In Event: 14.022 - Sensitivity to Subtleties in Children's Early Learning and Teaching

Abstract

Teaching is a double-edged sword - it ensures learning but also restricts exploration. For example, if children are taught one function of a multi-function toy, they will focus on that single function, failing to discover anything else about the toy. Conversely, children who are not taught discover multiple functions (Bonawitz, Shafto, Gweon, Goodman, Spelke, & Schulz, 2011). One explanation for this lack of exploration within pedagogical contexts is that learners assume that the instruction they are given is not only accurate but is also exhaustive. Indeed, 6-year-old children rate teachers who provide accurate but incomplete information more negatively than teachers who are exhaustive in their instruction (Gweon et al., 2011). There is, however, a pedagogical middle ground between providing exhaustive and incomplete instruction. A teacher can acknowledge that they are providing incomplete information with the intent to encourage exploration by the learner. No research has explored how children rate teachers who are under-informative but acknowledge it. Understanding how children interpret such instructions is important since teachers often limit the information they give learners to encourage exploration.
To see whether young children differentiate between exhaustive, under-informative, and purposefully under-informative instructions, we designed a toy with five functions and recruited 35 children ranging from 4-to 7-years-old from two elementary schools in upstate New York. We let children discover all five functions of the toy and then randomly assigned them to three conditions. In the teach one condition, children watched an instructor teach a learner only one function. In the teach all condition, children watched an instructor teach a learner about all five functions. In the teach one but condition, children watched an instructor teach a learner only one function but acknowledge that there might also be other ways to use the toy.
We found that children rate a teacher that explicitly teaches only one function but acknowledges that there might be other functions as better than a teacher who simply teaches one function but as worse than a teacher who explicitly teaches about all of the functions. We found that children rated the knowledge of the teacher in a similar fashion. Participants believed the teacher who acknowledged that there might be others functions knew more about the toy than the teacher who provided no such acknowledgement, but did not know as much as the teacher who taught all the functions. Children were more likely to think that the teacher wanted students to learn about the toy on their own when the teacher acknowledged that there might be other ways than when the teacher made no such acknowledgments.
These results confirm that preschoolers expect teachers to be accurate and exhaustive and demonstrate that young preschoolers can distinguish between under-informative and purposefully under-informative instruction.

Authors

• Taylor Hovish (Brown), Hillbrook School

• Alex Was, Harvard University

• Samuel Ronfard, Harvard University