The Impact of Activities on Childrens Learning

Self-regulation, metacognition and child- and adult-initiated activity: does it matter who initiates the task?

Introduction and overview

Activities improve children’s experience and provoke learning. The learning that a child gains from active experience gives him or her with new knowledge, skills and improves ability. While there is reasonable agreement that activities initiated by either adults or children themselves contribute to learning, there have also been a lot of debate regarding which approach is necessary for specific developments.

Also there was lot of effort trying to find a dynamic balance between the two types of activities. The debate is shown in the practical consideration of choosing between teacher-led activities and child-led activities in schools. The purpose is to find the impacts of child and adult initiated activities on two traits showing learning and development in small children’s self-regulation and metacognition. The researchers collected and coded children’s behavior and the activities that they do in school. Using these types of behavior, the researchers were able to know status of different mental learnings that the children were going through internally

Key Findings

The data was gathered in a London public school for over a period of ten months from 19 boys and 10 girls, aged 4-5 years old. The study confirmed that the balance between the two types of activities can be reached. Furthermore, it also exposed some new interesting findings. The study involves, recording and coding 17 hours of video footage of participants. A total of 66 child-initiated acts and 68 adult-initiated acts were coded and included in the analysis.

These are the key observations from the report;

The report shows that adult initiated and child-initiated activities improve self-regulation and metacognition skills of children.

The study discovered considerable differences in how children expressed metacognition and self-regulation, evidenced by the difference in the rates per minute measures.

The best opportunity for children to express metacognition and self-regulation were provided in child-initiated activities.

Adult-led activities showed significant impact in supporting a child’s procedural knowledge.

There were no significant differences found in emotional regulation or motivational regulation between adult-led and child-led activities.

Discussion of findings

The study used three categories to codify observations;

Metacognitive knowledge (which included knowledge of people as thinking persons, knowledge of tasks and knowledge of strategies.

Metacognitive regulation (subcategories of which are planning, monitoring, control and evaluation) and

Emotional/motivational control and regulation. In terms of relative frequency, the most evident category was Metacognitive regulation. Also, data showed higher mean rates of occurrence in every category for child-initiated activities.The concept of self-regulation has been examined and articulated through many different disciplines through the history of academia. The meaning of

self-regulation used in this research paper comes from the cognitive school of thought. In the view, motivation and executive functions play underlying roles below the greater cognitive process. In cognitive perspective, autonomy, self-integrity, control and efficacy are important for someone to be successful in following their desired goals. Recent years have also seen many studies dealing with metacognition and executive function in the area of understanding self-regulation Carlson and Wang, (2007). The ability to perform self-regulation has been observed in young children who exhibit goal-oriented behavior and has served as a massive predictor of success in later life as well.

This study found that children had better ideas about their activities and reasons when it comes to child-initiated activities. Children generated more concepts and also used a wider ways of problem-solving techniques. In child-led activities, children were more co-operating with each other and engaging in mutual evaluation, goal setting, monitoring and regulating behavior. According to Boekaerts (1999), children must feel entitlement to the choice of initiating activities for they affect their self-regulated learning. Furthermore, Fulgini et al (2012) found that quality of adult-child interactions increased with more child-initiated activities. During adult-initiated activities, there is less need for the children to take responsibility for their actions, so there is less motivation for development of self-regulation according to Krafft and Berk, (1998). This may leads to children relying on the adult for problem solving during activities said Niemivirta (2000). This research also found that during adult-initiated activities, children tend to submit control to adults and look them as the source of their goals and knowledge. These findings support previous research that self-regulation might be harder to achieve in adult-led activities because children may not be motivated enough to participate in their or cognitive faculties powers.

Kopps (1982) stated that the roles of adults in the eyes of the children are significant factors. Metacognition refers to the processes used by the brain to monitor, evaluate and plan the individual knowledge and behavior. Metacognitive knowledge has been identified as an integral part of self-regulation in recent academic history. Metacognitive knowledge is an awareness of oneself as a thinker and thought. The study found that in adult-led activities, children display metacognitive knowledge often during task-oriented. Mostly, they exhibited metacognitive knowledge for the purposes of helping the child gain authority or their classmates in completing group tasks. This supports previous research that children display procedural metacognitive skills according to Schneider ( 2010).

In contrast, children in this study displayed metacognitive knowledge for a wider array of needs example, negotiation. In child-led activities, children’s display knowledge and strategic learning. Children’s’ communication during these activities often center only when the activity continue. These findings are consistent with Ramani’s (2012) that child-led activities were more promoted by positive communication between children. The results were much less common in the context of adult-led activities. This shows that the involvement of adult make a difference in children’s demonstrations of metacognitive and strategic knowledge.

In a study of children’s creative cognition, adults were seen as good enablers of children’s usage of prior knowledge, though they were less enabling when it comes to adding new knowledge. Previous research suggested that teacher-led activities may not enough to captivate the student and decrease chances of getting the children to use memory and cognition, choosing rather to rely on the adult Boekaerts and Niemivirta, (2000). The same study found self-identified learning goals as one of three main constructs of self-regulated learning. Meece (1994) found that when children were given the chance to work independently, they showed more opportunities to practice self-regulation. Similar results were reported in a study of young children aged (3-5 years old). Metacognitive regulation was seen to be more noticeable in child-led activities. These observations are consistent with the results from this study, where more opportunities for metacognitive regulation were seen in child-initiated activities. The most common Metacognitive regulation monitoring behavior identified was actions which displayed the children’s effort in reviewing progress on a task. In adult initiated activities, these acts of monitoring mostly functioned as checks by the children to make sure the adult approved their processes. An example of this is included in the study where participant Sam was doing an adult-initiated writing activity. After each word Sam wrote, he looked up at the participant teacher for approval, before continuing writing.

Adult-led activities in the study were more likely to have concrete results and expectations, which the children could check their progress against. However, this could lead to reducing awareness and cognition regarding these outcomes from the children’s part who in these cases would entrust these things to the adult.

The goal of children-initiated activities appeared really exciting to children and helped them to conduct more checking and be more aware. These observations mentioned also support this view. It was found that children’s actions and comments in adult-inititated behavior were mostly ways of checking their progress with the adult. This is because children saw the source of their progress and directive as coming from the adult rather than from themselves. These findings support previous research which Mclnnes et al (2010) suggests that children rest their choice and control functions with adults in adult-initiated activities

This research emphasis the importance of child’s self-commentary and associated it with development of self-regulation Mead and Winsler (2015). Self-commentary is children’s speech to themselves, or private speech. The study found that self-commentary occurred when children used private speech to clarify their thoughts. Actually, the study did not get any differences between the periods of occurrence of self-commentary during adult-initiated and child-initiated activities. This is surprising and confusing because the previous studies found different results regarding activity which influences children’s self-commentary better according to Krafft and Berk, (1998). On the other hand, Winsler and Diaz (1995) found that children’s self-commentaries were very supported in tasks which involved “an intermediate degree” of adult-involvement. The results of this study have contributed to the school in this debate, finding no conclusive data linking private speech to any type of activity.

This research ended that teachers should encourage both child-initiated and adult-led activities, because they are important for promoting holistic learning in children according to Sylva et.al. (2010).

Similar sways were discussed which asked to equal balance between both types of activities because it ended that children experience learning opportunities from a range of activity structures with different level of adult-involvement stated by Fulgini et.al. (2012). An equal approach was made for effective social andemotional development of children. This same approach is also highlighted by this study suggesting that children require exposure into all types of activities help to develop their holistic development. Siraj-Blatchford et al (2002)

Conclusion

The findings of these research advocate towards two important implications. The first is that for children to fully realize their development potential and expand their capabilities of self-regulation and metacognition, they must have ample opportunity to engage in both child-led and adult-led activities. Since school curriculum is often rigid and may offer little scope for children to conduct their own activities, their own learning or thoughts. In such cases, it is the responsibility of teachers to ensure that children are getting enough opportunities to explore self-led tasks. The second implication is that adult presence and engagement in all forms of activities are crucial for improved observance and support for children’s development of cognition, autonomy and control. Children’s free play must not be thought of as adult-less. In fact, they provide the best opportunities for adults to support the expansion of the child’s thoughts and thought processes. This might require teachers to display their trust in children’s capacity for learning more explicitly, specially when it comes to children-initiated activities, but also in the context of adult-led activities. Self-regulation is a state of learning that gradually emerges in a child as they begin to understand the reasons for values and standards. This type of autonomous behavior is different from previously learned compliance, because now it is dependent on the self. Successfully learning these processes require gentle exploration and supportive environments and the freedom to know and develop one’s own thoughts and actions. 1814

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