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Problem-Centered Teaching and Learning in Early Childhood Education

The Auburn University Early Childhood Program uses the constructivist theory of Jean Piaget for conceptualizing and implementing early childhood teaching and learning. Theoretical tenets used in the program include three critical understandings related to the nature of the learner and to the nature of the knowledge to be learned. The first holds that individuals construct knowledge as they act on, interact with, and attempt to make sense of their physical and social realities. A second tenet holds that this construction of knowledge is developmental, and thus the thinking of the young child is qualitatively different from that of older children and adults. Children do not imitate adult models, but rather construct their own ideas about phenomena. For example, at an early age most children think the moon follows them as they walk. They transform these earlier ideas by inventing and coordinating a series of wrong ideas, with each wrong idea being a constituent part of the next idea. The third tenet holds that all knowledge to be constructed can be classified into one of three kinds of knowledge that differs according to its source and the means by which it is constructed. Physical knowledge is the knowledge of objects that exist in the external world. Its source is the object and is discovered as the learner acts on the object. Logical-mathematical knowledge consists of relationships that are invented in the mind of the learner. Relationships of sameness and difference are constructed through the learners' mental actions. Social-conventional knowledge consists of information that is made by people, such as language, morals, and rules. This kind of knowledge is arbitrary in nature and is constructed through social interaction with the cultural group. However, although we discuss them in isolation for the purpose of understanding, all three kinds of knowledge are constructed in concert and cannot be constructed in isolation.

Early Childhood educators organize the content to be learned around broad general themes that allow for the construction of all three kinds of knowledge through a problem- centered approach. They establish the experiential environment and conditions by which authentic problems related to the content emerge and are addressed. Authentic problems are defined as those that come from the thinking of the learners as they examine content that intrigues them. These themes are organized so that the children are active learners who choose to work on a variety of projects within the themes' broad framework. This framework consists of: 

1. An initiating activity to engage the interest of the learner. 

2. The design of a number of projects based on what the learners want to know. 

3. The use of representations to share what they have learned. 

4. A final assembly that culminates the theme by a sharing of what they have learned with the larger community.

€ Sample vignettes from graduates of the program illustrate how this approach allows for the construction of the three kinds of knowledge.