Effects of Structuring on the Productiveness of Children’s Thinking

AN IMPORTANT issue in childhood education centers on the question of what constitutes appropri ate prestructuring of the learning environment for young children. Structure, in this sense, refers not to organization within the content of the subject matter field, but to the instructional arrangements whereby children are introduced to and guided through the learning experience. Structure, in this frame of reference, may be 1) relatively high, with carefully prescribed teacher communications pre established for the purpose of shaping children's responses in certain precisely defined directions. Structure, on the other hand, may be 2) minimum, with the learning environment a relatively "open" one, and with teachers and children jointly involved in determining both immediate goals and the experi ences engaged in while working toward those ends. The literature in early childhood education re flects rather strong persuasions toward one or the other of these instructional arrangements. Biber (3), for example, has argued that "too early"intro duction of structure, characterized by "right wrong" criteria, authoritatively imposed by the teacher in the course of the young child's emerging awareness of his world, is a costly one, denying children opportunity for cognitive exploration and "discovery". A number of writers in the field of creativity have argued that directive teaching prac tices, enforced by high-controlling teachers, tend to suppress creative or divergent responses of learn ers, and reduce the variability of pupil response (13). Baldwin (2), in reviewing the present controversy over the relative merits of didactically presented, newer preschool programs and traditional c hi Id centered, individualistic programs, has suggested the critical difference between them is not in the materials used. The controversy, he suggests, is inappropriately focused when directed simply to the merits of the computer-controlled typewriters or the materials used for sensory training under the newer programs, as opposed to the art, music, or social learning materials of more traditional early childhood curriculums. Both approaches use pre selected and prearranged materials. Both can lead to imbalance in practice. A more central issue, Baldwin conte nd s , con cerns the degree of teacher constraint imposed in the introduction and pacing of those materials. Teacher constraint, he suggests, may be high or low in any of these programs, wherever degree of teacher preplanning, scheduling, and didactic p r e sentation operates as a variable under the control of the individual classroom teac her. Controversy concerning the merits of higher and lower degrees of such teacher constraint, Baldwin notes, is em pirically resolvable. Such resolution callsfor study of the observable effects of differing levels of teach er constraint, under any of these instructional pro grams. To date, some important research has developed concerning effects of high and low levels of teacher structuring or constraint on social climate within preschool and primary classrooms (l, 12). Surpris ingly, little research attention has been directed to the influences of structure in the learning environ ment on the productiveness of young children's think ing. It is to this question that this research was di rected.