TITLE:
Emerging Young Children’s Thinking through Social and Cognitive Development in the Project Approach
AUTHORS:
Masayu Dzainudin, Hamidah Yamat, Faridah Yunus
KEYWORDS:
Emergent, Young Children Cognitive Development, Social Development, The Project Approach
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.9 No.14,
October
26,
2018
ABSTRACT: Young children learn by interacting with their physical and social environments. The physical environment must be planned to invoke their curiosity and the social is to promote trust. The interaction often occurs as children explore their environment with their peers and/or with adults through social interactions. This paper presents and discusses a part of an action research on exploring young children’s learning through the project approach at a private preschool. The objective of this paper is to illustrate the children’s social and cognitive development as observed and as measured by the Assessment, Evaluation and Programming System (AEPS®). Six children aged five in one private preschool in Selangor were observed in this study and their interactions with peers and adults (teachers) were recorded. The findings illustrate that the children’s cognitive ability or thinking emerged through the social interactions that took place while they were involved in the project work. This implies that the learning environment should be shaped or designed to allow abundant of social interactions to take place that will stimulate, encourage and eventually emerge deeper thinking skills among young children. It is therefore recommended that preschools should focus on developing young children’s social skills to enhance their cognitive skills.