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Transition to school

Features of early years pedagogies: Sustained shared thinking

Sustained shared thinking occurs when educators support the development of children’s complex thinking and problem-solving skills by engaging children in open-ended and exploratory conversations (Touhill, 2012).

The following table identifies teacher and student actions for sustained shared thinking.

TeacherStudent

The teacher:

  • develops mindful and intentional learning experiences and challenging play environments that provoke ideas and encourage conversations
  • plans for meaningful conversations so that children investigate concepts and ideas and develop new ways of talking and thinking about things (Connor, 2013)
  • asks open-ended questions to sustain focused conversations
  • facilitates higher order thinking by providing more progressively sophisticated communication and collaboration (Meade et al., 2013).

The student:

  • works collaboratively and intellectually with a teacher and/or another student/s to solve a problem or clarify a concept
  • investigates self-initiated problems through rich discussions to find solutions
  • responds to open-ended questions in intellectual ways to clarify a concept
  • views problems from new perspectives after focused discussions with teacher.

Classroom example

This professional learning example shows how one Prep teacher priorities sustained shared thinking to support learning in her Prep classroom.

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Annette Woods
Associate Professor
Queensland University of Technology

Classrooms where children are engaged in sustained shared thinking are classrooms where problem-based learning will be happening — where children are actually able to consider enquiry and to enquire about the world, and where they may indeed be thinking about critical literacy and critical higher-order thinking, by engaging together, by thinking about what other children within their spaces are thinking, by thinking about a variety of perspectives, and coming to an understanding that the world is not something that has a right and a wrong, but that in fact people think differently.

Rae Welch
Prep Teacher
Jamboree Heights State School

[reading a letter from the Tooth Fairy] ‘I have some sad news. Last week there was a big storm and my house collapsed. Do you have any ideas? Please write back to me if you can help. From your friend, Sparkles the Tooth Fairy.’ [to the students] When you get yours I would like you to just draw what you can imagine the Tooth Fairy’s house might look like. And then we’ll put all our ideas together and come up with a really special house for the Tooth Fairy.

Rae Welch

I set that activity up for thinking to occur by initially asking the children just to do their own drawing. It was their own ideas from the stimulus of the Tooth Fairy letter. So they were captivated, they were interested. It’s very relevant to these children at the moment because lots of them are losing their teeth. But it was just their little notetaking — clarify their own thoughts in their heads, and build on their own thoughts as they were doing it, to then share with the class.

Student 1

A light.

Rae Welch

A light for the Tooth Fairy. Why do you think the Tooth Fairy’s house needs a light out the front? I like it.

Student 1

So she can see.

Rae Welch

So she can see. When does she fly again?

Student 1

At night.

Rae Welch

She flies at night time. So why do you think a light out the front of her house might be a good idea?

Student 1

So she can see where she’s flying

Rae Welch

A light for the Tooth Fairy. Why do you think the Tooth Fairy’s house needs a light out the front? I like it.

Rae Welch

The purpose of sharing their thinking was to build on the ideas, to recognise other people’s ideas as positive things, and to help them extend their own thoughts and extend their own designs. They could just have a look and oh that was a good idea, I can include that. I can adapt mine this way and that. So just, you know, more ideas, more brains to create it, to build on their own initial one.

Using all those ideas that we’ve come up with, see if you can have another go at drawing a beautiful strong big house.

I gave the children time to think to start with. I like to think that every child has … full of imaginative ideas and I want them to be able to express their own ideas and not always be led by the first child who’s answered the question. Therefore they’ve had a chance, they’ve done their own thinking, they’ve got it down there on paper. And they could then, throughout the lesson, build on their ideas with everybody else’s. But they’ve got their own ownership of it and haven’t had to just copy from someone else.

Student 3

Fairy.

Rae Welch

Fairy, and why did you write that there?

Student 3

Because they know which house is the fairy’s house.

Rae Welch

So they know where it’s the Tooth Fairy’s house. And then over here is what you designed after hearing everybody else’s ideas and you’ve now got a house. Tell me all about this one again.

Student 3

Those are the bricks and those are the teeth and that’s the sparkles and there’s the light and that’s the door ...

Annette Woods

That’s an extremely important thing for our children in classrooms to be learning. Learning to understand about other people’s perspectives, learning how to get on together, learning how to lead and how to follow. Actually understanding that by working together and collaborating, and understanding each other’s perspectives, that we indeed ourselves are learning a lot more than we might if we were thinking in a more individual sense.
Last updated:
30 March 2023

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

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