Hedges, H., & Jones, S. (2012). Children’s working theories: the neglected sibling of Te Whāriki’s learning outcomes. Early Childhood Folio, 16(1), 34-39.

This article aims to provide a working definition of working theories so that teachers may use this definition to inform their practice. It is also an article which acts as an introduction to a larger research project on working theories. The authors begin by noting that there are two outcomes in Te Whāriki: dispositions and working theories. They note that the former has had plenty of attention but the latter has no operational definition.

The authors claim there is very little focus of working theories in initial teacher education, and that teacher understandings are generally intuitive and difficult to articulate. They point out that teachers often use children’s exploration as a means of describing what they mean by working theory. For this reason the authors believe it is necessary to construct a theory to support understanding and articulation.

The idea of learning theories borrows from Claxton’s neo Piagetian idea of minitheories, whereby children and adults seek to construct personal meaning. The authors claim that using a sociocultural lens can further complexify this notion of meaning making. To do this the authors identify six themes of working theory from a sociocultural perspective:

1.       Working theories developed through intentional observations and practice of the outcomes of those observations. For example, how friends look after each other.

2.       Working theories are developed through children being together and become the foundation of later learning. For example, children playing McDonalds links to understandings of commerce.

3.       Working theories are developed through social negotiation as children come to understand one another.

4.       Working theories are driven by the need to make sense of the world and are strongly linked to collaborations in learning.

5.       Working theories require active engagement with others.

6.       Working theories are treated by intellectual curiosity and as a curriculum event was clearly linked to thinking in the school curriculum.

This article puts a sociocultural lens on the notion of working theories providing the following definition “the evolving ideas and understanding is formulated by children as they participate in their family, community and cultural lives and engage with others.” My own suspicion is that this definition is not clear in itself, but rather a reworking of Vygotsky’s objections to Piaget. It will be interesting to see how this project develops.