Nursery World - Leading questions: How to develop children's thinking skills

What questioning techniques can early years practitioners use to help children use their critical thinking skills to the utmost? Elizabeth Powell investigates in part two of our series on the Characteristics of Effective Learning

All pictures: Eden starting the process of making her medal, mixing paint and cutting the shape (see Case study)

Each school has a unique and special ethos, and this ethos dictates the culture of the school. The culture informs how practitioners view children – it is through this lens that interactions are guided. What is your image of the child, and does it match your school's? This is not a question we ponder over often, but it is important. It focuses us on the capabilities of young children and how these are viewed and fostered in our settings.

In the 1993 seminar ‘Your image of the child: Where teaching begins’, Loris Malaguzzi said, ‘The concept of the image of the child can be imagined as a pair of glasses that adults and teachers unconsciously wear and through which they come to see children in a particular way. It matters which glasses teachers look through because the way they see and understand children informs the curricular and pedagogical choices they make as teachers.’

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