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It’s so important that children are taught to be consciously aware. The earlier, the better. So much of what we believe is subconscious. We, as adults, have to really think about how we show up in the world and that there are many who do not have the same rights and privileges as we do. It is so easy to take for granted and be unaware of our situation in relation to others. By learning to continually question and probe, children could grow into adults who are consciously aware citizens out of habit.

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I believe teaching critical consciousness from and early age to be an important and essential life skill for students to be able to make decisions based on their own 'lens' (values, beliefs, knowledge).

I work in Early Childhood and I often have students come to me and tell me things like 'I can see some rubbish on the ground over there but it's not mine'. Where I usually respond with 'well what do you think you can do about that?', to which I often would get a response like 'well it's not mine, I just saw it there' - Asking students these questions, rather than telling them something such as 'well put it in the bin' encourages students to not only notice things that they think are wrong, but to critically think about why that is so and what they can do to change it. Encouraging these critical thinking processes is crucial for students to be able to start developing their own sense of critical consciousness that can help inform their actions based on their own understandings.

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There are hierarchies and biases that we develop over time, that aren't explicitly taught, that we pick up by osmosis from a young age, even before students start school. We need to teach about critical consciousness so that students develop the skills to analyse and edit these biases.

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A focus that develops student's ability of being critical consciousness provides opportunities for curiosity and can be a gateway to academic motivation and achievement for all students including those marginalised. The ability for young people to recognise and analyse systems of inequality encourages a commitment to take action against these systems. HASS provided the ideal learning vehicle for students to explore human cultures, ideals and identities and understand their place in the world 

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A focus that develops student's ability of being critical consciousness provides opportunities for curiosity and can be a gateway to academic motivation and achievement for all students including those marginalised. The ability for young people to recognise and analyse systems of inequality encourages a commitment to take action against these systems. HASS provided the ideal learning vehicle for students to explore human cultures, ideals and identities and understand their place in the world 

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The world is a really complex place to get your head around and we have a limited capacity to store information. So there's not much point in knowing random facts like the capitals of countries unless there's some sort of way to apply it in a meaningful relevant way for the learner.

The reading was really eye opening about the importance of conceptual understanding. It's what provides teachers with expert knowledge. I like how there's a story to unravel if you take a few of the knowledge facts and skills and conceptualise them all which for me makes learning much more interesting and feels more important.

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I think that teaching students the skills for critical consciousness is imperative.
Teaching students about ideas, communities, political doctrines etc. which differ from their own experiences broadens their understanding of different systems and places within the world, as well as their understanding that every place and every person are not the same.
I think that embedding these ideas within early childhood will support students in having a better understanding of the world. This way of thinking is tied to the HASS curriculum, where students begin learning about their world and community, then how the world exists outside of them.
Further, I think that introducing structures within learning that support conceptual thinking will simultaneously nurture the development of critical consciousness in young students.

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I think the teaching of conceptual thinking in early education is vital and has many benefits for a number of reasons:

- Conceptual thinking encourages and harnesses a child's innate curiosity and interest of the wider world, linking their own sphere of understanding/community to wider places and concepts that are beyond their own experience.

- In this way, conceptual thinking provides a means for children to understand and think beyond the limits of their own experience. In particular, the concepts of HASS and conceptual thinking through the HASS curriculum provide powerful learning opportunities that may not be as readily available in other curriculum areas, or in a student's daily life experience.

- As student learning transitions from concrete to more abstract ideas and concepts, conceptual thinking is a vital tool to be able to develop their observational, analytical, and reflective skills further into their education.

- Conceptual thinking is a vital skill to develop from a young age, as it encourages children to consider the influence of different perspectives, bias, and context on the information they receive. This is a key skill when considering historical thinking, eg. viewing Australian history from a colonial/empirical vs an Indigenous Australian perspective. This has the real potential to cultivate young children to be people of empathy and open mindedness.

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I found something really interesting in the article :
Freire talks about “banking” education where the teacher “deposited” knowledge in students, rather than promoting agency and learning through engagement with the world. Hence, HASS as a subject should be thrown open before the students to analyse, have a perspective, ponder on decisions made in history-were those decisions meaningful for the world /did those decisions change the world and how. More the inquiry, better the learning and 'understanding' as preferred over 'banking' knowledge.

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I think in a learning area like HASS it could be all too easy to focus on teaching specific facts and content which could cause ideas to become very separated from each other and also dampen students' natural curiousity. I can see that focusing on conceptual learning and big questions and always having a larger unpinning idea actually means that students learn to think more deeply and build connections between ideas that they otherwise wouldn't make. This would support the development of students to become well-informed and critical, active members of society.

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For conceptual thinking, an inquiry-based learning is an appropriate pedagogy to consider for exploration of ideas and with sufficient guidance and scaffolding, accessible to young children too.  Concepts may be too abstract for young students to understand and interpret the knowledge into the context that is relevant to them.  However, with multimodal learning, they can also a vehicle that enables shared understanding of events, for instance, across time, places and cultures. This learning would help students reflect on and develop deeper understanding of themselves through the lens of others from different time, place and/or culture.  When I taught a HASS lesson on a relationship between Asian culture and food to year 2, I saw my students not only engaging in group discussions but making connection between this learning with their personal experience.  I think that concepts such as these are worthwhile and can be built on to make meaning of diversity.  So, from early stages, students should be exposed to conceptual thinking and are given opportunities to develop critical and creative thinking skills.

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It was interesting to listen to the video and understand what critical consciousness can do to young minds. To be able to develop critical consciousness in early learners, is like giving them the tools to explore and investigate, deconstruct and swim into the concepts to absorb them rather than just accepting them as they are. Building on child's own experience, story, life to connect it to the world they live in, makes the whole learning more meaningful and substantial to transform their own lives and the ones around them.

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I have my own critical things I would say about the focuses of the history curriculum particularly that I won't mention presently as they will appear in my presentation with Jack in Wk 3. However, I believe it is important that the K-2 curriculum specifically focuses on the students immediate circumstances, their immediate existance through their families positioning, through geography and their own histories in order to build a students understanding of what these HASS concepts mean in specific relevance to themselves. I think the key concept of critical consciousness begins with this awareness of self, this understanding of where they fit into the broader scope of their society, family dynamics, place in their community and fundamentally their global position given the sociality we presently live in.

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I think teaching critical consciousness is important for younger years. Teaching children to view the world with a critical lens and critical thinking will allow students to begin to understand fairness and things that are unfair in the world. This is important so that children grow up to question things for themselves and to push for changes in areas that need it. If children are not taught critical consciousness they will go along with things that are unjust because they have been taught right from wrong rather than how to analyse and decide for themselves. From a young age children have a great understanding of "fair and unfair" in situations relevant to themselves, critical consciousness is about teaching children to understand fair and unfair about situations that don't necessarily include themselves. I think this begins with allowing children opportunities to become aware of similarities between themselves and others and reflect on these.

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The benefits of teaching conceptual thinking or critical consciousness in early education is that wonderful opportunity to harness a student’s natural curiosity and wonder about the wider world providing a bedrock to challenge Bordeax statement "It goes without saying because it came without saying".  The 21st century world is fast paced; it is important to regularly check HASS content to current events thereby keeping abreast of current developments and not accepting the status quo.

Engaging students initially in their micro system (Bronfrenbrenner) diagram below, allowing them to develop a knowledge of identity and connection to others is a bedrock for students as they think about their own backgrounds and histories and their local environment.

As students move through primary school their consciousness is broadened and their influences extended, now seeing beyond themselves, learning from the past and seeing how the present impacts the future from a local, national, and global standpoint and being open to change as the globe is dynamically connected..

A clear benefit is developing crucial skills necessary to develop into successful global 21st century citizens.

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I like this transition from lower primary "everyday geometries" thinking to upper primary conceptual thinking... The thinking around the students' own stories and histories or relationship with the place in which they live helps them to start thinking about themselves in a conceptual way which builds well into the upper primary conceptual skills, eg. empathy, critical consciousness, etc.

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I like this transition from lower primary "everyday geometries" thinking to upper primary conceptual thinking... The thinking around the students' own stories and histories or relationship with the place in which they live helps them to start thinking about themselves in a conceptual way which builds well into the upper primary conceptual skills, eg. empathy, critical consciousness, etc.

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Cathy

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Write about your views of teaching conceptual thinking or critical consciousness in early education, What would be the benefits? Write your name