Advices for professional teachers

Considerations for teachers

• The importance of teacher-child conversation for children’s continuing language development

• Value the children’s talks and ideas for their understanding of the world

• Children will gain indirectly from such conversation through the teacher’s increased understanding of their ideas

• Children differ, individually and culturally, in how much they know they will offer in answer. Without teacher requests them to “say more”, some children’s knowledge will be seriously underestimated

• Teachers need to attend to their students’ inner meanings instead of their surface behaviours (Scheffler, 1968)

• Language development is crucial to learning because it is through language that young children construct meaning and communicate with others. (Exploring language; A handbook for teachers, p. 8)