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SUMMARY:Toddlers Think for Themselves! - Dr Elena Hoicka\, University of B
 ristol
DTSTART:20190212T163000Z
DTEND:20190212T180000Z
UID:TALK116341@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Anna Vidos
DESCRIPTION:*Join PEDAL for our Lent term research seminar by Dr Elena Hoi
 cka from the University of Bristol.*\n\nSocial learning has been a large f
 ocus of early developmental psychology for the past three decades. While i
 mportantly revealing how culture is transmitted to young children\, questi
 ons about how young children come up with their own ideas and learn for th
 emselves have been largely ignored. In this talk\, I will present research
  showing that toddlers can be creative and come up with their own ideas. I
  will focus on two streams of research – toddlers’ creation of their o
 wn novel jokes and pretending\, and toddlers’ divergent thinking with no
 vel objects. However\, I will also demonstrate that social learning can be
  an important part of children’s independent learning and thought\, sugg
 esting both of these strands of learning are inter-connected.\n\n*About Dr
  Elena Hoicka*\n\nElena's core research area is cognitive development\, fo
 cusing on creative play in early development\, including humour\, pretendi
 ng\, and creativity. This topic has strong links to education as two of th
 e three characteristics of effective teaching and learning in the Early Ye
 ars Foundation Stage are (1) playing and exploring\, and (2) creating and 
 thinking critically. While this research area is central to education\, th
 ere is surprisingly little experimental\, quantitative research on creativ
 ity in early development. One way in which Elena's research fills this gap
  is by using experimental\, quantitative methods to discover that toddlers
  can think for themselves. Some examples of this can be seen through child
 ren's divergent thinking (generating many different ideas within a problem
  space) as young as 1 year\, by inventing their own novel jokes as young a
 s 2 years\, and by inventing their own acts of pretending from 3 years. Fu
 rthermore\, her research suggests humour and pretending have separate role
 s in education. While pretending might prime children to learn in a strict
  rule-like way\, humour might prime children to allow creativity. Elena's 
 work also ties social learning and creativity together\, with several of h
 er papers suggesting young children can socially learn to think creatively
 .
LOCATION: Donald McIntyre Building\, Faculty of Education\, 184 Hills Road
 \, Cambridge\, CB2 8PQ\, Room GS4
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