Pedagogy Does Not Necessarily Constrain Exploration: Investigating Preschoolers' Information Search During Instructed Exploration

Abstract

Pedagogy is seen as a "double-edged sword": it efficiently conveys information but may constrain the exploration of the causal structure of objects, suggesting that pedagogy and exploration are mutually exclusive learning processes. However, research on children's active involvement in concept acquisition implies that pedagogical signals could facilitate exploratory behavior, indicating a complementary relationship. To understand the link between them, we designed an object exploration task for preschool-aged children featuring between-subject conditions of pedagogical exploration or pedagogical demonstration. Our findings suggest that if the use of the toy is not demonstrated to children and they are allowed to discover the evidence independently, pedagogical signals do not restrict subsequent exploratory behavior. These results imply that pedagogy and exploration complement each other, with pedagogical signals highlighting the relevant evidence and exploratory behavior enriching knowledge by fostering learning from individual experiences.

Keywords: exploration; guided play; learning; pedagogy.

FIGURE 1

The apparatus used in the experiment.

FIGURE 2

Results by condition. Bar plots depict the average responses by condition. Scatter plots depict individual participants’ jittered performance.

FIGURE 3

Patterns of exploratory behavior. Stacked plots depict the distribution of the proportions of action categories in the baseline, pedagogical exploration, and non‐pedagogical exploration conditions. Bar plots depict the average responses by condition. Scatter plots depict individual participants’ jittered performance.