Many young children believe they “can” because they haven’t even considered that they “can’t.”  Doubting oneself is a learned behavior that takes place over time and through negative experiences.  Consider the last time you thought that you couldn’t do something.  Was it because you had tried it before and were unsuccessful?  Was it because at some point in your life, you were told, in one way or another, that you were not good enough, smart enough, adept enough, coordinated enough, brave enough, strong enough, kind enough, or tenacious enough?

Very young children have no reason to believe one way or another that they are good at math or bad at math. In fact, most research shows that it isn’t until grade school that math achievement is connected to self-efficacy.  Once children believe that they are not good at math, their performance in math decreases.  With this decrease, comes a distaste for math as well as a real possibility to develop math anxiety.  This becomes a never-ending cycle of math despair.

Eventually, ability will play a role in math success but not until children are much older.  It is far more important for young children to develop strong metacognitive skills so they are aware of what they need to be successful and to figure out how to go about getting it, as well as strong self-efficacy skills and believing in their own abilities.

Teachers of young children must develop strategies for building self-confidence in children and supporting their efforts in everything they do. This does not mean that children should be praised and congratulated falsely.  It does mean that effort should be recognized as should strategizing, planning, trying, and trying again.  Working hard for achievement is a really valuable life skill – it may be more important that being smart.  Most children, if given the time and reassurance that they are capable, will find success.  They will believe they can and then they will.

Metacognition is broadly defined as “thinking about one’s thinking.”  If you have strong metacognition you probably know that you learn better with visual cues, or you are going to need more than one night to cram for a test. Each of us learns in our own way, with specific nuanced behaviors.  Once we become aware of them, we can develop strategies that will support our learning, such as goal setting, self-regulation, evaluate the learning process, and checking and rechecking our work. These are really important skills for children to develop.

How does this work with young children?  The development of strong metacognitive skills might take 20 years not 20 months so it is the adults’ responsibility to encourage “thinking about thinking” with the children in their classrooms.

You can do this by encouraging children to check their answers.  When you ask,”How many boys and how many girls came to school today?” allow children to develop their own strategies for figuring out the answer.  One child may need to group the girls together and then group the boys together so they can be counted.  Another child may walk around the circle, counting each girl and then around the circle to count each boy.  When they arrive at the answer, rather than telling them they are correct, or incorrect, allow the other children to agree or disagree.  You can ask a follow-up question about how they came up with their strategy.  All of these will encourage them to think about their thinking.

Ask children how much time they need to figure something out.  That way they can consider whether they think the problem is a difficult one and will require more time, or an easy one which will require less.  They may not know, but can report after if it took longer than expected or shorter than expected.  Even with very simple day-to-day tasks, these prompting questions will encourage metacognition in the children.