Thinking Skills and Early Childhood Education

This book offers a rationale for the increasingly popular idea among teachers and researchers that young children should be taught critical thinking and argument in the early years of their education. The author makes a critical evaluation of the aims and purposes of early years education, refers in particular to the development of thinking skills, and looks at how teachers can foster such skills in young children through the teaching of personal, social and moral education, philosophy and argument, and investigates the concept of citizenship education in the early years and the development of initial and in-service teacher education programs.