Teaching & Academics Teacher Training

Dialogues with a Little Thinker

Talking with children about metaphysical problems of reality
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (98 ratings)
6,673 students
Created by Eugene Subbotsky
English
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Ask children metaphysical questions and analyse the children's answers

Requirements

  • No special skills are required, but knowledge of psychology and philosophy at an introductory level can help understand this course

Description

In this course I will tell you how to ask children questions that can help the children to think. These are not ordinary questions; they are metaphysical questions, which don’t have single and clear-cut answers.

We cannot answer a metaphysical question by using out past experience or by finding out a suitable formula. Answering this sort of questions requires the application of our natural creative ability.

I asked these questions to children in Russia and the UK and was surprised how thoughtful and interesting the children’s answers could be.

Every lecture in this course can be also used as a practice exercise. Those of you who want to help their children to apply their creative ability can simply ask the children these questions, without caring much about the kids’ answers. All what is important is that the children could hear these questions and ponder over them. This might be enough to awaken the thinker in the child.

Those of you who want to dig more deeply could compare your children’s answers with the answers that my children gave and try to analyze common points and differences.

The course includes an introductory lecture, two sections and fourteen lectures. Section 1 covers dialogues about the world and Section 2 - dialogues about a human being. Lectures include author’s texts, author’s videos, animated graphs and pictures.

I built this course for students in social sciences, specialists in education, psychology, philosophy, writers for children, artists and everyone who is curious to learn more about children’s ability to think and reason

Who this course is for:

  • I built this course for students in social sciences, specialists in education, psychology, philosophy, writers for children, artists and everyone who is curious to learn more about children’s ability to think and reason

Course content

3 sections • 15 lectures • 1h 55m total length

  • Introduction
    06:28

Instructor

Eugene Subbotsky
PhD in Developmental Psychology
Eugene Subbotsky
  • 4.0 Instructor Rating
  • 721 Reviews
  • 23,928 Students
  • 10 Courses

Eugene Subbotsky obtained a PhD in Developmental Psychology at Moscow State University. He taught at Moscow State University, Russia (1975-1990), Lancaster University, UK (1991-2013) and was an Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellow at Konstanz University, West Germany (1990-1991). He is known internationally for research on children's moral development, the development of children's metaphysical reasoning, and the development of magical thinking and behaviour over life span. He conducted research in Russia, Germany, United Kingdom, USA and Mexico. He published over 100 papers in scientific journals and is the author of 12 books, including those published by Harvard University Press, Oxford University Press, and Psychology Press. Eugene is an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a BPS charted psychologist, a Member of the BPS Division of Teachers and Researchers in Psychology.