European Journal of Social Sciences – Volume 8, Number 3 (2009)
Nurturing Creativity in Young Children for Heightened Engineering Prowess
Andanastuti Muchtar Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment ,Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (The National University of Malaysia) 43600 UKM Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia E-mail: muchtar@eng.ukm.my Rosadah Abdul Majid Faculty of Education ,Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (The National University of Malaysia) 43600 UKM Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia E-mail: rosadah@ukm.my Abstract This article explores the German early education of young children from the perspective of Dr Andanastuti Muchtar from the National University of Malaysia (UKM) who went on an exchange programme to the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) beginning 1st October 2007 and ending 30th September 2008. As the author was privileged to share the German experience with her spouse and three children, her exposure to the German education system was not only limited to that which she gained from her work at university, but also included the experience of her young children in kindergarten and at school. In this paper, the author wishes to share her experience and analysis on early education in Germany from her point of view, which is both that of a university academic and a mother observing the development of her young children in a German kindergarten and school. The children’s cognitive development and their learning processes are enhanced by their experience, observation, and interactions with other children while playing at school and at playgrounds in Germany. It is suggested that the engineering prowess of the Germans may also be the result of early engineering exposure, which is inculcated in the very young.
Keywords: Academic Exchange; Early Education; Experience; Cognitive Development, Learning Process
1. Introduction
German engineering is widely acclaimed internationally as having superb quality and great skill. Their craftsmanship is both innovative and precise. German engineers are well respected and demand great admiration from their peers in other parts of the world who sometimes wonder how they did it. In the present paper, some aspects of the early education in Germany is discussed. Some comparison between that of the German education system and that of the Malaysian system is also offered. However, the authors do not attempt to formally compare between the education structures of UKM and UDE as this has been successfully completed by the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia (2006). Dr Andanastuti Muchtar spent a period of one year in Duisburg and taught in the winter semester of 2007/2008 and the summer semester 2008. The exchange was financed by the German Academic Exchange Services, or Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD). She stayed 406
European Journal of Social Sciences – Volume 8, Number 3 (2009) with her family in a suburban neighbourhood, just about 2 kms outside Duisburg city centre. Here, two of her older children went to a nearby primary school and her youngest child went to a kindergarten. It was with such arrangement that she was able to experience engineering education in Germany, both as an academic employed to teach engineering related subjects at the University of Duisburg-Essen and as a mother of her children who studied in a kindergarten and a school in Duisburg. The experience that the children had undergone, in the opinion of the authors might be construed as early engineering exposure albeit in a surreptitious manner. Analysis presented would be substantiated on child development perspective, and the role of early education for young children. The experience that they encountered in the environment had a role in leading them through the learning processes which was very crucial in their development. Through play at school and at public parks, children learn to improve their motor skills, social skills and emotional skills (Parten 1932, Piaget 1951, Vygotsky 1978). Additionally, Bandura (1977) suggested that experience promote self efficacy among children. A child was said to have developed self efficacy when he or she believed in his or her own abilities or talent. Thus, it is hoped that the paper will offer an impetus for further discussion in the subject, towards the continuous quality improvement of engineering education in Malaysia.
2. Early Education: Engineering Ingenuity at the Playgrounds
When the first author and her children first started exploring Germany, one of the first impressions well imprinted on their minds was the fact that playgrounds in Germany were exceptionally different from those in Malaysia. Since play is very much a multi-dimensional and developmental tool for inquisitive young children (Sutton-smith 1997), it was interesting to note the differences of the types of playgrounds and correlating that to the engineering education of the two countries i.e. Malaysia and Germany. In many parks and children play areas in Germany, the play equipment and play structures are made from wood and metals (Figure 1). They are sturdy and last a lifetime. Interestingly, these come equipped with miniature engineering accessories or gadgets such as shovels, mini transporters, pumps, cranes, pulleys, ropes, drum pipes etc. The setup encourages inquisitive young minds to explore, feel, touch and get their hands really dirty. Piaget (1951) suggested that, in their effort to comprehend the world, children investigate, hypothesize, and create theories about their physical and social world. They predict and test their theories by exploring and experiencing their environment. The children learnt quickly to not just play with sand and make sand castles for instance, they also figured out how to use proper equipments to shovel, collect and transport sand (Figure 2). Or to pump water and create irrigation canals in the sand (Figure 3). This involved children’s strategies to solve problems as viewed by information processing theory of cognition which proposed human cognition to consist of mental hardware and mental software (Kail 2007). The sense organs, as well as the mental and neural structures used in the process of looking at the playing equipment, were considered as the hardware. Mental software involved organized sets of cognitive processes that a child needs in completing a task such as figuring out how to play with the equipment. To summarize the process, the children had to think in order to be able to play, but because it was such fun thinking, the children were not burdened with the effort. On their own, the children smartly guessed that it was all engineering work, and they loved playing engineers. It was an early development for love of engineering and technology. This is an early imprint of the affective domain in engineering education among the said children.
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Figure 1: Play structures in German playgrounds are made from wood and metals that let children explore their creative senses and offer endless fun.
Figure 2: Engineering lessons for young children: here the playground offers a stimulant for an interest in sand excavation and transportation.
On the contrary, Malaysian playgrounds are somewhat too safe and too easy. Children are only expected to climb, slide, jump, swing, and crawl or balance themselves on the play equipments. These play equipments offer less maneuverability for children to explore their creative senses. There is also less emphasis on problems solving. Most of the time children do not need to actively figure out how to make certain play equipments work. Additionally, the structures are almost entirely made from brightly colored polymeric materials which, after a while, sadly die a natural death out of lack of maintenance (Figure 4).
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Figure 3: Young children amuse themselves whilst surreptitiously learning about irrigation and fluid dynamics.
Another example where children voluntarily exercise their creative senses lie in the almost national favorite pastime of Lego building. Creative endeavors require a person to exercise divergent thinking. This is referring to the thinking process in responding to the kind of questions with no one definite answer. In Germany, almost every child plays with Lego bricks, and they are not simply for making simple miniature houses and trucks. The Lego bricks come in various shapes and sizes, from the basic Lego building bricks to very complex engineering structures and designs. Children participate in Lego workshops that engage them in design classes. On their own, children also learn to design and build the fastest car in order to win in car races (Figure 5). Thus, manipulating the Lego set in the workshops lead children to exercise their divergent thinking skills which become the basis for the ability to think “outside the box” or to think creatively.
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Figure 4: Typical play equipment in a Malaysian playground which poses little challenge with regards to creativity at play (top). Unfortunately, plastic based equipment tends to be short-lived in the hot and humid climate of Malaysia (bottom).
Figure 5: Children design their own Lego fast cars (top). The fastest car wins and that is enough motivation for children to design the winning car (bottom).
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3. Early Education: Creativity is Priority
As the children of the first author experienced firsthand, the German kindergarten and school offered plenty of opportunities to be creative. In kindergarten, the children do not occupy themselves with lessons of A, B, C and 1, 2, 3. Contrary to the Malaysian kindergarten, the kindergartens in Duisburg do not offer lessons that are academic in nature. Instead, the lessons taught in kindergarten focus on humanity skills, how children should interact between their peers and their teachers. Again, creativity is also encouraged. Young children only begin learning the alphabets in their first year in primary school. Even so, creativity is still very much in the heart of the learning cycle, whereby creative lessons interspersed regularly with academic lessons (Figure 6). At school, academic achievement is important but not overly emphasized such that it does not undermine the importance and focus of the creative developments of the pupils. In other words, children are taught to exercise convergent thinking when they are expected to come up with one definite true answer, and this is not the only thinking process that were trained in schools. Children are expected to come up with more than one answer when they need to create or build new designs. Thus, they are actually exercising divergent thinking. This shows that young children are taught not to be overly stressed out by academic excellence but their creative endeavors are facilitated and cherished. Perhaps, when children are exposed to so much creative sessions in the early stages of their development, indeed, the children have inherent capability to be more creative in their chosen career in future. However, it is also noted that in Germany, the early education system is dictated by the states, whilst the federal government plays only a minor role (Lohmar and Eckhardt 2006). In the present case, the author’s children studied in Duisburg, which was part of the state North Rhine-Wesphalia and as such, the experience of her children might only be relevant for this part of Germany. Nevertheless, it is evident that in at least some parts of Germany, creativity is nurtured from the very young. One can imagine that such early exposure to engineering and technology may leave an imprint in young children that they develop some kind of inherent talent for engineering upon adulthood. Granted, not all young Germans aspire to become engineers, but when they do, they are able to engineer with excellence.
Figure 6: A classroom in a German school bursts with creativity, with the results of the pupils’ creativity sessions displayed prominently on the walls
4. Summary and Concluding Remarks
In the present paper, the authors attempt to explore the German early education system as experienced by the first author and her children. The authors scrutinize mainly on the creativity development in young children in Germany. From the experience of the first author and her children, the authors are of the impression that Germany emphasizes heavily on creativity development in young children. 411
European Journal of Social Sciences – Volume 8, Number 3 (2009) Inadvertently, inherent creativity that may prove useful later as an engineer is developed and secured in young children as they have fun playing in the playground or even at school. This is in line with Bronfrenbrenner’s ecological theory on child development (Kail 2007) which emphasizes the role of the environment in the holistic development of a child. Although neither exhaustive nor conclusive, the authors are inclined to share experience and analysis of early engineering education in Germany as experienced by the first author. It is hoped that all views written in this article still remain relevant for future generations of Malaysian engineers.
Acknowledgement
The first author would like to thank the German Academic Exchange Services (DAAD) for financing the academic exchange. She is also indebted to UDE and UKM for the opportunity of a lifetime as a guest lecturer in a German institution. The authors also acknowledge the funding and support from the Engineering Education Research Group of UKM (UKM-OUP-NBT-26-124/2008) for dissemination activities.
References
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] Bandura, A. 1977. Social learning theory. Englewoods Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. DAAD Visiting Professorship. http://www.daad.org/page/50132/ [8 October 2008]. Lohmar, B & Eckhardt, T. 2008. The Education System in the Federal Republic of Germany 2006. KMK: Bonn. http://www.kmk.org/dossier/dossier_en_ebook.pdf [21 October 2008]. Kail, R.V. 2007. Children and Their Development. 4th. Ed. Prentice Hall: New Jersey. Ministry of Higher Education. 2006. The future of engineering education in Malaysia. Parten, M.B. 1932. Social participation among pre-school children. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 27, pp. 243-269. Piaget, J. 1951. Play, dreams and imitation in childhood. New York: Norton. Sutton-Smith, B. 1997. The ambiguity of play. Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L.S. 1978. Mind in Society: the development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press.
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