Can children teach children?

I've sure you've heard them a time or two--children explaining the "rules" to other children when playing a game, playing dress-up, when coloring a picture. They even tell each other how to dress, how to behave and how to talk. But would we call this teaching? Do children have an awareness of what it means to teach?

These questions were the focus of a 2007 study sponsored by the Swedish Board of Education where children were observed teaching their peers how to play Chinese checkers. As it turned out, all four children managed to teach their partners how to play the game.

According to the study, teaching is defined as “showing awareness of affecting change in the learner.” The author states, “In order to teach effectively, one individual must understand what another one sees, knows, wants and is trying to achieve.”

The task of teaching a peer to play a game represents a genuine social problem, the author says. Children are constantly placed in situations where learning takes place as a result of an action in an attempt to solve a problem. Supporters of the “social cognition” theory (Brown et al., 1989) explain that learning takes place in authentic activities, that it is deeply rooted in context and culture.

So,children are able to teach other children because they are experts at learning by doing? Because learning is a natural part of the socialization process? Or, because learning is best achieved when what they are doing depends on it? My guess is all of the above.

But haven't we aleady concluded that children are quite capable of passing on habits and behaviors to their peers? Here it is the middle of January and I'm still in the process of "unteaching" my six-year-old the incorrect version of Joy to the World--you know the one that involves flushing a purple dinosaur down the potty? Now, who taught him that, I wonder?