Previous developmental research on pedagogical learning has heavily
emphasized the role of children as learners. However, little is known about
how young children understand pedagogical exchanges, including the
teacher’s role. In this experiment, we investigated how 3.5-year-old and
4.5-year-old (n=24 per age group) children transmit pedagogical knowledge
to a naïve adult. Children first learned about fictional animals and were
then provided the opportunity to teach what they learned to an adult
unfamiliar with these animals. In the learning phase, children learned
information that was marked as true or false. Preliminary analyses reveal
that 3.5-year-old children had difficulties teaching any information and do
not distinguish between facts and false information. By contrast,
4.5-year-olds commonly and spontaneously engaged in teaching behavior and
mainly conveyed true information (in 71% of the cases) when doing so. These
results suggest that preschoolers between 3.5 and 4.5 years begin to show
competence at teaching. Overall, the findings expand our understanding of
pedagogical learning by uncovering how young children apprehend the
complementary roles of teacher and learner.