Article 1of 4:The Power of Gathering: Reclaiming Collaborative Learning Through Intentional Group Meetings
- liliannk
- Jun 8
- 10 min read
Children as Co-Researchers: A Four-Part Series To Transform How You Listen to Children
By Lili-Ann Kriegler and Bronwyn Cron - Project Sustainability Collective Co-researchers with children, educators, communities and organisations
Series Introduction: Seeds of Wonder, Forests of Understanding
At Presbyterian Ladies College, a group of four-year-old children had been immersed in investigating plants and seeds for weeks. Under the careful guidance of educators Eva and Jasmine, they had germinated various seeds, documented growth and failure, held a requiem for a watermelon seed that didn't germinate, and moved some of their experiments outdoors to compare with indoor controls.
The depth of their engagement was evident not only in their scientific observations and artistic documentation but also in how this learning had transformed their relationship with their environment.
The most striking example came from a group of boys who typically used the outdoor garden for physical play. When they discovered what they called a 'sick tree,' they didn't just observe—they acted. They communicated their concerns to educators, requested water, built protective barriers of tanbark, collected smooth stones from the architect-designed water feature, and created a hand-drawn 'no touching' sign. These children had become environmental stewards, demonstrating that when we listen carefully to children's thinking, they reveal themselves as capable agents of change.
When we, as facilitators and co-researchers, joined a conversation between these children and their educators, we witnessed something remarkable. In forty minutes of sustained dialogue, four-year-old children revealed sophisticated understanding of plant ecosystems, demonstrated metacognitive awareness of their learning, and posed questions that opened doorways to profound investigations about interconnectedness, time, care, and wonder.
This wasn't coincidental. It emerged from intentional sustainability education that recognises five domains—environmental, social, economic, cultural, and leadership & governance—woven through authentic, place-based learning experiences. These children weren't being indoctrinated with predetermined messages about environmental care.
Instead, they were being partnered in discoveries that honoured their existing knowledge while expanding their capacity to think systemically about the world they inhabit.
The conversation that unfolded challenged many assumptions about early childhood education, including those regarding attention spans, the value of group meetings, the depth of children's thinking, and the role of educators as facilitators versus knowledge-holders. Most importantly, it demonstrated that when we approach children's ideas with genuine curiosity rather than dismissive charm, we discover that they are profound thinkers already engaged in making sense of complex systems.
This series of four articles explores what we learned about critical reflection through listening to children, offering insights for early childhood educators committed to sustainability education that is both rigorous and joyful, both planned and responsive, and that honours children's agency while recognising educators' professional expertise.
Article 1 of 4: The Power of Gathering
Reclaiming Collaborative Learning Through Intentional Group Meetings
'I forced myself to go see the owl, and I was glad because it was good to see it.'
This profound statement from a four-year-old child reveals metacognitive awareness that many adults would envy. Yet it emerged not from individual reflection, but from a group conversation where authentic listening created space for such insights to surface. In an era where there is growing pressure to abandon group meetings in favour of purely following individual children's interests, this moment reminds us of what we risk losing: the irreplaceable magic of collaborative meaning-making.
The Case Against Group Meetings: Valid Concerns
The movement away from traditional 'morning meetings' or whole-group gatherings raises legitimate concerns. Critics argue that requiring children to sit still violates their natural need for movement, that forcing them to participate compromises their agency, and that following predetermined agendas ignores their authentic interests. These criticisms often stem from observations of rigid, adult-directed meetings where children are passive recipients rather than active contributors.
At face value, these concerns align with contemporary understanding of child development and rights-based approaches to education. Children do need movement, agency, and respect for their interests. The question isn't whether these needs are valid—they are—but whether abandoning group meetings entirely is the solution, or whether we need to reimagine what collaborative learning can look like.
A Different Kind of Meeting: When Children Choose to Stay
The conversation at Presbyterian Ladies' College began as a scheduled provocation within a sustainability investigation but quickly evolved into something more organic. Initially, some children demonstrated classic 'meeting resistance'—chatting, fidgeting, not focusing. Yet as the conversation deepened and children witnessed their ideas being authentically valued, something shifted. The emotional tone shifted from one of restless compliance to one of engaged participation.
What kept these four-year-olds focused for forty minutes, far longer than conventional wisdom suggests is appropriate, wasn't coercion or entertainment. It was the experience of being heard as serious thinkers whose ideas mattered not just to adults, but to their peers.
When one child mentioned that plants need 'water,' another immediately connected this to rainbows forming from rain and sun. When a quiet child finally shared that he grows radishes in her garden, it sparked a whole discussion about underground vegetables and how you harvest them by 'pulling from the green stuff that grows above ground.' Ideas built upon ideas, creating a collective understanding that no individual child could have reached alone.
Embodied Learning Within Structure
Rather than requiring static sitting, this meeting naturally incorporated movement as a learning tool. Children demonstrated seed growth with their bodies, crouching small and slowly rising. They stretched tall like trees and swayed their 'branches' to show wind movement. They used gestures to show the shapes of pollen, leaves, and flower petals.
This embodied learning wasn't a break from the conversation—it was integral to it. Movement became a language for expressing complex scientific concepts, allowing children to literally embody their understanding while contributing to the collective building of knowledge.
The key insight here is that honouring children's need for movement doesn't require abandoning group experiences. Instead, it requires reimagining what group experiences can look like when they're designed with children's learning styles in mind.
Metacognitive Awareness in Collaborative Context
The child's reflection on 'forcing herself’ when her mum invited her outdoors to see and hear the owl demonstrates sophisticated self-awareness, as she recognises her initial reluctance, acknowledges her decision-making process, and evaluates the outcome. This wasn't prompted by an adult asking, 'How did that make you feel?' Instead, it emerged organically as she contributed to a conversation about night animals and garden discoveries.
This illustrates how group conversations can make children's thinking visible in ways that individual interactions might not. When children hear peers sharing experiences and ideas, they're prompted to reflect on their own experiences, often revealing insights about their learning processes that surprise even experienced educators.
Other examples of metacognitive awareness emerged throughout the conversation:
Children 'bouncing ideas' off each other's comments and being 'reminded' of connections to their own experiences
New vocabulary learning is happening in real-time as children clarify meanings with each other
Visible connections are being made between previously separate pieces of knowledge
Peer Teaching and Co-Construction
Perhaps most powerfully, the conversation demonstrated children as peer teachers. When the quiet child who had contributed little finally shared that she'd drawn 'a flower,' starting with 'a circle' for 'the centre,' other children immediately built on this contribution. They supplied that the circle was 'surrounded by petals' and showed various petal shapes with their hands. They explained that 'the stalk or stem was below the flower, holding it up, not the other way round.'
This wasn't one child showing off knowledge while others listened passively. It was genuine co-construction, where one child's tentative contribution became the foundation for collective exploration. The child who drew the flower provided the foundation; her peers provided the extension and elaboration. Together, they created an understanding that belonged to the whole group.
Inclusive Participation Without Coercion
Not every child spoke during the conversation, but every child was clearly listening. When one child was directly invited to share but remained silent, the questioning shifted naturally to others who had been engaged observers. This demonstrates how skilled facilitation can create space for different types of participation without pressuring reluctant contributors.
The child who initially remained silent about seeds eventually shared unprompted that he grows radishes at home. Her contribution came when she felt ready, not when adults decided she should participate. Yet she was part of the learning community throughout, absorbing and processing the collective knowledge being built.
The Social Dimension of Sustainability Learning
This collaborative approach directly supports sustainability education across multiple domains. The social domain of sustainability emphasises community, cooperation, and collective responsibility—values that can only be learned through actual community experiences, not individual pursuits.
When children work together to understand how plants need different elements to thrive, they're learning about interdependence. When they build on each other's knowledge about underground vegetables, they're experiencing how individual knowledge contributes to collective understanding. When they plan together to protect the 'sick tree,' they're practising collaborative stewardship.
These social sustainability concepts can't be learned in isolation. They require authentic community experiences where children practice cooperation, shared decision-making, and collective care.
Flexible Structure: Goals with Openness
The meeting at Presbyterian Ladies College had clear intentions—to explore children's understanding of plants and ecosystems as part of ongoing sustainability investigations. Yet it remained entirely open for unexpected directions. No adult had anticipated the depth of children's knowledge about pollination, the sophistication of their understanding about plant parts, or the metacognitive insights that would emerge.
This balance of intention and openness represents sophisticated pedagogical practice. It requires educators who are confident in their goals but flexible in their methods, who can recognise learning opportunities in unexpected moments, and who trust children's capacity to surprise them.
Implications for Practice
Reclaiming group meetings doesn't mean returning to rigid, adult-directed formats. Instead, it means reimagining collaborative learning experiences that:
Honour Children's Need for Movement: Incorporate embodied learning, allow position changes, and use movement as a language for expression rather than requiring static participation.
Create Authentic Purposes: Focus on genuine inquiry and investigation rather than compliance or information delivery. Children sense when their contributions matter versus when they're performing for adults.
Develop Facilitation Skills: Educators need sophisticated skills in listening, questioning, and creating space for multiple types of participation. This requires professional learning and reflection, not just good intentions.
Balance Structure with Responsiveness: Maintain clear learning intentions while remaining open to unexpected directions and insights from children.
Document and Reflect: Make children's thinking visible through careful documentation, then use this documentation to plan further investigations and learning experiences.
The Risk of Losing Collaborative Learning
If we abandon intentional group learning experiences entirely, we risk losing opportunities for:
Peer teaching and learning from diverse perspectives
Co-construction of knowledge that no individual could achieve alone
Development of discussion and listening skills, which are essential for democratic participation
Shared meaning-making that builds community and collective understanding
Metacognitive development that emerges from hearing others' thinking processes
Community as Learning Partner
The conversation at Presbyterian Ladies College lasted forty minutes, not because children were forced to participate, but because they were genuinely engaged in collaborative meaning-making. They stayed because their ideas mattered, because they were learning from each other, and because the experience honoured both their individual knowledge and their capacity to think together.
This challenges us to move beyond the false choice between individual agency and community learning. When group experiences are thoughtfully designed and skilfully facilitated, they become powerful contexts for both honouring children's voices and building the collaborative capacities essential for addressing complex challenges, such as sustainability.
The four-year-old who 'forced herself' to see the owl and 'was glad' demonstrates the kind of reflective, thoughtful decision-making we hope to nurture in future citizens. She developed this capacity not in isolation, but in community, sharing her insight with peers who could learn from her experience and educators who could recognise its significance.
In our interconnected world facing complex sustainability challenges, we need citizens who can think together, learn from diverse perspectives, and co-construct solutions. These capacities begin to develop in early childhood, through conversations where children's ideas are taken seriously and their contributions help build collective understanding.
Group meetings, when done well, aren't constraints on children's agency—they're practice for democratic participation in a world that desperately needs collaborative problem-solving.
Series Significance: The Future of Listening
These four articles explore what becomes possible when early childhood educators commit to critical reflection in listening to children. Through the lens of sustainability education with its five interconnected domains, we've examined how authentic listening can transform learning communities, deepen understanding, and nurture the capacities our world desperately needs.
The children at Presbyterian Ladies College demonstrated that when we listen carefully, we discover sophisticated thinkers already engaged in making sense of complex systems. Their theories about the influence of the moon on plants, their metacognitive awareness of learning processes, their collaborative knowledge-building, and their confident assertion that expert help should be sought when needed—all reveal capacities that emerge when children experience genuine respect for their own thinking.
This work challenges us to move beyond surface-level responsiveness towards the deeper professional artistry of creating learning environments where children's voices are not just heard but genuinely valued as contributions to collective understanding. It calls us to develop our capacities as listeners, learners, and learning designers committed to honouring both children's agency and our professional responsibility for creating rich educational experiences.
In our interconnected world facing complex sustainability challenges, we need citizens who can think in systems, collaborate across differences, and remain open to learning throughout their lives. These capacities begin to develop in early childhood, in conversations where children's ideas matter, where their questions lead to investigation, and where their thinking is extended through thoughtful planning and authentic partnerships.
The future of our world may well depend on our capacity to listen—really listen—to the wisdom children offer when we create conditions that allow them to share their thoughts and ideas.
This series represents our contribution to that essential work: learning to hear the profound within the everyday, the conceptual within the specific, and the hopeful within the complex challenges we face together.
The authors thank the children, educators, and community at Presbyterian Ladies College for their partnership in this ongoing investigation into sustainability and the power of authentic listening in early childhood education.
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If you'd like to purchase our books:
Stem Detectives – Bronwyn Cron and Niki Buchan
The Power of Play – Lili-Ann Kriegler
Professional Bios
Lili-Ann Kriegler (B.A. Hons, H. Dip. Ed, M.Ed.) is an award-winning author and education consultant with over 30 years' experience in educational leadership and cognitive development. As founder of Kriegler Education, she specialises in cognitive enhancement methodologies and Reggio Emilia-inspired project-based learning. Lili-Ann develops comprehensive learning frameworks and facilitates professional development for educators, with a focus on embedding sustainability through project-based action. Her most recent publication is 'The Power of Play: Mastering the 7 Dynamic Learning Zones'. Her work is driven by the belief that education is a transformative force for shaping a better future.
Bronwyn Cron has over 20 years of experience in developing science and sustainability education programs. She has worked with local and state governments, businesses, non-profits, community groups, schools, and early years services. Bronwyn is committed to providing engaging opportunities that support early childhood educators in building skills and confidence in implementing STEM and sustainability into their policies, programs, and practices. She is co-author of 'STEM Detectives' and specialises in creating learning experiences that transform isolated moments of play into cohesive sustainability investigations.
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