The ability to explain

Why do we give explanations? There are two main possibilities. We may give an explanation to help someone else understand something; alternatively, we may give an explanation to demonstrate our own understanding. Similarly, when we ask for an explanation, we may be aiming to extend our own understanding; alternatively, we may be aiming to test someone else's understanding. Thus, explanation provides both a means of conveying knowledge and a means of assessing knowledge. For this reason, explanation is central to education. The ability to give explanations, the ability to understand explanations, and the ability to seek explanations are important assets for both the teacher and the pupil. This brings us to the question which will be the major focus of this book: how and when does the ability to explain develop? Despite the considerable educational relevance of this question, there is a dearth of research which addresses it directly.

Developmental psychologists have tended to treat children's explanations and justifications not as subjects of study in their own right but rather as a research tool. In other words, researchers have used explanations as a means of assessing abilities other than the ability to explain. For example, children's explanations have been employed as measures of their understanding of causality (Piaget, 1929, 1930; Berzonsky, 1971), their social sensitivity (Flavell et al., 1968), their metacognitive ability (Piaget, 1976, 1978), and their metalinguistic ability (Gleitman, Gleitman and Shipley, 1972).