Searching for Wisdom in Children’s Dialogues: A Mixed Approach in Educational Practice

Abstract

The paper presents an analysis of diagnostic and exploratory the author’s studies carried out in various Polish cities, whose main purpose was to identify and analyze specific manifestations of wisdom (with creativity as its strong predictor) in older preschool children. Such research and analysis of collected research material would only be possible using mixed methods. Integration of quantitative and qualitative analyses enabled the analysis of collected research materials to be more in-depth and broader. Likewise, when drawing wider conclusions, the use of this approach allowed to generalize results. Combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis of the research material also allowed to compare research results against a number of studies and concepts supporting child development, especially in cognitive sphere.