One of the key challenges of contemporary education concerns the conditions created to prepare children for the uncertainty and plurality of perspectives that characterise the modern world.
Accordingly, it is important to develop teachers’ competences in responsiveness and their readiness to engage with situations of uncertainty that inevitably arise in the discussion of problem situations and in the joint search for creative solutions with children.
This study aims to investigate the competences teachers need to foster problem-solving in early childhood settings, with particular attention to the teacher’s role.

The study is devoted to the analysis of shared problem solving as one of the conditions for the development of creative thinking in early childhood education.Creative (dialectical) thinking is understood as reflecting development processes, formulating a contradiction and setting a task for its resolution. For solving creative (dialectical) problems, collaborative discussion is essential, as it allows for the presentation of opposing ideas through distributed activity (Shannon et al., 2024).

Research shows that adults often fail to support children's reasoning and problem-solving (Perret-Clermont A.-N. & Mehmeti, 2017; Galton et al., 1999; Siraj‐Blatchford I., 2002). Shared problem solving is more common in groups with a high-quality educational environment (Siraj‐Blatchford & Manni, 2008; Sylva et al., 2004).

Research using the "Creativity Environment Rating Scale (CERS): ECERS extension" (Shiyan et al., 2025a) showed that situations in which adults provide meaningful responses to children and engage in extensive dialogue with them about problem situations, where children can offer their ideas, are extremely rare (Shiyan et al., 2025b).Researchers in developmental education point out that all adult actions cannot be reduced to scaffolding (Wood, Bruner, Ross, 1976; Pramling et al., 2019 )., since this phenomenon was originally described in a situation where a child masters a method of action already known to an adult.It is important to analyze the actions of an adult in a situation of solving problematic situations for which the adult himself does not have only a ready-made answer, but also a pre-thought-out “conversation script.”

This study aimed to move beyond the description of observed situations, as captured in the CERS scale indicators (dialogue with children, discussion of problematic situations, etc.), to identifying the specific teacher actions that serve as the conditions for the development of such situations.

The research question is what specific actions a teacher should take when leading a shared problem solving in a group of preschoolers.

The theoretical basis of the study is the cultural-historical psychology of Vygotsky (1997), which considers learning based on the child’s zone of proximal development as a condition for the amplification of child development.

A case study approach is relevant for identifying teacher actions and the opportunities they create for children during shared problem solving (Gaya and Smith, 2016; Sujetaitė-Volungevičienė, 2021). For the analysis, a group from a kindergarten that participated in previpus study (Shiyan et al., 2025b) was selected. The quality of the educational environment was assessed using the "Creativity Environment Rating Scale (CERS): ECERS extension" (Shiyan et al., 2025a). The 2024 educational environment quality assessment results for the selected kindergarten were 5.25. For reliability, a repeat assessment was conducted in 2025, and the high score (5.75) was confirmed. A video recording of a discussion with children, recorded during morning circle time, was analyzed as a case study. The "child-adult-child" pattern was adopted as the unit of analysis to identify the mechanism of adult "response" to children's ideas and how children respond to this response. For analysis, the dialogue was manually transcribed. The transcript included not only the responses and actions of the teacher and children, but also non-verbal behaviors relevant for analysis (intonation, facial expressions, gestures, voice level). The discussion took place in a mixed-age group (children aged 3 to 6 years). It was initiated by an adult as a "circle conversation" and lasted 24 minutes. The teacher structured the discussion around a conflict situation that occasionally unfolds within the group. A transcript of the dialogue was compiled, and two assessments were agreed upon for marking the teacher's actions.During the first stage of the qualitative analysis, types of teacher actions were identified. First, actions that create an intellectual challenge, such as when children are confronted with a problematic situation posed (or supported) by an adult, or when an adult problematizes a child's idea (reveals the irrelevance or inadequacy of an argument). Second, actions designated as scaffolding: assistance that enables children to engage in a group discussion or maintain engagement. Within scaffolding, two categories of actions were identified: cognitive scaffolding, where an adult helps to comprehend a situation or clarify a concept and summarize responses, and interactional scaffolding, the purpose of which is to maintain the coherence of the discussion. In the second stage of the qualitative analysis, episodes were identified that demonstrated the triad of "children-teacher-children" interactions in order to analyze the effectiveness of the teacher's dialogue strategies. Three episodes were selected for the article: "problem formulation," "working with solutions," and "refining the solution."

A qualitative analysis of interaction episodes suggests that collaborative problem-solving with a group of preschoolers and flexible responses to the uncertainties that inevitably arise in dialogue with children require the teacher to balance four pairs of opposing actions: first, challenge and scaffolding; second, actions aimed at solving the cognitive task and creating a collaborative discussion; and third, narrative and logical modes of discussion (Bruner, 1986). One of the conditions for children's engagement is the integration of the affective and intellectual aspects of interaction during discussion. Analysis of the videos reveals that challenge and assistance, work with the cognitive sphere and collaborative discussion, narrative and logical modes, emotions and intellect are dialectically integrated in skillful discussion. In educational practice, however, teachers often fail to achieve this balance, maintaining only one of the opposites in each pair (Shiyan et al., 2025b). An analysis of this case shows that, with adult assistance, children begin to perceive someone else's idea as meaningful and can expand on and elaborate on it. This occurs because the teacher, through their responses, connects the children's statements into a larger discussion, relating the children's ideas to one another, helping the children hear and understand each other, and connecting individual ideas to the overall flow of the discussion. The results from the study may highlight areas professional learning so that teachers can better support development of creative thinking and problem solving in general in early childhood.

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