How child‐centred education favours some learners more than others (original) (raw)
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Research has shown that schoolteachers often prepare children for success in standardized reading assessments by ‘teaching to the test.’ Concurrently, research exploring children’s emergent literacies and ‘school readiness’ has shown that early childhood teachers often feel pressured to ‘prepare’ children for school and may do so by focusing on print-related literacies, to the detriment of earlier stages of the oral-to-print continuum. This raises the concern that teaching children as a group, preparing them for the next ‘stage of education,’ will disadvantage children who are working below or above expected levels of development. Our study explores the teaching approaches used with a group of foundation-year children who achieved more advanced reading outcomes than children from four adjacent classrooms in their first year of schooling. We collected the reading and letter-identification outcomes of 16 children in the teacher’s foundation-year class and interviewed her about her pra...
As they join Key Stage 1, many young children in the UK still face an outcome-driven National Curriculum that is measured by a narrow set of criteria within two years. This is despite the introduction of the statutory play-based Foundation Stage Curriculum in September 2000. Indeed, the Foundation Stage Curriculum itself contains outcomes as well as context for the children’s learning and suggestions for that process. Conversely, the surrounding literature and much effective international practice both tell us that the most effective early years’ learning puts the child, not extrinsically driven outcomes, at the centre of good practice. As a Foundation Stage practitioner, working with 4-5-year-olds in a primary school between during the academic year 2001-2, I attempted daily to manage the lack of reconciliation between a fully learner-centred approach, the curriculum-centred Key Stage 1 approach and the Foundation Stage approach, which includes elements of each. Through action research employing a triangulated model, this study focused on finding ways to achieve that reconciliation.
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International Journal of Early Years Education, 2019
This paper addresses the incompletely resolved tension between play-based and direct teaching approaches to early years pedagogy and practitioners' resultant difficulties in understanding and delivering high-quality practice. Previously, we argued for the importance of infusing playfulness into all classroom interactions and activities in order to assist practitioners in forming a useful mental model of early years practice. Here, we extend the playful image to present a new, coherent framework for early years practice, based on three dimensions: the degree of playfulness in the activity taking place, the locus of control of the action during the activity and the nature of the learning taking place. We lay out the framework and describe its relation to free play as a prelude to discussing how it applies to classroom play and other types of early years classroom activity, illustrated by cameos. It is argued that the full range of each dimension should be well sampled through choosing a variety of activities and that such an approach will preserve high levels of child engagement. The framework provides a useful tool to prompt reflective practice and professional development.
Children, Development and Education
Children, Development and Education, 2011
Early childhood education in many countries has been built upon a strong tradition of a materially rich and active play-based pedagogy and environment. Yet what has become visible within the profession, is essentially a Western view of childhood preschool education and school education. It is timely that a series of books be published which present a broader view of early childhood education. This series, seeks to provide an international perspective on early childhood education. In particular, the books published in this series will: outcomes The series will cover theoretical works, evidence-based pedagogical research, and international research studies. The series will also cover a broad range of countries, including poor majority countries. Classical areas of interest, such as play, the images of childhood, and family studies will also be examined. However the focus will be critical and international (not Western-centric).
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INTRODUCING THE IDEA OF THE ‘classroom as community’, a class of six- to eight-year-old children engaged with a project, The Wellbeing Classroom (McInnes, Diamond & Whitington, 2014), which intended to support and advance their social and emotional development. This paper examines how the notion of ‘classroom as community’ informed the thinking and actions of the adults involved, and identifies six key elements of the approach employed. The teacher employed five strategies over a year: professional learning and reflection; building trust with children and modelling emotional self-regulation; teaching social skills across the day; accessing regular outreach worker support; and involving parents. Led by an upskilled teacher, the ‘classroom as community’ approach was found to have successfully supported children's social and emotional development, particularly those with difficulties. The project's reach included parents, thus extending its effects. This article reports on the ...
‘What works’ and for whom? Bold Beginnings and the construction of the school ready child
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School readiness is a dominant discourse in current policy agendas in UK and international contexts, fulfilling a range of goals such as providing children with the ‘best start in life’ by breaking the cycle of poverty, and preparing children for formal learning in compulsory education. Focussing on the school readiness agenda in England, this paper interrogates how the local touchdown of international policy formulations influences policy at country-level. It is argued that the emphasis on teaching Mathematics, Reading and Writing as a way of readying children for school raises concerns over the formalisation of pedagogy and curriculum in the Reception year (aged 4–5), in preparation for the transition to Year One of the National Curriculum. Using Hyatt’s Critical Discourse Policy Analysis Frame (CPDAF) this paper examines how the Office for Standards in Education (OfSTED) report ‘Bold Beginnings’ further strengthens the policy discourse that establishes Reception as a site for sch...
Australasian Journal of Early Childhood
This study investigated the practice of two early-childhood educators and their interactions with 24 children (mean age 5.2 years) in an inner-suburban Australian preschool setting. The study specifically examined the nature of how educators ‘intentionally teach’ concepts to young children in a child-centred programme. Six hours of educator–child digital video observations and three hours of educator interviews were gathered and analysed using Kravtsova’s (2009) concept of ‘subject positioning’. The findings suggest that it was challenging to teach intentionally in a child-centred programme based on children’s interests. This research is the first phase of a larger study. It is argued that the tensions between educators’ beliefs about child learning and their role in relation to fostering children’s conceptual development in child-centred programmes could make it difficult for educators to implement intentional teaching as presented in the Australian Early Years Learning Framework (...