This link takes us to the blog of a bloke called Don Ledingham, who states that
Recent research, and our intuitive understanding, into the link between the ability to read and the ability to access the curriculum would suggest that a child’s developmental level is a key factor in their success or failure. Yet we treat younger children, who might be 20 per cent behind in their development, in exactly the same way as their peers.
I’d echo his thoughts on this.
I’ve had the good luck over the last few weeks of visiting some really good young and trainee EY practitioners in schools, and am brought back time and again to my persistent worry that, even where Child Development is part of the training programme for EY teachers and other practitioners, we run the risk of having our work (and consequently their work with young chidlren) dominated by externally defined structure – by training them to be what, in a previous post I noted Frank Furedi calling HE lecturers “purveyors.” Outcome mongers, perhaps.
What I would, in a perfect world, be calling for is a training curriculum that trusts three key players in the training process much more deeply than at present: it would trust the trainee who, increasingly, is in the process not by default (if that were ever widely the case) but out of a genuine desire to understand and practise the skills of teaching; it would trust the schools as hosts and partners to have something to give other than classroom space for the inexperienced to gain experience; it would trust initial teacher training providers to be able to encourage trainees in their desire – to encourage scholarship, risk-taking and learning from their mistakes. But this Utopia would be undrpinned by my desire to see Child Devlopment at the heart of the understanding of trainee – and the lecturer, and the host teacher – and that’s maybe just me wanting to impose that agenda rather than the agenda of people who work best by structure.
nicktomjoe 