Tag: Childhood

Who asks the most questions in your classroom?

An interesting question in itself. I wonder, hearing Julie Fisher talk about interactions in the classroom, whether we have really moved on, in ITE, from talking about “effective questioning” to a module that genuinely is interested in what children have to tell us. That killer phrase from one practitioner in the REPEY report “I need to tell you…” seems to me at the heart of this: the teacher confusing her/his clear professional duty to educate with a desire to control that process to such an extent that no real learning is allowed (or, if we’re honest, even looked for ) that isn’t in the teacher’s grasp. I’ve asked before “Is there a clear link between Sustained Shared Thinking and effective pedagogy?” and I wonder how this might continue to play out as we expect more and higher quality interactions from our newest professionals. God forbid that we should teach Sustained Shared Thinking as a technique when what is (might be) needed is time for teachers to listen and to follow up interests…

And then there’s this: the fiery Michael Rosen suggesting on his blog the kind of things the teaching profession should be saying out loud: “Children are full of feelings and thoughts,” “We ask children to think about difficult ideas…to think beyond themselves…” “We want children to ask questions…” Reading intelligently isn’t taught just by decoding, and thinking deeply is only partly encouraged by debate (Rosen has ideas about this, too); the critical thinking we ask for in trainee teachers comes from the genuine interest of others in your ideas, and starts from teachers and other adults with young children having a real delight in their thoughts.

Playing Outdoors

Some very interesting links here for the New Year, for example this one on play in the Early Years or the more general link to a map (which perhaps could do with a bit of elaboration – I note some gaps round Oxford for example!!).

The Play In Schools position paper is also well worth a read, despite being 6 years from its publication.  Despite? Perhaps because. How much movement has there been? Are we now seeing a return to formalisation in schooling which will cost play dear? Or will it simply mean a clearer line between the two – “Work hard, play hard” as my head teacher used to say – except he was thinking of rugby, which I found more of a trial than Greek.

Physical Activity Report

The ever-thoughtful Julian Grenier brings to our attention – well, to mine anyway – the new physical activity guidelines in his blog and in the factsheet 2 It deserves some consideration, although I feel uneasy as I read it. . Part of me has to recognise where my opposition comes from: the tone, which is less factsheet than Diktat, and (deeper in my history) from the dire footie sessions in Junior and Secondary schooling where I was taught nothing and stood around, bored and cold and sidelined (and I now shamefacedly wonder about all those other classes where I lapped up attention at the cost of bored and sidelined classmates). However, three hours a day seems an awful lot to get in – until we turn from the terse and instructional language of the factsheet to the longer report itself, Start Active, Stay Active and in particular Ch 3 on Early Years.
Full marks to the repeated admissions of the paucity of research evidence on EY activity. But I find the argument interesting, and  I worry about this reported connection:

Importantly, patterns of sedentary behaviour, particularly TV viewing, are relatively stable over time.

The brief, sketchy but important section p24 tells us soething about what the report sees as important about play, abd while I could argue about this rather instrumental view of such a core way of interacting, it is nonetheless worth quoting in extenso:

Active play opportunities should encourage young
children to:
•use their large muscle groups
• practise a wide range of different movements
• experience a variety of play spaces and
equipment
• set up their own play areas
• make up their own active play
• have fun and feel good about themselves and what they can do.

But does it have to seem as if we are required to do it? Oppositional me feels like catching the bus instead of cycling to work in the morning….

Westminster Education Forum

The Westminster Education Forum was interesting in that we got to hear some strong, individual voices, even if the sessions were  not illuminating about what was actually going to happen to the hard work of Robin Alexander and Claire Tickell. Here, for reference, is a link to the Cambridge Primary Review and here’s one to the review of the EYFS,  although I have made note of this before in this post.

What Robin Alexander had to say at the Westminster Forum is, in some ways, replicated by his Minimalisms Model in the release from CPR currently on their home page and also seen in this response to the DfE consultation process.  He remained reticent about what reception this message got from officials or ministers in the DfE, and it looked to me as if DfE representatives had been told not to do much, well, representing to us last week, although they may, of course, have had a different brief, and were representing back to ministers the feeling of the forum. They would have had their work cut out, I think, with so many different partis pris at pains to say their bit. I shall pass over my irritation at the cutesy tones of those advocating direct instruction for under sixes on the grounds that “children just love being praised for doing things the teachers ask them to” and the general frustration at the same speech-as-question repeated at every opportunity about why we have to fund Early Years when education is only compulsory over five. Too cheap (even for me) to carp at the people I disagree with.

With conflicting voices at the forum it was also fascinating to read Julian Grenier’s comments on his blog about how the media are reporting Tickell and I note (although without much hope that it will have effect) his sonorous sentence “This is not the time to start all over again.” I agree, it isn’t: but we remain, or rather as Carol Aubrey  wrote nearly ten years ago, the children remain

“the nexus  of power relations, policy concerns and value investments of home and school. They are caught struggling to meet competing social, cultural and academic goals embedded in distinct pedagogic practices at school and home. In this context, notions of complexity and diversity may not convey positive meanings.”

The next WEF session may be more enlightening in terms of how the Government is intending to lay the paths.  Attending  was fascinating but it tells me we are not out of the woods yet.

Tickell Review

So it’s out. Claire Tickell’s pieces to camera notwithstanding, there is much to be thought through, munched over, &c., &c. in the review, which is linked here:

I’ve only just begun to take it in, and early reactions have to be tempered by thoughts of how well the Government will take it, whether it will be tinged with the other debates – such as the phonics stuff, for starters, and the debate about making it voluntary (which she addresses on p 11) – and what effect it might have on the NC review (the call for evidence, about to close,  is linked here) or vice versa. But here from a first reading of the first section are a few snippets to ponder:

Repeatedly people reinforced the importance of an experienced, well-trained and supported workforce, and the international evidence supports this. Indeed, there is strong evidence that under-qualified and under-supported staff have a detrimental impact on outcomes for children. I have therefore made recommendations on how the status of working in early years might be enhanced and developed.
 There was also a strong and repeated emphasis on the importance of an appropriate, proportionate regulatory framework delivered by an inspectorate with a deep understanding of early years.
 Finally, and very importantly, the current economic context needs to be acknowledged as a significant factor informing the approach taken to the review.

Already there is lots to say here. I like the idea (how could I not?) of an experienced and well trained workforce, but looming over it like a thundercloud is her final point here: how will this be paid for? Later in the report she notes that “Much of the resource initially provided to support the implementation and development of the EYFS is being phased out.” In the same way, an “appropriate framework” inspected (or delivered, I’m not sure what the import of her wording is here) by people “with a deep understanding of early years” is something I and others have wanted for a long, long time – but I am in real doubt that the current regulators and inspectors are necessarily ready to take this on without considerably more training.

Pressing on to the parts that everyone was (perhaps understandably but unfairly) waiting for, the issues of school readiness and what the new framework might say about formal aspects of learning such as reading. Dame Claire comes out with guns blazing:

I know that some people interpret the term ‘school readiness’ as implying that
children could be pressured to learn to read and write at inappropriately young ages.

Her emphasis on personal and social development puts her review back (if it ever left it) within the “nursery inheritance.” While I still haven’t quite digested where she’s gong (to mix my metaphors) with talking about school unreadiness, I can, I think, see sense in her assertion (p21) that personal, social and emotional development, communication and language and physical development are identified as prime areas of learning in the EYFS.” It will depend, of course, on how this interpreted in the final documents, and how this is spun by politicians.

On then to Annex 4, the proposed slimming down of the Foundation Stage, and Annex 5, the proposed Early Learning Goals.

“Mercifully little change” seemed my first response, but I am now unsure. We have had slimmings-down before, and somehow the debate moves from giving children time and space to the day being taken up by those things the Government want measuring. No party can be seen to be in favour of declining standards, and it always seems to me to be beyond the wit of spin doctors to devise a way of selling to their politicians the notion of early learning not being about reading and writing. We will have to see whether the “school readiness” debate becomes, again, dominated by an adult-led (a panic-driven, headteacher-led?) scramble for formal skills, desirable for Governmental measuring, or whether the reports recommendation (p58) that “playing and exploring, active learning, and creating and thinking critically are highlighted in the EYFS as three characteristics of effective teaching and learning” is actually taken seriously.

Michael Morpurgo on why I come to work

There must be more than just this briefest post at some point, but here  is the current link (how long will an I-player link work?)  to Michael Morpurgo’s inspirational Dimbleby lecture and here is the link to Morpurgo’s own website and text.

I notice that the harder-lined chatterers are already out with comments like “He is a well intentioned, but clueless person. He has a big old fashioned left wing heart, good at bleating, but short on analysis.”  I disagree: we are not dealing here with “wrong but romantic versus right but replusive”  but with a whole set of practices and assumptions that ultimately defeat the work educators try and do.  I write this  because the points he brought in – the power of books to transform understanding, school starting age, the complexities of discussing oppression, life-chances and school experiences – all made rather a clever argument for the right of children to be able to access  a well-thought-out and effective educational experience.

And if there was the occasional bleat, I’m afraid I prefer it to to a snarl.

Aesthetic and anaesthetic education?

Some interesting stuff here – an RSA Animation again from Ken Robinson, whose fascinating insights I have cited before.  Thanks to my colleague Helen for the link, by the way.

The link between the growth of routine medication for possible ADHD and routine testing makes for a thought-provoking “moment” and (such is Robinson’s way) a good gag about the way different states in the US provide for what he calls a “fictitious epidemic” – but he has some important things to say about  “aesthetic and anaesthetic education” and the  link between patterns of industrial and educational organisation. And what do we make of the decline in divergent thinking throughout schooling? It reminded me powerfully of a poem Jack Zipes cites in his wonderful Relentless Progress, “…Because the houses of Quiet Restraint/had so few gifts in them…”

Spend just over 11 minutes on this and rethink (some) ideas on what education is about.

Wet play times

“My” PGCE students are out on their first day of what we term their first school experience, and the rain has tipped down, and the winds are high. It reminds me of my very first play time that I had to supervise and it was announced (perhaps somewhat gleefully by an older teacher) as Wet Play Time.

It was a bear garden, if by that term we can conjure up a hundred bears and probably about 75 crayons and the longest piece of paper – from one end of the hall to the other – and twenty minutes of frenzied drawing.

Did I mind it? Well, it was an eye-opener as to how much these rather daunting and serious-minded children could throw themselves into a rather ad hoc activity. No, it was fine, except perhaps for gathering them all together at the end. What gave me pause for thought was what counts as unsuitable weather.  Rain is out, for starters, apparently.

Then, after a stretch of some four years, I found myself in the pouring rain with a bunch of four year olds, watching water pour down the leaky gutter onto the pumpkin they had grown. We all got wet and cold, and took about an hour to invent ways of collecting water, harvest pumpkins, and so on. I thought I was very brave, smugly. I can see now I was learning.

Move forward to this morning, and my thoughts turning to the baptism by fire that might, in some schools, be Wet Play Time for the PGCE students. I find, with a bit of help, two starkly contrasting visions of outdoor play: this from Norway and this from the UK .  The emphasis on risk and protection from the v enthusiastic advocates in UK is entirely valid, but the conversations (and in some ways the actitivities) are dominated by the notion of staying safe.

Both sets of practitioners  would  claim that “Being happy, being outside and getting fresh air is clearly important for today’s children” as Heidi, the Norwegian school leader states. This is close to the four dimensions of outdoors mentioned by the Kaplans that I have discussed before: Being Away; Extent; Fascination; Compatibility. What is most striking is the degree to which they do this, the degree of Extent to use Kaplan’s phrase – one setting being next to a (doubtless quite cold) lake, where the staff meeting (in a tepee) discusses (at 12 mins 50 in the clip) being able to see the children after the winter sun disappears, and the other in a UK garden where an island is manufactured with a tarpaulin sheet (6 mins 20) and you have to pretend it’s deep water. Look at the Norway clip around 10 mins in, and see the match incident, to see real instruction, real involvement. It’s there in the UK, of course – as in the box play (4 mins 50) – but contrast that to the mountain walk in Norway (16 mins 20).

There are huge issues of confidence here – adults’ trust in the resilience of children, parents’ trust in the staff (and we can note the difference in the videos between advocating the outdoors to parents in the UK, and the parents’ voices in Norway) the staff’s trust in their understanding of the children: a mutual upbuilding of a project, arising from respect and common ideals. Is that what we’re lacking in the UK context?

Play and playfulness

Perhaps I have been too allusive in recent posts on EYFS, and perhaps this is a symptom of being away from the classroom  too long – too far away from the stories shared with chidlren, the time we found a mouse’s nest, the cafe where the food was made of sand from the sand pit.  When I included here a quotation from Evangelou et al to the effect that “the art of early years practice is getting the balance right between guided and self initiated learning, either in homes or in settings” I ought to have gone further, and maybe nailed my colours to the mast.  Here, then are some more quotations to think about.
In Sue Rogers’ chapter on “Powerful Pedagogies” (in Liz Brooker and Sue Edwards’ Engaging Play) she suggests, for example that

The coupling of play with pedagogy is in many ways a deeply problematic enterprise for at least three reasons [I’m quoting just the first two here]: first, because traditionally, the concept of play has been positioned in marked opposition to its apparently more worthwhile counterpart, work. This divuision is marked not simply by the ways in which play is often relegated to specific times and places but also in the ways inn which it is regarded in practice as a marginal and recreational activity removed from the real business of the early childhood classroom. Second the pedagogization of play (pedagogy of play) has meant that play has increasingly become an instrument for learning adult competencies.

And Deborah Albon’s chapter on Playing for Real (in Janet Moyles’ Thinking about Play) starts to draw to a conclusion with these remarks:

…I do not believe there are easy answers; indeed I am suspicious of ‘easy answers’ to complex areas of practice. But I do believe the questions are important to reflect on and constantly revisit as team. This points to a need for reflective classroom discussions about play in early childhood settings that go way beyond planning meetings merely listing the resources that might be added to an area in order to organize and encourage children’s play or that discuss observations of children’s play without reflecting on the role practitioners could play in extending or, indeed, inhibiting that play.

So here’s me not being allusive:
The richest times I have seen children have in school have rarely been in the gift of the adult, except indirectly. That’s not to say that there wasn’t learning there – my observations at the time suggested the opposite – or that learning didn’t take place in opportunities I created, but simply that those times which I remember best from working with young children are those in which children seem motivated and involved in a project that has only incidentally been about their learning something I have chosen. They have been afternoons with time machines, days with dens, improvised pulleys and rope swings, funerals for dolls, and the time that mouse came out from under a paving slab.