1. Improving the Quality of Adult Engagement in Children’s Learning
Professor Chris Pascal and Professor Tony Bertram

2. Agenda Importance of quality in early childhood education and care
The Effective Early Learning Programme (EEL)
Quality of teaching
Nature of adult educative relationships
The Adult Engagement Scale

3. Effective Early Learning (EEL) Project: What is it?
the most used evaluation and improvement strategy in the UK with a clear intention to raise quality
an externally validated and participatory process of self evaluation and improvement
works through a collaborative and democratic partnership between practitioners, parents and children by developing an open, ‘civic’ culture in each setting
emphasises practitioner and organisational development through training and action research
sets out to empower and strengthen those who work with young children and young children themselves

4. Effective Early Learning (EEL) Project: How it works
3 days of intensive training for practitioners (and parents) to enhance their knowledge of effective early learning and how to evaluate it, followed by 12 – 18 months action
a 4 stage process of evaluation, action planning, improvement and reflection in each setting
a nested support framework including detailed documentation, regular network meetings, a dedicated EEL External Adviser, an EEL Help Line, local support, publications
an accredited quality assurance and training process

5. Effective Early Learning (EEL) Project
Self Evaluation Framework with Three Domains to Evaluate Quality:
Contextual Factors: Aims, curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and record keeping, environment, staffing, relationships and interactions, parental involvement, leadership, monitoring and evaluation
Process Factors: Adult Engagement/Child Involvement
Outcome Factors: Children’s Learning/Practitioners Learning/Setting Quality

6. Effective Early Learning (EEL) Project
Collaborative and team based action research
Methods for gathering evidence in all three domains include:
Observation Schedules
Interviews
Documentary Analysis
Questionnaires

7. Key Focus in EEL: Quality of Teaching
Strong evidence that the most important factor in the quality of early education is the quality and level of adult interaction with the child (Pascal and Bertram, 2007; Sylva et al, 2008)
Cognitive focus
Sustained shared thinking
Framed or ‘scaffolded’ pedagogic interactions

8. Nature of Adult Educative Relationships
Carl Rogers (1983): Adult qualities that facilitate learning:
Realness or genuineness
Prizing, acceptance and trust
Empathetic understanding

9. Adult Engagement Scale
(EEL Programme)
Adult Engagement Scale developed to assess quality of adult educative interactions with children
Focuses on three aspects of interaction that support children’s learning:
Sensitivity
Stimulation
Autonomy

10. Adult’s Pedagogic or ‘Engaging’ Qualities (Bertram 1995)
Sensitivity:
Sensitivity of the adult to the feelings and emotional well being of the child and includes:
Sincerity
Empathy
Responsiveness
Affection

11. Pedagogic or ‘Engaging’ Qualities (Bertram 1995)
2. Stimulation:
The way in which the adult intervenes, scaffolds and frames learning opportunities to support child’s current learning/development journey and includes capacity to:
Motivate
Stimulate
Extend
Sustain
Persist
Involve

12. Pedagogic or ‘Engaging’ Qualities (Bertram 1995)
3. Autonomy
Autonomy identifies the degree of freedom the adult provides for the child to:
Self direct
Experiment
Choose
Initiate
Self organise and manage
Negotiate
Take responsibility

13. Assessing Adult Engagement
Peer review process
Multiple observations of practitioner(s) in action
5 point scale for each dimension
Analysis of observations to create graphs which reveal levels of Adult Engagement over time and situation

14. Observations in Action!
Now to practice!
Watch the DVD clips and see how you would rate the UK practitioners levels of engagement.