1. Early Years Provision and Practice Week 2
Session 2: Quality Provision? How Children Learn.
Teaching Lecturer Sue Raphael

2. Aims To explore the pioneers of Early Years Provision and Practice
To consider the notion of “quality” in relation to practice
To explore the concepts of:
How Children Learn
Theorist’s perspective

3. Feedback to the whole group.
In small groups discuss the ideas of the pioneers that you have researched.
How did their contributions impact on practice?
Identify key points related to the following pioneers:
Frierich Froebel
Maria Montessori
Rudolf Steiner
Margaret McMillan
Susan Isaacs
Feedback to the whole group.

4. Pioneers in Early Years Education
Early years practitioners are indebted to the work of Froebel ( ), Montessori ( ), and Steiner (1861—1925) who have been influential on training and practice. Along with McMillan ( ) and Issacs( ) they have generated a set of core principles, which encompass the ‘early childhood tradition (Bruce,1997:QCA, 2000)

5. What is Quality? Quality is about:
knowing what you want to do and how you want to do it
learning from what you do through reflection
using what you learn to develop your setting
seeking to achieve continuous improvement

6. Group Activity
What would you expect to see that reflects “quality” in an early years setting?
In small groups make two lists.
The characteristics of a “quality” setting.
Factors that might impact upon “quality”
Identify 5 points and explain to the whole group why you have chosen them.

7. EPPE Project November 2004 5 Year project
EPPE explored five questions:
1. What is the impact of pre-school on children’s
intellectual and social/behavioural development?
2. Are some pre-schools more effective than others
in promoting children’s development?
3. What are the characteristics of an effective preschool
setting?
4. What is the impact of the home and childcare
history on children’s development?
5. Do the effects of pre-school continue through
Key Stage 1 (ages 6 and 7 years)

8. Discuss the 5 questions further- what does it mean to you/your setting/your practice?
(Report By Kathy Sylva+, Edward Melhuish, Pam Sammons, Iram Siraj-Blatchford and Brenda Taggart. Institute of Education, University of London, University of Oxford,
Birkbeck, University of London, University of Nottingham)
If time-Take a question each and discuss & Feedback to each other

9. A Quality Curriculum An appropriate curriculum:
Builds on what children can do.
Opportunities to engage in adult directed and child initiated activities.
Opportunities for learning through playing, talking and experiencing.
Promotes a positive attitude towards learning
Offers situations where the children have confidence to work alone or with others to solve problems.

10. The law that sets out:
duties on local authorities to improve outcomes for children and to ensure access to information about provision in their area
legal frameworks for the regulation and inspection of provision for children from birth to age 17
the Early Years Foundation Stage: this is the framework for the delivery of quality integrated care and education for children from birth to the 31 August following their fifth birthday.

11. Pound (IN Dryden et al, 2005, p. 178)
Quality Staff
Well trained and effective staff
Understand how children learn
Plan for learning
Create a stimulating learning environment
Work in partnership
“The diversity of provision is reflected in the diversity of qualifications”
Pound (IN Dryden et al, 2005, p. 178)

12. Research
Research funded by the DfES entitled “Researching Effective Pedagogy in the Early Years” (Siraj-Blatchford et al, 2002) suggests that settings employing trained teachers produce higher standards of achievement than those where staff are not similarly qualified.
What do you think?

13. Is Quality Subjective? Is Quality subjective?
The inspectors preferences and prejudices
Differing staff values
Represents the community it serves
Parental Choices

14. Theoretical Perspective
Vygotsky asserts
‘that it is out of early interaction of quality between child and significant other that higher order functioning emerges.’
Bruce (1987, p.54)

15. Group Activity
In small groups write a definition of learning in the Early Years.
Feedback and discuss

16. Theory underpinning how children learn
Why is it important to recognise and understand how young children learn and develop?
Why should it be of equal importance to view the child holistically with all areas of development being considered equally?

17. Learn by observing others-imitation is a central process
There is no one right view; as all theories offer some insights into how individuals dev and learn Bentham (2004, p.9)
Suggests children learn from action and exploring their own environment
Learn through links forming between stimulus and response and conditioning these thru positive and negative reinforcement
Learn by observing others-imitation is a central process
Constructivist-
Behaviourist-
Social learning theory-

18. Learning Theorists –A brief guide
Behaviourism
Explore acting thinking & feeling.
Behaviour can be learned and ‘un learned’
Operant conditioning
Cognitive Constructivist Learning
Piaget's theory of constructivist learning has had wide ranging ... peer collaboration, cognitive apprenticeship , problem-based instruction, ...

19. Behaviourism Pavlov – Classical Conditioning 1849-1980
Thorndike – Reinforcement

20. Behaviourism
Skinner - Behaviourist theory

21. Summary
Behaviourism is a theory of learning focusing on observable behaviours for example conditioning.

22. Considerations
When rewarding children the reward should have value to the child.
Unexpected rewards keep intrinsic motivation high.
The child must have control over the behaviour to be rewarded.
Consistency is the key.

23. Constructivism and Social-Constructivism
Contructivist theory has drawn upon the work of Jean Piaget ( )
Piaget developmental psychologist
Outlined stages of development through which children progress as they learn
Generally accepted that he underestimated abilities of young children
Early years practitioners indebted to Piaget for showing importance of active learning and how children make sense of their world.

24. Activity
Give an example of Piaget’s learning theory

25. Constructivism and Social-Constructivism
Social constructivist theory associated with the work of Vogotsky( ) and Bruner (1915-)emphasise the social context of learning and the importance of language in learning.
Vygotsky introduced the notion of ‘Zone of Proximal Development’ where a child may reach higher level of understanding with the help of a knowledgably other
Bruner subscribes to the theory of scaffolding and the spiral curriculum
This is where a knowledgeable other scaffold child’s growing understanding thus extending learning

26. Activity
Give examples of Vygotsky and Bruner’s Learning theory

27. Multi-Intelligences
Howard Gardner(1943-) identified eight different types of intelligences
Claimed all humans possess all theses capacities but individuals more or less proficient in each one
This makes a unique profile
Practitioners need to think about range of learning experiences offered to each child to take account of differing abilities

28. Effective learning
Our session has built upon the work of pioneers and theorists.
Drawing upon the work of the pioneers and theorists about how young children develop and learn practitioners can intervene more effectively in children’s learning.
You now have a theoretical starting point for your own development and learning within this theme.

29. Theory underpinning how children learn
Why is it important to recognise and understand how young children learn and develop?
Why should it be of equal importance to view the child holistically with all areas of development being considered equally?

30. Further exploration Piaget – Stages of Cognitive Learning-Schema
Vygotsky – Zone of Proximal Development
Bandura - Social Learning
Bruner - Scaffolding.
Chomsky – Language development
Erikson – Emotional and personality development

31. Next week
Find out more about the theories of Vygotsky, Bruner, Piaget for next week.
The groups will share the information that has been gathered and put forward a case for one of the theorists.

32. Aims To explore the pioneers of Early Years Provision and Practice
To consider the notion of “quality” in relation to practice
To explore the concepts of:
How Children Learn
Theorist’s perspective

33. Recommended Reading
Explore the journals posted on Blackboard that examine Early Years Pedagogy.
Examine the findings of:
The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education [EPPE] Project. A longitudinal study funded by the DfES (1997 – 2003)

34. References
Dryden, L.et al (2005) Essential Early Years London: Hodder Arnold
Bruce, T. (2005) Early Childhood Education London: Hodder Arnold
Siraj-Blatchford, I. Sylva, K. Muttock, S. Gilden, R. Bell, D. (2002) Researching Effective Pedagogy in the Early Years London: Department for Education and Skills