Early Years: Nick

Not “Don’t do that” but a link to the Being Human BBC3 blog that explains why there’s a link to the show on my work blog - apart from the quality of the drama, of course.

This link takes us to a series of clips on werewolves. Timid, high-voiced and nervy, George is the antithesis of the monstrous werewolf or even the ordinary, opportunist carnivore,  canis lupus, the grey wolf. Or is he? He is - as are all three protagonists - without hope, one of Agamben’s criteria for the wargus (see my post from November of last year). And at a deeper level, this is what makes the ghost, the vampire and the werewolf essentially human in the post-modern world: they muddle through, ineffectual and without an aim, hopeless.

And rather than characterise this by a link to Richard Dawkins, I’ll link this to another anti-religious polemicist (although perhaps with more of a sense of purpose, and to my mind a better writer anyway), Tony Grayling.

He would probably chastise me for not distinguishing between aimless and hopeless. But they both sound like cows from Cold Comfort Farm…

My initial thoughts (selfishly) after this, my third trip to the Gambia, is about HE pedagogy.  It was challenging (refreshing, positive) to have to teach - direct teaching - without recourse to the law of the rectangle, the whiteboard, the interactive WB, powerpoint, video footage. How do we manage without the technology? How does the technology dominate the teaching - and does it affect the ‘message’?

So here’s the song (to the tune “London Bridge is falling down”) I made up and I’ll ponder its significance at another time:

Watch the children every day, every day, every day;

Watch the children every day: Observation.

See what they can nearly do, nearly do, nearly do;

See what they can nearly do: that’s assessment.

Of course the idea of teaching “without” these things already presupposes a negative model of teaching in Gambia College. It wasn’t like that at all. What I had as ‘raw materials’ (if we can use that image, and I’m not at all sure I like it) was a sense of committed good will that was forgiving of my foibles, and a readiness to work.

This http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oom2EPuNP… is well worth visiting, even if there’s no decent visuals…

Without comment for now, this link takes you to the Oktaikon web pages, and  this is the short YouTube intro, Marcus on Okki blocs

It seems to me that, while I can pick out what interests me the most – play and outdoors – and have done so, to some extent in earlier entries, the bundle of documents in EYFS is so wide-ranging that we might just as well pick out safeguarding and learning. What really are the Key Themes?

Well, we have the documents’ own four key themes, and I must say I like the layout on line that gives us a page like this one,  with no nonsense.

But is the learning and development section so overarching that, despite all the other words, teachers will still focus on outcomes rather than provision? When staff and governors at my old nursery school, Bartlemas, chose “Investing in the Whole Child” as our mission statement, someone pointed out to me how interesting it was that people working with young children tend to go for statements to do with what adults provide, and schools for older children, or with a more ‘top-junior’ ethos perhaps, emphasise what the children will do. I’m not sure if this holds water, but it’s interesting to reflect on this huge divide between the philosophy that looks at education as input and the one that looks at it as output.

So if we look at EYFS in terms of output, the learning and development sections are the place to be to find key themes – or is it? Teachers might look to the ‘development matters’ section for things to identify as learning objectives (although some – most- are so broad as to be unusable on their own) but they are only one strand out of four. Planning and resourcing is to do with adult investment of staff time and interest, focus, even money; look, listen and note is again about investment of attention, focused attention; effective practice speaks for itself.

So we have four key themes, one of which might get grabbed by the hesitant educator as the real business of EYFS; and within that one theme, one column concerns itself with outcomes, and even that is tempered with statements like this last one:

The challenge for practitioners is to ensure that children’s learning and development occur as an outcome of their individual interests and abilities and that planning for learning and development takes account of these.

http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/eyfs/site/4/4.htm

And maybe Ellis and his friends, whom I mentioned in the previous entry, give a good exemplification of this way of working, of looking at and providing for children’s learning.

I come no closer to identifying them, these central ideas, apart from identifying my own bias, which comes from my experiences with my own children, in my own practice in schools, and seeing practice as I visit other settings. Perhaps we really do have to take the document at face value, and say that, whatever might be made of them in poorly provisioned pre-schools or lacklustre reception classes - not that this is the whole or dominant picture - the EYFS is founded on principles of each child’s unique development, where genuine and positive relationships work with good provision to enhance a child’s life chances. Voila: the four key themes all in one sentence without a bullet point in sight.

There’s a mini learning journey for practitioners here.

We start off on the EYFS home page and click on profile. Hidden (far too well, really, as we come to expect live hyperlinks to look obvious) on this page is a link to the NAA work on the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile:  and in case they move it, here is the link as it appears at present: http://www.naa.org.uk/naa_17850.aspx

And here we meet Ellis and friends. This link takes us to Ellis and Ashton’s exploration of plans to build a spaceship, with windows, teleport (or lift; there is a professional disagreement between the two designers here) and a jumping device.

Their learning journey is made clear for us by the possible scale points which is downloadable, but it also made me think of the remarks of Margaret Edgington in The Foundation Stage Teacher in Action (2004, p158):

However intensive their study of children during initial teacher training, teachers still have a great deal to learn. Early years teaching is quite simply about studying and learning about children. There are two related parts to this study. First, teachers need to understand about children in general - ideally from birth until at least 7 or 8… They need to understand environmental, sociological and psychological theories in order that their view of society is broadened, and is taken beyond their own limited life experience.  They also need to know that individual children develop uniquely… Throughout their careers, teachers need to develop further their general view of children through the study of individuals. [my emphasis]

Hmmm.  Did I say a mini learning journey? It might be just part of the practitioners’ job, but I wouldn’t want to underestimate the task.

Although publicised by the IOL, it actually comes from the English Outdoor Council:

This is one of their aims for the week:

Encourage your school to be doing something adventurous in the outdoors this year. Book a week at a centre. Produce leaflets showing the opportunities that are on offer in your local area. Invite the media to visit some of your initiatives.

And it is a media-focussed initiative, to some extent. So what does a practitioner do?

A full text of the guidance - some of which is from last year, so the dates aren’t quite right - is to be found here.

One of the things that isn’t quite right is a broken link to teacher net. Using the (rather cumbersome) search facility found an interesting case study that looked worth sharing, from Turners Hill in W Sussex.  This is where it gets interesting from my point of view.

Wouldn’t it be great to share good practice, not in the spectacular but in the particular? What if schools - Growing Schools or not - told their parents, their local community, and perhaps most importantly their neighbouring practitioners what great things they have been doing outside? The synergy (not sure I really like the buzz word) demonstrated at Turners Hill is exemplary.  As the case study reports:

…it was impossible to plan for one area of learning without thinking about the other areas. What is started at one stage needs to be developed in another. Learning should be for life!

And where this might be a Shibboleth for some, it seems to be real practical work in this school.

They aren’t alone, of course, and in the “Thinking Primary” section of QCA’s pages on the Rose Review, are case studies from schools. Here, for example, we see Berkswich Primary School Head teacher Martin Holmes and deputy Head Jill Pearce-Haydon publicising their school with a similar vision: “We use the environment to support learning. Our work has an ecological theme and we have created a rich outdoor learning area to curriculum delivery.”

How rich is rich, then? The article continues:

In fact the school has an outdoor theatre, a mathematical garden, a play area designed by the learners, a scientific quadrangle and a water harvesting area that provides power for the school’s other ecological areas such as the weather station and irrigation system!

But how does all this relate to a successful learning experience?

“It is all designed to provide an active learning environment for the children. The wormery is open to all and water system has transparent pipes so that the children are able to observe it working. Our curriculum is one that focuses on direct experience and creating ‘wow’ moments. We know that children don’t see learning as subjects, they see learning as learning.”

Seeing learning as learning. Not seeing subjects as  separate things, however we deliver the bits we need to deliver. Not seeing walls between English and Geography any more than between inside the classroom and outside. All tall order for a school: a tall order for teacher-trainers who are preparing students for jobs in schools like this.

Having listened to the BBC R4 dramatisation of the novel (not available for download) , I was intrigued to get the book for Christmas - after some very heavy hints, of course!

And this link will take any readers to Jamila Gavin’s own website and her thoughts on risk, creativity and education.  She is at risk of being accused of elititism when she writes

“I’m asking that we are more selective with what we give our children in school. We should recognize that, for a vast majority, it may be the only opportunity to give them contact with the finest achievements of many civilizations. I think a fear of “elitism” has meant that generations of children aren’t hearing the finest music, reading the finest literature, or being given access to the best of human achievement.”

But she does have a point, and  I feel Coram Boy is a work that in its bravery and clarity gives her the authority to talk about ‘the finest literature.’

Better late than never, the interim report of the Independent Review of the Primary Curriculum is finally out. This link goes to the BBC’s reporting; this link to the page from which (until or unless DCFS move the URL)  the ipsissima verba of Jim Rose can be downloaded.
Provisional Recommendations 10 and 11 are the ones I was looking for most eagerly, especially after this morning’s reportage about key subjects &c &c. They are
Recommendation 10:
(i) Entry into reception class in the September immediately following a child’s fourth birthday should become the norm. The Review will explore how this might be achieved without unduly restricting parental choice, for example by allowing parents to choose a period of part-time attendance.
(ii) The DCSF should provide information for parents and local authorities about the optimum conditions and the benefits to children of entering reception class in the September immediately after their fourth birthday.
Recommendation 11: The Review will consider how best to support teachers and practitioners to provide effective play-based learning.
Hmmm. This seems to suggest that children will be in school - not nursery, where the quality may be seen to lie, but in Reception classes - when they are four and a bit. Le Roy le veult. So far, my mouth turns down.  However, unpacking recommendation 11 - “how..to support…effective play-based learning” is more encouraging. Into school with you, little child, and if your parents don’t like it, you don’t have to go all day, but there you will find play-based learning, as outlined by the best research.
I remain cynical about the will - and mostly the budgets -  of schools and the expertise of YR teachers  to implement this.  This isn’t to do down the commitment of teachers of young children, but to note that they continue to be faced with a continuing dynamic that looks to SATS looming (despite what the report has to say) and the demands for early, noticeable acquisition of secretarial and calculation skills, which simply raises the questions - deeply related - of funding, vision and qualifications…
And the question for us in ITT has to be: how do we train new entrants to the profession to bring this change about?  How do we help create EYFS teachers, rather than very early Primary teachers?

Now, this report is rather hidden in its efforts to prove its reliability. It is the “Scoping study” from Centre for Excellence and Outcomes in Children and Young People’s Services http://www.c4eo.org.uk/themes/earlyyears/scopingstudy01.aspx

The points (p16-17) on effective practice are worth examining:

The ten studies highlight some effective features of integrated practice. The main areas of practice are professional development of staff, links with parents and the home environment, collaboration between partners, and the involvement of a broad range of stakeholders.

The first aspect of effective practice identified is training and ongoing professional development for staff. Some studies suggested that there is a link between the qualifications and training of staff and positive outcomes for children in early years’ settings (Sylva et al 2004). Some studies suggest that shared training involving different professionals helps to build a common language and way of working and that this helps build effective integrated teams (Schneider et al 2007). Training focused on the skills needed for integrated working also facilitates the development of effective teams (Bertram et al 2002). The opportunity that staff from different agencies have to interact and build relationships during such staff development activity is also important (Bertram et al 2002).

The studies also demonstrate the importance of links with home activities to support the early years’ approaches in settings. In general, the quality of the home learning environment is shown to have an impact on outcomes for children (Sylva et al 2004). More specifically, outcomes can be improved where centres work closely with parents and they share educational aims, as this enables parents to support children at home with activities or materials that complement their experiences in early years’ settings (Sylva et al 2004).

The selected studies also highlight the importance of the nature of collaboration in integrated settings, and there are several key elements of effective collaboration identified:

• Effective and frequent communication between different professionals is important, and there are indications that bringing different professional groups under the same roof can aid communication and collaboration (Schneider et al 2007).
• Integrated teams need to have common aims, a shared philosophy and agreed working practices, along with an understanding of the roles of all team members. Within this context, it is important that individuals act as team players and are flexible in their approach, taking note of the needs and expertise of others (Smith et al 2004).
• The leadership and management of integrated centres and teams play a key role in developing and sustaining an effective team (Bertram et al 2002).
• Finally, the studies demonstrate that it is important to involve a broad range of stakeholders/constituents in integrated centres and teams. Children and their families benefit from having a wide range of agencies involved, as this works towards a ‘one-stop shop’ to meet all their needs directly or through referral (Schneider et al 2007). The involvement of parents in integrated centres also benefits the parents themselves, but also the services offered, as parents often have a clear idea of what they and their children need (Schneider et al 2007).

And from this I’ll pick out - without comment for now - just some key words:

• Effective and frequent communication
• common aims, a shared philosophy and agreed working practices
• sustaining an effective team