Early Years: Nick

Context

The context for these reflections, as it was for the work in first place, was a Spirituality and Young Children module for undergraduate students in Early Childhood Studies.

ECS students focus on the early years of a child’s life from (Pre) birth to approximately 8 years of age and the field, according to our handbook, draws on a number of academic disciplines to give you a broad and reflective understanding of early childhood. ECS students study some modules that focus on child development from a psychological perspective, others that consider more sociological aspects including the role of family and culture in development. “You will be encouraged to consider how childhood itself can be viewed in very different ways by different people. “

In other words these are not theologians or students of the phenomenology of religion, but they are people with experience and a theoretical understanding of the phenomena of childhood.

Exploring contemporary definitions of spirituality meant looking at the literature

From a more or less conservative Christian standpoint (or at least resolutely within an incarnational standpoint in Christian Theology) the work of Kees is important: he would place the study of spirituality at an interdisciplinary level amid anthropology, psychology, sociology and the social sciences, encompassing professional understandings, theological insights, textual and theological study)

Eaude says it is inherently elusive and contested - something EC students are strangely familiar with in another context, since they have grappled with definitions of play since their first taught session in the Univ. – and this has a further echo later in this paper.

What does the literature mean by Spirituality? - and can this ‘biographical’ construct be applied to young children??

We used the work of Andrew Wright quite heavily, esp by mid-point in the Semester. when I felt it was time to look at academic definitions of Spirituality:

Universal search for meaning – common theme in modern writing on spirituality, and I’ll return to it in my final section. Spirituality is an elusive and dynamic concept whose complexity is revealed when viewed in the light of: a mind–matter dualism; the contrast between the sacred and the profane; and the notion of spirituality as the cultivation of self awareness.

Despite their differences, these three routes have in common a concern for the ultimate meaning, purpose and truth of human existence.

Eaude again:

In many ways, the term ‘spirituality’ poses similar problems. This has, for me at least, the connotation of being primarily interior and individual, based within a religious tradition. Yet what I seek to describe is something more basic, and wider, than religious faith or commitment, rather more akin to a universal search for meaning and identity.

Approach

What ways did I use (and how successful were they) to explore concepts of Spirituality? - what did the students think about defining spirituality

We began not with the literature but with three clips: from Into Great Silence; from Kundun and from the Snowman.

Their responses were very varied:

from

The Snowman was the most striking for me, particularly because of the music factor. The visual also played well with the music and it did have that effect of kind of an ‘out of body’ experience.
I felt that the most relevant clip for me was The Snowman as well because I think it got all the areas that I believe spirituality to be in. (Music, Nature, Soft/Quiet places) Though the Dalai Lama film was interesting, I think I couldn’t get past that they were actors and it was a film (silly I know since The Snowman was a cartoon, of all things) BUT I felt it had to do with more of the religion-y things than something more spiritual-though religion and spirituality do go hand-in-hand at times. Die Grosse Stille did have a “dark factors” that I didn’t particularly like, but the music was soothing and I can see people going into a tra[n]ce over it and reaching into something more spiritual for them.
Like C, I really think it is hard to give a general idea of what spirituality is that will satify a large crowd, BUT, to me, it is (on very simple terms) to feel and be aware of something greater than ourselves. If things can provoke this feeling or awareness, whether it be via music, nature, quiet, or whatnot, than I would say that that is all that matters. For me in these films, it seemed to go down to the music (which all films had) and that is what does it for me.

to

to me the dali video struck me as more spiritual except i wonder how much of that was to do with tradition and story telling. The monk film i felt i was to involved with how hared the life seemed it was an extreme to me. You would need to be very devoted to the religion. but that may not be the same as spititual (not to me anyway)

and

I found the most striking clip was the snowman, and perhaps the most spiritual. However this may be because it brings back many childhood memories so i can relate much more than i can for the others. I feel its a very powerful clip particularly with the music. I also find it a very pensive clip which personally i think contriubtes to something being spiritual.
I think they can all tell us something about spirtuality in different ways depending on what you think is spritiual. The issue of religion may also be important; i personally do not think spirituality is always associated by religion.

perhaps the most well-reasoned of the responses was

This clip (Kundun) struck me of more for it involved a child which is my areas of interest. However, I asked myself is ‘Children’s spirituality’ different from “adult” spirituality?
Spirituality has different meanings to different people depending on their world view or philosophy of life
These clips description of spirituality demonstrate how culture, religion and spirituality are intertwined and are therefore all relevant to anyone belonging to one of either. This may as well show us that children are socialised into whatever spirituality notion or belief they are brought into.
How the child may express his or her spiritual beliefs will undoubtedly be influenced by, and may parallel the child’s cognitive development
Like adults, children draw on previous experiences of life including religious and spiritual beliefs to make sense of life events and to cope with crises. They will have a range of preconceived ideas, fears, concerns and fantasies which are usually linked to their stage of cognitive development and prior experiences.
May we say then, that the child’s spiritual development grows when they make sense to their experiences in relation to the adult’s meaning of the notion of spirituality?

This has an echo for me in the work of from Ping Ho Wong’s “Conceptual investigation” (2006): the success of the spiritual education of the common people still depends to a large extent on a spiritual social ethos, picked up by one student who summed up her argument:

I do agree that the issues raised are rather crucial. I was pondering on the question about culture and first thought maybe looking at a country like India one can say that the spirituality is embedded in their culture. I would say that it naturally feels a more spiritual place which I can’t say about the UK.
On the other hand, I also thought that we as humans are always striving, or constantly looking for something, looking for eternal happiness or maybe we are looking for something much, much deeper!

In order to explore something of the phenomenon of religion we also made two visits to places of worship (we had intended a third visit to somewhere non-faith based but snow necessitated a change in timetable). Of course we’ve come into the domain of RE/RS here in order to hep students meet the aim of looking at religious identity. In the first – a Roman Catholic Church on a modern monastic pattern – the students were left to ask questions and they did so largely around the function of furniture “What is this for?” Questions of children’s participation were raised, mostly around “Can they see?” and “What do they do all the time.” This latter question came up in our second visit – the local synagogue – where we were guided through the artefacts, layout and practice by an eloquent and plain-speaking guide, who said “I’m not sure Judaism has much to do with spirituality: it’s about practice, about keeping God’s commands –“ something the students picked up on next week in the University-based class.

Perhaps we failed to grasp fully in the taught session the significance of Eaude’s three-part question:

• what is distinctive about spiritual development?
• what is the nature of children’s spiritual experience?
• to what extent can and do young children engage in spiritual experience?

It should be noted that many of the final assignments looked specifically at these issues.

A codicil:

What is my own construct as (in some ways) a ‘Christian educator’?
I am still uneasy about the wresting of spirituality away from traditional faith communities, if only because it seems to me that too many of the definitions we are left with are about ‘meaning’ and ‘life stories’ which seem to me to be less appropriate for young children – as in “…that which enables, or enhances personal integration within a framework of relationships by fostering exploration, conscious or otherwise, of identity and purpose…” (Eaude, 2006)

– and I worry there is sometimes (by no means always) a lack of honesty here: does use of words like character, meaning &c stand as shorthand for bigger words and concepts like transcendence and God or are they an attempt to make spirituality applicable to as wide a range of people as possible?

I am, perhaps, happier with the notion of transcendence as being capable of being all-inclusive – multi-faith, agnostic, perhaps even humanist – where, for example, Ping Ho Wong draws on Hay’s work to talk about ‘mystery sensing’ ‘value sensing’ beyond the material, and states that spirituality comes in different degrees and shades, like the colours in a colour circle, and for some purposes at least, no radical break should be assumed to exist between spiritual and unspiritual states

If they aren’t – if spirituality is as Champagne (2003) suggests Being Alive categorised in three modes sensitive, (perception) relational (interpersonal) and existential (choices, games, symbolism) – then I’d suggest that at the heart of children’s spirituality is play. If as Bruce suggests, play “is an integrating mechanism that brings together everything a child knows feels and understands” then it is , in some ways a spiritual experience. There isn’t time in this paper to explore this notion, but in discussion with the ECS students it was one that had some resonance: play as “dizzy” (Kalliala, Caillois) , and a reflective and integrating practice (Bruce) play in which a child is “a head taller than himself” (Vygotsky).

Play as spiritual practice for young children: perhaps the title for another, more reasoned, paper.

Champagne, E (2003) Being a Child, a Spiritual Child International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, Vol. 8, No. 1

Eaude, T (2003) Shining Lights in Unexpected Corners: new angles on young children’s spiritual development International Journal of Children’s Spirituality Vol. 8, No. 2, August 2003

Eaude, T (2005) Strangely familiar? - teachers making sense of young children’s spiritual development Early Years, Vol. 25, No. 3, November 2005, pp. 237–248)

Eaude, T (2006) Children’s Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development, Exeter: Learning Matters

Waajman (“Spirituality: a multifaceted phenomenon,” Studies in Spirituality 117, 2007)

Wong, P H (2006) A conceptual investigation into the possibility of spiritual education drawing on a Confucian tradition International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, Vol. 11, No. 1, April 2006, pp. 73–85:

It was interesting reciting the edgy DeLaRue/Zipes’ reconstruction of the Story of the Grandmother to PGCE students in the woods today, those lovely dappled woods where the magpies chatter and one group saw a deer and we all felt at ease with children in the outdoors. In some ways it felt rather like the side-by-side comparison of Red Riding Hood stories on Katherine Harris’ site or rather the student project on the site

And it set me in mind of the power and transferability of Sendak’s Outside Over There, represented in Labyrinth , where themes such as burgeoning sexuality, sibling rivalry - not to mention the more complex issues of siblings and new babies in reconstituted families - are dealt with so openly. Is OOT more menacing because of the subtler treatment of the themes?  Or is it merely ambiguous to the point of being open to any interpretation?

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.’