Who was Corinne Hutt?
Corinne Hutt was born in Sri Lanka and came to England to study, attending Manchester University, where she gained a degree in psychology, which was to lead her into work at the Park Hospital in Oxford and then to a research career at Keele University.
In the early 1970s Corinne and her husband Professor John Hutt were awarded a research grant from the Department of Education and Science to explore young children's lives and learning in different types of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings - maintained nursery schools and classes, playgroups (pre-schools) and social services-run day nurseries. At the same time, a team had been funded to find out how four-year-olds spent their days at home.
Corinne's earlier research had resulted in her book Males and Females, in which she explained how hormones impact on a developing foetus to create not simply a male or female body but also a male or female brain. While Corinne pointed out that there are many gradations related to this hormonal effect and that a society might emphasise or limit gender differences, her work was seen, at the time, as deterministic, rather than as something people needed to take into account in childrearing and educational practice.
What did Corinne Hutt achieve?
Immediately prior to the DES project on young children's activity in ECEC settings, Corinne's research had focused on children's play with a 'novel object'. Groups of young children had been given opportunities to experiment with a special box which had been fitted with different devices so that a sound or lights would be emitted following certain manipulations.
This research led Corinne to suggest that children would play in a serious, exploratory or experimental way for a while, as if asking the question, 'What does this do?' This was the 'epistemic' phase of the play. The children would then use what they had learnt to play in a fun, or 'ludic' way, as if asking, 'What can I do with this?'
What Corinne also noticed was the difference made by adult intervention, not to take over, but to advance the child's knowledge through their play. This work, together with the collaborative publication, with John Hutt, of a manual on observation techniques for research involving children, was fundamental to the Keele study 'Play, Exploration and Learning', which began in 1974. Ethologists had devised ways to keep track of animal behaviours, through the use of tape recordings and timed observation schedules, and the Hutts adapted these methods in order to observe young children in natural settings.
Before this time, much research in developmental psychology had been laboratory-based. Other researchers had, at different times, also recognised the importance of watching children in familiar surroundings, where they could be observed interacting with each other, adults and the materials on offer. These include Susan Isaacs, Dorothy Gardner, Marianne Parry and Hilda Archer, Kathleen Manning and Ann Sharp, Peter Smith, Joan Tough, Jack and Barbara Tizard, Margaret Donaldson, and John and Elizabeth Newson.
Further impetus to this movement was added with the arrival from the United States of Jerome Bruner to lead the Oxford project, which was to contribute important new knowledge to the field. Bruner's team introduced key researchers to us, including Kathy Sylva, who has become a pivotal figure in ECEC research in this country and worldwide.
Development of ECEC research
The period of the 1970s and early 1980s appears to have been a golden era for the funding of ECEC research, especially projects which focused on the processes involved and the variables related to the contexts in which young children were living and learning. During and since that time there has been much debate about researching human behaviour. For example, arguments have concerned philosophical standpoints; assumptions made about what to observe and measure; the impact of a researcher's presence and power; the shared meanings of participants and the kinds of methods best fitted to gain insights into these; and ethical issues involved in research with children. Most importantly, there has been a flowering of ECEC enquiry by practitioners, as well as courses to promote the understanding of research. In fact, research is now seen as a necessary and automatic part of policy and practice.
Hutt's main messages
Corinne's tragic death in 1979, at the age of 46, deprived the field of one of its finest researchers and was in part the reason for the delayed publication of the evidence from 'Play, Exploration and Learning' for another decade. She had been, above all, keen to stress the necessity for rigour in research processes.
In respect of practice, she saw the important role that adults could play in children's learning and was eager to have practitioners recognise that their planning for and intervention in play could foster cognitive development. She hated the idea of adults wasting young children's time with irrelevant activity or too much sitting still to attend to adults.
Corinne based her theoretical perspectives on Piaget's, but she would have endorsed the social constructivist understandings of Vygotsky, which also now inform practice. She promoted the observation of children's imaginative play as the optimal method for gaining insights into their linguistic and cognitive competence. When asked by parents what would be the best toy to buy their young children, Corinne would recognise children's inventiveness, urging them to simply supply an empty cardboard box.
Tricia David is Emeritus Professor at Canterbury Christ Church University College
Suggested reading
- Aubrey, C, David, T, Godfrey, R and Thompson, L (2000) 'Early Childhood Educational Research' in Issues in Methodology and Ethics. London: Routledge
- Davie, C, Hutt, SJ, Vincent, E and Mason, M (1984) The Young Child at Home. Windsor: NFER
- Hutt, C (1972) Males and Females. Harmondsworth: Penguin
- Hutt, SJ and Hutt, C (1970) Direct Observation and Measurement of Behavior. Springfield Illinois: CCThomas
- Hutt, SJ, Tyler, SJ, Hutt, C and Christopherson, H (1989) Play, Exploration and Learning. London: Routledge
