My advice in the 1980s
Working with children requires personal skills and you will learn a lot from the staff around you.
You will want to prepare yourself by finding out about the types of reading schemes in use and perhaps by practising the appropriate lower case lettering used in the school.
Much learning at this stage is by doing. Even though you might not be required to help with more formal learning you are needed to support the children as they progress. Much learning through play is encouraged by giving the children suitable activities. You can have some suitable ones planned. Most importantly, you need to talk to the children about what they are doing and give them encouragement and support.
What advice would I give now?
It’s important to determine your role as a student while in placement. You may need clarification about whether you are to be counted ‘in ratio’ (which should be at the level below your level of study) and what that means for your responsibilities and supervision.
Placement students must understand their part in how the year will unfold, their role in the requirements of the EYFS, curriculum (what is to be learned) and pedagogy (how it is to be learned). You need to be familiar with guidance such as ‘Development Matters’ and the EYFS Profile assessment.
Look for how the environment and room is set up and its climate, how children move about the space, children’s choices and the teachers’ direction, timetables, the sound level at different times, planning, curriculum, literacy approach(es), outdoors, STEM strategies, continuous provision, messy activities, uses of technologies, how staff connect with each other, types of observation and documentation used ... Maybe you might also observe how children enter at the start of the session, subtle ‘messages’ to parents, visible diversity and any anti-bias approach.
What you see might not align with the practices that you learned on your course or are part of your own philosophy/ethos/frame of reference. Common differences include behaviour management strategies, literacy approaches, the prevalence of early academics over child-centred education, and faith-based practices.
Historical context: Less focus on results
The nursery class of the late 1980s was still heavily influenced by the recommendations of the 1967 Plowden Report, which shaped what happened in primary schools throughout the 70s and 80s. Much of the thinking was inspired by Jean Piaget. Encouraging imagination and creativity wasn’t about only sensory experiences and arts and crafts; the idea that children can do new things and create new knowledge was driven by constructivism.
Developmentally Appropriate Practice sprung from that as Piaget’s ideas were rooted in stage theory. The task of the teacher was to support children on their path through these stages: ‘Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves’ [Jean Piaget]. When a child had key experiences that led to them being ‘ready’ for the next step or stage, they would do well.
In the early days of Plowden there was no testing of children’s progress, insufficient research about the outcomes of this or any other approach to each childhood. The 11+ hadn’t yet been abolished. In 1988 the Government tackled the entire school system and introduced the Education Reform Act. This included a national curriculum, testing and assessment and, later, school inspections. The focus now was on results. The overarching goals of the act were accountability and parental choice. The EYFS, the fifth key stage, was introduced 20 years later in 2008.
Current practice seems to strive for a balance between teacher-led and child-directed activities. For some teachers their core ethos presents a challenge because there is a mismatch between their beliefs and their practice. While curricula and pedagogy appear to be open to a teacher’s discretion, there is evidence that pressure to achieve everything required is making them lean toward a more teacher-directed mode than they might desire.
Play-based is one term used, but not all play is going to be self-directed, voluntary/self-chosen, pleasurable, meaningful, active, symbolic, process- focused, intrinsically motivated or adventurous (Huizinga 1955). Nor will it be therapeutic, voluntary, involve flow, non-literal, be free from external rules, be solitary or social or change direction, forget time, be spontaneous, joyful, involve choice, include creation, remove the self from a different reality (Gray, Axelsson 2021). How much of this does the EYFS classroom offer now?
Sue Martin trained at the Froebel Institute in London and worked as a nursery teacher, an NNEB lecturer before pursuing doctoral studies in early childhood at the State University of New York. She wrote “Take a Look” , a leading Canadian textbook on observation now in its 7th edition.
While at Nursery World, Sue was the author of a regular ‘students’ corner’. These articles are a ‘then and now’ take on these columns from the late 1980s.
