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The Ofsted document Bold Beginnings(Ofsted 2017) has exposed fundamental differences in the way young children in England are viewed as learners. How we view children as learners naturally determines how we situate the role of their educators.
The tussle between the supremacy of adult-led learning as opposed to child-led learning has underpinned the changing role of the educator since the days of the great philosophers in the 18th century. Surely, here and now, in the 21st century, there should no longer be any tussle, but there is, and it is a tussle that needs to be addressed if children are to enjoy developmentally appropriate experiences that enable them to learn, and boost their motivation to learn.
From all that we now know about children’s development from, and before, birth (Gopnick et al 1999, Murray 2014) and what we also now know about the impact of environmental and social factors on that development over time (Bandura 1977, Goswami 2008), adult-led and child-led learning should be viewed as different but complementary features of growth and maturation.
THE IDEAL COMBINATION
From the moment a baby is born, they are compelled to make sense of the world around them. Their curiosity drives them to explore, to investigate, to try out, to question. Using all their senses, they grasp, smell, watch and taste the world into which they have been propelled, in a never-ending personal quest for mastery and inclusion. But the fortunate baby is also picked up. Loving and attentive adults say, ‘look’, ‘see here’, ‘try this’ as they open up a wider range of opportunities and possibilities than the baby could ever experience alone.
In this way, the fortunate baby is empowered to learn and to develop in two key ways:
- Through their own self-initiated exploration.
- Through the support and provocation of others.
This combination is clearly highly effective for, in their infant years, young children develop an extraordinary range of skills, knowledge and understanding at a rate that will never again be repeated in their lives.
It would seem logical, therefore, that professional educators would build on and replicate the strategies that have been so successful from birth; that settings and schools would offer children an appropriate mix of opportunities to follow their own self-initiated interests and to be inspired by the interests and opportunities initiated by others.
A shift in the balance
For many years in Britain, this was precisely the balanced pedagogical diet that most early years settings offered. But there has been a steady, insidious shift in this balance between child-led and adult-led learning. In many early childhood settings, particularly those with Reception-aged children, the influence of the adult has become increasingly dominant and the nature of the adult input has become increasingly prescriptive. This has resulted in a shift in the nature of adult support for the child’s development – a shift away in some cases from introducing a child to something new, or suggesting an activity or experience that the child might want to try, towards insisting that a child learn something because an external agenda has deemed it necessary and appropriate.
From adult-suggested to adult-insisted
From adult-suggested to adult-insisted is a major shift. It means that the role of practitioners working with young children is no longer merely to facilitate, to respond or to provoke, but now includes to enforce learning. This becomes challenging for the practitioner, because what is to be enforced may not be of interest to the child, and the child may not appreciate its purpose. This can inevitably lead to learning being a negative experience (for the practitioner as well as the child) with possible long-term impact on the child’s self-esteem and motivation to learn.
This shift in the role of the early childhood educator is affecting both adult-led and child-led learning in many Reception classes, and even filtering down to some nursery provision also. So, it is critical to acknowledge what is happening and to understand why, if the quality of early childhood education – particularly in our schools – is to be protected. And so we can clarify the adult role in supporting early learning; let’s first look at the different purposes of adult-led and child-led learning.
THE PURPOSE OF ADULT-LED LEARNING
Adult-led or adult-directed learning is where the practitioner is in control of the learning outcomes. For a variety of reasons, the practitioner has decided that a certain activity or opportunity will give a child or group of children an experience that they need at that moment in time. It may be:
- a skill – for example, how to handle a hammer and nails correctly
- a concept – for example, separating out groups of objects in different ways
- to share an experience – for example, planning to go on a visit to a wildlife park.
Whatever the purpose, it belongs to the practitioner and the practitioner has identified purposes – objectives – for planning and leading this learning.
Achieving outcomes
Just because an activity is planned and has objectives, that doesn’t always mean these are achieved. We know young children have a knack of high-jacking adults’ best-laid plans. For example, in the middle of a story about baby owls, Danny told us he had a new duvet and lamp of the same colour in his bedroom; in a demonstration about grouping, Karim wanted to know what number house I lived at and other children chimed in with their house numbers.
So, practitioners may have a purpose for their planned activity, but because children are busy connecting new information and knowledge to what they already know, and what is preoccupying them at the time, their connections can sometimes appear random and lacking in focus.
The ‘jigsaw’ of learning
When thinking about children’s thinking I have always liked the image of the child constructing their own personal cognitive jigsaw (Fisher 2013), picking up a new ‘piece’ of experience and then trying to fit it in to what is already known and understood:
Sometimes the new piece fits straight away.
Sometimes the child twists and turns the new piece, trying it out in several places before it finally fits.
Sometimes the effort to make sense and make meaning is just too hard and the child discards the piece and tries another.
Sometimes the effort to make sense and make meaning is hard, so the child rams the new piece in…only to find later that it is in the wrong place because other pieces don’t fit.
Sometimes the practitioner is on hand to say, ‘I wonder whether…’, ‘I think maybe…’ to support the child when they are getting frustrated and might give up.
So, practitioners may have a clear picture of what they want children to learn and how it builds on what has gone before, but it is the child who has to make meaning, the child for whom the experience or the idea or the concept must make sense – and sometimes children come to understandings via very circuitous routes that cannot be predicted by even the most sensitive practitioner.
THE PURPOSE OF CHILD-LED LEARNING
Child-led learning or child-initiated learning is where the child is in control. The child is given time, space and opportunity to play, to explore, to investigate in their own way and in their own time. These opportunities are ‘wholly decided upon by the child, based on the child’s own motivation and remains under the child’s control’ (DCSF 2009).
These child-led opportunities are:
Sometimes prompted by something an adult has previously shown the child in an adult-led context – for example, building a den or practising the letter at the start of their name.
Sometimes the child builds on a play episode from a previous day or time – for example, transporting sticks from the wooded area to the sandpit to build a trap.
Sometimes the play might be prompted by adult activity – for example, the adult using blocks to build a tower, which provokes a child to try something similar.
Where play and exploration start is not the issue. What makes something child-led is that, once a child sees a purpose for an activity, they are left in control of its process and outcomes and, if the adult intervenes at all, they do so in sensitive ways that never rob the child of that control.
Learning opportunities
Child-led learning may present practitioners with many opportunities to enhance or extend learning. Opportunities arise to:
- introduce new language
- plant fresh ideas
- demonstrate or suggest how something might be done differently.
But however an adult contributes to a child’s self-led learning, they must never manipulate it for their own ends.
During child-led learning is not the time to suggest counting the spots on the ladybird being carefully studied by the child; to do a quick recall about shapes when a child has offered you a round playdough doughnut for you to eat and enjoy; to rehearse the naming of colours when the toddler is tipping crayons from one container to another and is asking for your help with this.
The great skill of the early childhood educator is to weave in enhancements to children’s knowledge and understanding in natural an genuine ways so that the child’s thinking is enhanced (Fisher 2016) but their purpose and their intentions are never compromised.
THE PURPOSE OF ADULT-INITIATED LEARNING
There is, of course, a third context in which children’s learning is situated, a context which I describe as ‘adult-initiated’ (Fisher 2013).
As with all labels, it is not the label that counts so long as each person understands what another means by that label and how it is used.
For me, adult-initiated learning is when a practitioner decides that they will plan an activity or an experience or an opportunity that children will undertake for much of the time on their own, so that the practitioner can see what children can do, remember or indeed show they already know, while acting independently.
In adult-initiated learning, the practitioner may:
- introduce something during an adult-led activity, such as a maths game or a painting technique and then leave resources out later in the week to see what children remember and can do alone
- want to know what children already know before embarking on some direct teaching. So, they may leave out natural resources, for example, for children to sort and group to see what connections they make; or leave numerals and a die in the outside area to see how skilled children are at making up their own games
- want to observe the level of children’s problem-solving skills and set a challenge that a group are asked to complete together so the skills of negotiation, using initiative and collaboration can be observed.
Levels of independence
Adult-initiated learning has many purposes. It starts by placing the adult in control (the objective) but then, because of the level of independence given to the child or children, it can rapidly become child-led according to the flexibility of the task.
The quality of independent learning lies in the open-ended nature of the activity or experience given initially to the children. Say, ‘Find me six things that…’ and the activity will be over in a flash. A crucial part of the adult’s plan should clarify whether any adult-initiated activity is intended to provoke children’s own independent enquiry (so becomes child-led) or to prescribe children’s activity (so remains adult-led). It is not the starting point that determines the nature of the experience, it is its process. To whom does the process of learning – and any outcome – belong?
Abandoned learning?
But independent learning should not be abandoned learning. The quality of what children achieve on their own will be diminished if they feel they are being left to their own devices because the practitioner is more interested in and spends more time with the adult-led agenda. Every activity that takes place in a nursery or classroom must be seen by adults and by children to be as important as all the others.
Each has its own special purpose, each offers the child a different way of learning and the adults a different perspective on their children as learners. So, when children have had an opportunity to try something out for themselves, to see what they make of a challenge or activity, then the practitioner must return to that child or group to see what has taken place, what has been learned, what help or ideas might be needed.
The role of the adult is just as important in child-initiated and adult-initiated learning as it is in adult-led learning. What the practitioner needs to understand is how their role changes subtly, but significantly, as they move from supporting one kind of learning to supporting the others.
Key points
From birth, children learn best through a combination of their own self-initiated exploration and adult-support and provocation.
This adult-led and child-led learning should be viewed as different but complementary features of growth and maturation.
Early years educators should replicate and build on this combination in the nursery and classroom.
In recent years, the balance between child-led and adult-led learning has shifted, resulting in the adult input becoming increasingly dominant and prescriptive.
This imbalance can have a negative impact on children’s learning and the efficacy of the adult in supporting that learning.
Practitioners can categorise learning experiences in three ways: adult-led, child-led and adult-initiated.
Each category has different purposes – though it will always be the child who determines the eventual learning outcomes.
Each category also requires different kinds of adult input, giving the child varying levels of independence over their learning. What is important to recognise, however, is that independent learning should never be abandoned learning.
ABOUT THIS SERIES
Who should initiate and lead learning in an early years environment? And what is the adult role in supporting learning in different contexts? These questions will be addressed in this four-part series looking at:
- child-led, adult-led and adult-initiated learning
- the role of the adult and child in learning experiences
- the challenges of supporting learning
- balancing adult-led and child-led learning.
REFERENCES
Bandura A (1977) Social Learning Theory. Prentice-Hall
Department for Children, Schools and Families (2009) Learning, Playing and Interacting: Good practice in the Early Years Foundation Stage. DCSF Publications
Fisher J (2013) (4th edn) Starting from the Child. Open University Press
Fisher J (2016) Interacting or Interfering? Improving interactions in the early years. Open University Press
Gopnick A, Meltzoff AN and Kuhl PK The Scientist in the Crib. Harper Collins
Goswami U (2008) Cognitive Development: The Learning Brain. Psychology Press
Murray L (2014) The Psychology of Babies: How relationships support development from birth to two. Constable and Robinson
Ofsted (2017) Bold Beginnings: The reception curriculum in a sample of good and outstanding primary schools. www.gov.uk/ofsted
