Learning & Development: School Readiness: Part 3 - A better way?

In most of Europe, no child is regarded as 'ready for school' - in other words, ready for formal teaching and learning - until they are at least six years of age. Within England, however, in its attempts to 'raise standards,' the Government has introduced formal curricula at ever-earlier points in school and, within its recent publication of curriculum frameworks and related guidance, has prescribed that children should be 'made ready' for school by the age of five.

Such an approach runs counter to that in many other European countries and raises questions about the purpose and suitability of these curricula - and about how best we can offer teaching and learning to the youngest members of our society.

CONTRASTING PERSPECTIVES

At the centre of much widely respected early years provision, such as that of Reggio Emilia and Experiential Learning, for example, lie the notion and methods of social constructivism. This philosophy focuses upon the interests, experience and choices of young children within their social contexts.

Such an approach is regarded as being 'pedagogy', a broader concept than 'curriculum' in that it also encompasses the physical and social environments of young children. Social constructivist pedagogy places equal value upon care, upbringing and learning and is evident in many countries of Scandinavia and central Europe.

Practitioners working in a social constructivist tradition (also called social pedagogy) recognise that what a child learns influences how they will develop, and that a child's capacity to think and understand stems from their interactions with others, predominantly through spoken language.

At its heart lies the goal of self-regulation; over time, the child becomes able to regulate their own social, emotional and cognitive functions, rather then relying on adult support. Thus social pedagogy supports the development of basic 'tools of the mind' - brain functions such as the child's working memory, powers of attention and their inhibitory control, as well as their language and expressive abilities - all of which underpin the child's developing capacities for self-regulation.

Clearly, the goals of such a pedagogy are not so much content-related but process-related; there is an emphasis on learning skills and acquiring dispositions which will be useful to the child in their lifelong learning, not just to pass examinations.

As in England and the United States, national curriculum frameworks for the early years sector exist within Scandinavia and many central European countries. Indeed, some governments introduced them more than a decade ago - Sweden has had it for oneto six-year-olds since 1998 and Norway for nought to six-year-olds since 1996.

Also, as in England and the US, many European countries have seen the emergence of 'transition classes', located either in kindergartens (for example, Cyprus) or in schools (for example, Poland) or in both (for example, Bulgaria and Finland). These arelabelled with a range of names, such as 'preparation class' 'reception class' or 'pre-school class', with some countries, such as Poland, even insisting on compulsory attendance.

In their provision of a common curriculum framework, the aim of these governments is to ensure smooth transitions for children across different schooling systems. The use of familiar curricula structures bridge the 'institutional divide' by linking themes and strategies in the year before official school entry to those in the first years of primary school.

However, there is a clear divide between governments in their perception of the purpose of early childhood provision, reflected in the curriculum frameworks they have drawn up for providers. On the one hand, in many European countries, government policymakers see early childhood as an extension of home life, and place more emphasis on the continuing unfolding of children's emotional, social and physical development throughout this phase, enabled through an holistic pedagogy.

On the other hand, policymakers in England and the US see early childhood as a phase for preparation for school, and so emphasise the necessity to develop children's linguistic and cognitive skills during this phase through a prescriptive curriculum.

SOCIAL PEDAGOGY

In practice, most pre-schools in European countries, committed to the social pedagogy tradition, view their government's curriculum directives as instruments of general guidance. Pre-schools exercise a high degree of autonomy in determining their own classroom approach, in consultation with people in the children's immediate social context, such as parents and wider family members.

This freedom to interpret governmental curriculum guidance according to their principles of social pedagogy is considerable. Thus, providers are empowered to take an holistic approach in which children are supported in their current developmental tasks and interests, and in which the content and learning methods can be fine-tuned to individual children's needs within the specific contexts. Learning through activity, play, social interaction and individual investigation are valued as children's natural learning strategies.

This early childhood pedagogy has been extending into the lower classes of primary school in many Scandinavian and central European countries over recent years4.

THE 'EARLIER THE BETTER' APPROACH

In direct contrast to these broad curriculum frameworks in Europe stands curriculum guidance such as that provided by the UK Government in 2011, which rates highly the 'earlier the better' approach to early childhood education.

The Statutory Curriculum Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage5 was revised and put out for consultation in mid-2011. It contains specific early learning goals for children to achieve by the time they reach the age of five years, the statutory school age in England. In spite of several revisions deemed appropriate by early years educationalists, such as reducing the number of goals from 69 to 17 and focusing on three prime areas of learning, the document places explicit requirements upon practitioners - especially those within reception classes - to prepare children for school.

The descriptions within the revised framework related to 'play' and its importance in an early years curriculum6 are undermined by persistent and contradictory statements suggesting the need for 'formal' education methods to begin in the reception classes of primary schools7.

Hence a view has emerged among some educationalists that the Government is attempting to use the EYFS documentation as a policy instrument to bring about a set of pre-defined standards, emphasising the teaching of predominantly cognitive and linguistic skills, for children's entry into primary school.

In striking contrast to the social pedagogies of Europe, with their emphasis on adapting to the individual needs of the children within the class, in the UK the National Curriculum in Year 1 currently is seen as 'fixed' and children are being required to fit into it as it stands, with no room for compromise.

Many early years educationalists are arguing that a more appropriate strategy is to adapt the curriculum to the developmental and experiential levels of the children who enter Year 1, whatever their cognitive and social skills.

Further, they take the position that if children are faring poorly there, the solution needs to be found in the school 'offering', including perhaps a recognition that the National Curriculum and its formal teaching methods is inappropriate, rather than assessing the child as 'inadequate'. They suggest that what children need from their early schooling is the opportunity to continue their learning through informal pedagogies - ideally up until the age of seven - in an environment that offers rich stimulation and sensitive, supportive adults who know best how to provide for their emotional and cognitive needs.

MAKING SCHOOL READY FOR CHILDREN: KEY INGREDIENTS

An extensive body of research evidence from developmental psychology, and studies of particular pedagogical approaches and programmes, such as Reggio Emilia, Experiential Learning, HighScope, Tools of the Mind and many others, points to some of the 'key ingredients' for an effective pedagogy for the early years, as follows.

Teacher responsiveness

Contemporary early years practitioners see themselves as 'scaffolders'8 of children's learning, rather than instructors. They support, encourage and extend the child's own active construction of meaning and understanding by engaging the interest of the child, simplifying the task if necessary, highlighting its critical features, modelling key processes and sensitively monitoring the child's success with the task in order to withdraw support when the child can proceed independently.

The evidence reveals that the best 'scaffolders' demonstrate high levels of responsiveness within joint attention activities with children. Some practitioners appear to be much more aware of the signals that children emit as indications of their interest and attention, and, having established the child's focus, the best practitioners tend to use this as a basis for further interaction, including talk. Others tend to attempt to switch the child's attention to their own focus of interest9.

A child-focused approach

A child-focused approach, rather than a content-focused approach, towards the curriculum is important. With such an approach, the child's natural focus of attention is followed by the adult, as opposed to the adult directing the child's attention to what is considered requisite learning to achieve the 'curriculum' in terms of subject knowledge.

High expectations of children

When faced with any particular task or problem, children can operate at one level on their own, but when supported or 'scaffolded' by an adult or more experienced peer, their learning can go further. This level naturally differs between children, because children's development is so multi-dimensional.

Effective practitioners discover each individual child's current level and then support it to the next. So, it is crucial that the practitioner has opportunities to interact with individual children or small groups, in order that they can ascertain current levels and help extend them - a skill that is difficult to exercise within large classes and with few adult practitioners.

A range of factors may affect practitioners' expectations of children. Recent evidence relating to summer-born children has shown that some teachers may not take relative ages into account when making assessments, and that early 'labelling' of children can lead to teacher expectancy effects10.

Emotional warmth and security

A secure foundation of emotional warmth and security needs to be in place to support the child's motivation, confidence and self-regulation. Their beliefs about the value of their activities, their emotional responses (for example, feelings of difficulty), level of interest and personal relevance, as well as the reasons they attribute to previous success and failure on similar tasks, will all affect 'goal-orientation'11. Research findings relating to 'self-efficacy'12, to interest13 and to 'self-determination'14 suggest that the satisfaction of children's needs for feelings of competence, autonomy and 'relatedness' (warm relationships) affect how they regulate their behaviours.

A number of studies have investigated the social and emotional aspects of classroom environments which might support the development of self-regulation15. Many evidence-based approaches are available to guide professionals in supporting children's developing emotional and social skills in schooling environments; current best practices recommend that programmes should begin in the pre-school and continue through the school-age years, and that social and emotional skill development should be woven into naturally-occurring learning situations throughout the day16, 17.

Play

The dominant vehicle for learning within social pedagogy is play, a multi-modal method backed by a large body of research evidence of its effectiveness, which supports children's learning through processes which come naturally to them18. Since most play occurs with others, opportunities provide for the child to learn from more 'expert' others through imitation, for example.

Taking advantage of children's natural motivation to play, practitioners can provide learning areas and specific activities to encourage the development of various competencies and cognitions. Socio-dramatic play, for example, aids the development of imagination and thinking skills. Pretending with others may also be important for developing cognitive self-regulation skills such as inhibition, as it frequently requires recognition of and adherence to rules.

Games with rules help children understand the nature of 'rules', and encourage socio-emotional learning which arises from sharing time and space and seeing events from others' perspectives. Through playing with objects, children start to explore the world and experiment with objects in efforts to understand their physical nature. This type of play helps to develop physical skills as well as thinking, reasoning and problem-solving. Within pretend play, objects take on meanings for the child in their imagination, irrespective of their function as real objects in the perceptual world. This enables the child to begin to manipulate their understandings of information and thereby deepen their brain's capacities for thinking.

Physical play, including 'rough and tumble' play, is effective in supporting children's emotional and social development. Exercise play, such as running, climbing, ball and racket games and fine motor play, including construction and cutting and sticking activities, are vehicles for children to develop gross and fine motor skills, improve their hand-eye co-ordination and develop muscular strength and stamina, as well as increasing powers of concentration and perseverance.

It is evident that the development of many core brain functions is brought about naturally for most children within play situations, including cognitive flexibility, inhibition and working memory, and capacities for problem-solving, reasoning and planning. Likewise, play affords opportunities for socio-emotional development where skills such as turn-taking, sharing and negotiating are required.

Self-regulation

The final essential ingredient is the encouragement of independence, or self-regulation in children's learning. There is now overwhelming evidence, as we reviewed in our second article (Nursery World, 15 November 2011), that children's abilities to be aware of their own cognitive, emotional and motivational processes, and consequently to be able to control and regulate them, is the key predictor of academic success and emotional well-being.

Educational settings which support self-regulation contain all of the essential elements outlined above19. In addition, however, the processes of learning and thinking, of problem-solving and creativity, and the experience of emotions and motivations, are all explicitly discussed, and their relationship with successful learning, performance and well-being is made clear.

In one study, for example, children's confidence and learning in maths was compared in Year 1 classrooms where there was more or less of this 'metacognitive' talk. The confidence and performance in maths of children who had been in the high metacognitive classes was significantly improved compared with those in low metacognitive classes, and this effect was sustained right through to Year 420. The crucial importance of self-regulation in learning and development, and how it can be supported within early years settings, is a major theme in a new book published by one of the present authors21.

CONCLUSIONS

Sensitive practitioners holding high expectations of children, enabling safe, warm classroom environments and providing opportunities for multi-faceted play, are just some of the essentials for a child-centred pedagogy. Underpinning the approach is a broadened conceptualisation of 'school readiness' which regards it as a condition of schools as much as individual children.

Regardless of the age for school entry, children will vary considerably in their social, emotional, and intellectual skills upon arrival. Conceptual and pragmatic changes need to be made therefore to the 'offer' from schools. In particular, pedagogies need to be designed to complement the natural learning capacities of young children in order that they can fulfil their developmental potential. Early childhood educationalists suggest that a much greater service would be provided to children if the focus was more on making school ready for children, than on making children ready for school.

Preparation for life

The model of 'readiness for school' is attractive to governments, as it seemingly delivers children into primary school ready to conform to classroom procedures, and even able to perform basic reading and writing skills. However, from a pedagogical perspective, this approach fuels an increasingly dominant notion of early childhood as preparation for school systems rather than for 'life.'

In this series, we have reviewed the now extensive evidence that the curriculum-centred approach evident in many Key Stage 1 classrooms, and the idea that rushing children into formal learning of literacy, mathematics and so on as young as possible, is misguided. This is leading to a situation where children's basic emotional and cognitive needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, and the opportunity to develop their self-regulation skills, are not being met. The problem is not that children are not ready for school, but that our schools are not ready for children.

David Whitebread is a senior lecturer in Psychology and Early Years Education and Sue Bingham is a former early years practitioner and a PhD student of the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge

REFERENCES

1. Vygotsky, L (1978) Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

2. Martin-Korpi, B (2005) 'The Foundation for Lifelong Learning', in Children in Europe, issue 9, Edinburgh

3. OECD (2010) Overview of Country Approaches to Standards, Curriculum and Pedagogy for Quality early education and care (ECEC). Paris: OECD

4. Martin-Korpi, B (2005) 'The Foundation for Lifelong Learning', in Children in Europe, issue 9, Edinburgh

5. Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (2011). Department for Education

6. Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (2011). Department for Education (p5)

7. Tickell, C (2011) The Early Years Foundation Stage Review: A report on the evidence. Department for Education (p21)

8. Wood, DJ, Bruner, JS & Ross, G (1976) 'The role of tutoring in problem-solving', in Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 17, p89-100

9. Schaffer, HR (2004) 'Using Language', chapter 9 in Introducing Child Psychology. Oxford: Blackwell

10. Gledhill J, Ford, T & Goodman, R (2002) 'Does season of birth matter? The relationship between age within the school year (season of birth) and educational difficulties among a representative general population sample of children and adolescents (aged 5-15) in Great Britain', in Research in Education, 68, p41-47

11. Pintrich, PR (2000) 'The role of goal orientation in self-regulated learning', in M Boekaerts, PR Pintrich, and M Zeidner (eds) Handbook Of Self-Regulation. San Diego, CA: Academic Press

12. Bandura, A (2001) 'Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective', in Annual Review of Psychology 52, p1-26

13. Dweck, CS (2000) Self-Theories: Their role in motivation, personality and development. Philadelphia: Psychology Press

14. Ryan, RM & Deci, EL (2000) 'Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development and well-being', in American Psychologist, 55, p68-78

15. Meyer, D & Turner, JC (2002) 'Using instructional discourse analysis to study scaffolding of student self-regulation', in Educational Psychologist, 37: 17-25

16. Sheppard GK, Hendricks Brown, C, Poduska, J, Ialongo, N, Wang, W, Toyinbo, P, Petras, H, Ford, C, Windham, A & Wilcox HC (2008): 'Effects of a Universal Classroom Behavior Management Program in First and Second Grades on Young Adult Behavioral, Psychiatric, and Social Outcomes', in Drug & Alcohol Dependency, 95(1): S5-S28

17. Zins, JE, Bloodworth, MR, Weissberg RP & Walberg, HJ (2007) 'The Scientific Base Linking Social and Emotional Learning to School Success', in Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 17 (2-3) p191-210

18. Boadhead, P, Howard, J, & Wood, E (2010) Play and Learning in the Early Years. London: Sage

19. Perry, N (1998) 'Young children's self-regulated learning and contexts that support it', in Journal of Educational Psychology, 90(4): 715-729

20. Ornstein, PA, Grammer, JK & Coffman, JL (2010) 'Teachers' 'mnemonic style' and the development of skilled memory', in HS Waters & W Schneider (eds) Metacognition, Strategy Use and Instruction. London: Guilford Press

21. Whitebread, D (2012) Developmental Psychology and Early Childhood Education. London: Sage

INFORMATION

This series of articles is based on a report commissioned by TACTYC (The Association for the Professional Development of Early Years Educators) entitled School Readiness: a critical review of perspectives and evidence, written by David Whitebread and Sue Bingham of the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. The report was launched at the TACTYC Research into Practice conference in York on 11-12 November, and an outline version (Occasional Paper 2) is now available from TACTYC (free to members). It is intended to publish the full report early in 2012. TACTYC can be found online at www.tactyc.org.uk