Studying Early Childhood: Part 3: Visits, observations, placements and dissertations

Often childhood degree courses will take you out into the 'real world', rather than simply expecting you to study in libraries and university classrooms. In different modules you might, for instance, be asked to undertake child observations, keep research diaries or practise developing other research skills by gathering data. You could be required to conduct interviews, perform archival work or undertake surveys, or to evaluate child-related spaces, such as classrooms or playgroups.

Your course may incorporate visits or field trips into children's centres, schools, nurseries or other relevant settings. Some courses include extended optional or compulsory placement elements, in which you have the chance to develop the knowledge, practical skills and competencies involved in working as a qualified early years practitioner.

Further, most childhood students will ultimately be required to undertake some kind of final-year independent research project, dissertation or extended piece of work, in which you apply what you have already learned to explore or investigate a topic in some depth. These are usually linked to an area of interest that you develop in specific settings, enabling you to work closely with particular professions or other stakeholders, gaining valuable insight into different ways of working in particular contexts. Sometimes, depending on your course and your mode of attendance, they can be linked to practical work being undertaken in settings.

It's important, then, as with other teaching and learning activities, to make sure you're clear in your own mind about the precise nature and purpose of such off-campus placement activities and how they can benefit you and your learning.

As the first two elements in this series (23 September and 28 October) have tried to highlight, this is a matter of tuning in to your lecturers' expectations and becoming aware of the active part they want you to play with regard to your own learning.

Are they trying to develop your practical skills and competences in working, say, as an early years practitioner in an accredited setting? Or are they hoping to offer you a way to build up your knowledge and understanding of professional practice, enhancing your awareness of emerging themes, issues and challenges in relevant child-related settings?

Are you already an established practitioner working with children in some capacity, so you're extremely familiar with your own setting? If so, are you really being asked to gain some critical distance on that space by, for example, visiting and analysing each others' professional spaces and using that analysis as the basis of class discussion? Or, as a practitioner, are you being asked to engage in some action research to improve your own professional practice or help move something forward in your setting, such as an innovation designed to support staff or children?

Answers to these questions will help you to perceive the relevance of the authentic experiences you're getting involved in. They will also help you be clear, in your own mind, exactly which 'hat' you're supposed to be wearing when you are in settings as part of your course. You will normally be there to learn, assuming the role of a researcher. So you need to be clear about the precise nature of your student identity.

BE CLEAR ABOUT THE FOCUS OR PURPOSE OF ANY VISIT

The first two articles in this series explained how studying childhood at university tends to be a transformative experience (a shift in the way you see and conceptualise things), rather than being about simply acquiring facts and more information. This is equally true when you get to study the 'real world'.

When studying 'real' environments, you usually need to think of yourself as someone who is, first and foremost, there to learn, explore and investigate. Just as the last article suggested that you need to see yourself as a sense-maker, who actively tunes into other people's understandings and theories when you are reading, the same principles apply when studying in real-life settings. You are rarely there just to gather facts, to fill in checklists or to prove or disprove whether something is 'working.' You are certainly not there to try to change the world by forcefully imposing your opinions on others.

As a rule of thumb, your course will encourage you to learn by 'looking' at the real world through the theoretical lenses it promotes to you. Your lecturers usually want you explicitly to make connections between your academic study and the real world of professional practice and the lived experiences of childhood. This will help you to see the relevance of your course, motivate you and deepen the quality of learning you achieve. Your lecturers want you to experience, at first hand, the challenges, issues and complex 'messiness' of the real world, so that you don't fall into the trap of thinking things are simple and cut-and-dried.

So, when they send you out, or even if you are already in practice, lecturers usually want you to get beneath the surface of whatever you are asked to focus upon. Here is where you put your critical, analytical skills to good use, by 'reading,' interpreting and actively questioning the different stakeholder viewpoints and cultural practices you encounter in everyday child-related settings.

In short, you can learn a huge amount through talking to people and observing what they say and do. As in all aspects of your learning, your lecturers want you to adopt an active, critical, inquisitive approach. They want you to question, think laterally, creatively and innovatively. It's vital, however, you appreciate what 'being critical' in an academic sense, as opposed to in an everyday sense, actually means.

CRITICAL IN AN ACADEMIC SENSE

Going on placement or making a visit is a bit like going into someone's house for the first time. It's deeply impolite to make the owner of the house feel that you disapprove or find fault with their home. If you seem critical in this everyday sense of the word, you're not likely to be asked back!

The same is true on placement. You need to remember that you are not there to make anyone feel upset or uncomfortable. On one level, this means trying to look out for the unspoken rules and to tune in sensitively to their routines. Of course, you will need to be appropriately dressed, punctual and reliable, but this also means going with the flow of their rules, even if you don't fully agree with the underpinning philosophy.

Remember that as a student of childhood, the main thing that is likely to change is you. This requires you to stay open-minded, be reflexive, remain aware of your own biases and be sensitive to how your presence affects the data and your interpretations.

Whenever you are doing any realworld research-like activity, think carefully about the perspectives, beliefs, attitudes and assumptions you have been learning about. You might find that you are more politicised than you realised, and may have developed strong views from your course about what is and isn't good for children. You might personally disagree with what you see of some educational practices or ways of interacting with, say, parents. But remember, in your role as a researcher, it's not your place to comment, or pick holes in other people's work.

In fact, it is often enlightening to have a placement in a setting where you don't share the philosophy, or to meet people who have very different views from your own. This can help you clarify or modify what you think. It makes you conscious of your own values, attitudes and assumptions, which is the start of being critical in an academic sense.

Your job as a researcher is to analyse, interpret and search for meanings, rather than simply taking things at face value. Below are some suggestions for being critical in an academic sense when studying the real world.

1. Pose questions to yourself

Learning to ask yourself questions about why people hold certain values, or how people construct and reveal views of children's needs, is essential to studying childhood. To achieve an academic level of critical enquiry you could ask yourself, for example:

• - How do different members of staff deal with a particular issue, practice or policy in the setting, and how does that relate to the perspectives you've read about in the literature?
• - Can you identify different points of view among the people in the setting? How are they similar, and in what respect do they differ?
• - What seem to be the barriers to change when a setting seeks to introduce a policy, and what features appear to smooth the path?
• - Can you form a sense of different people's preoccupations, values, attitudes and opinions in relation to something?
• - Can you perceive people's hidden agendas by noticing the words they use and thinking about the subtexts/nuances of how they use certain terms in a particular context?

2. Try to make the familiar strange

You could try to achieve an academic level of enquiry, too, by rendering the familiar strange. You need to aim to see beneath the surface, suspending your assumptions, watching and listening in an active way, and becoming open to why things might happen in a surprising way. This is 'seeing' in a new light, so that what might initially appear as familiar, everyday behaviour is made distant and strange. Imagining how things might appear to an alien can help here.

3. Use your academic reading and the theoretical perspectives you have studied

A real-world dimension to your studies brings things to life and helps you see the point of the diverse theoretical positions and viewpoints you've been studying, discussing and reading about. So, have these in the forefront of your mind, so that you 'see' the host of complex and inter-related issues that surround childhood and think critically, moving beyond taken-for-granted assumptions, popular myths and common-sense understandings.

In an important sense, this critical, questioning habit of mind is your foundation for thinking like a researcher, because you can use it to reflect on everyday experience. A researcher, after all, is basically someone who asks questions, analyses information, tries to illuminate something and aims to understand complex issues. If you think about it like this, research is a form of learning. The fact that it's taking place in real-life settings simply means you can practice developing your critical understanding in a real context, by linking theory to practice issues.

Genuine insights, some of which might serve to change future practice, can be gained by helping us get to grips with what actually goes on 'on the ground'. But, to be convincing, this sort of insight must stem from informed, critical and open-minded enquiry.

Developing a critical stance, in the academic sense of the word, is vital here. It means always asking questions about assumptions and beliefs, being aware of issues of power, and remaining continuously open to alternative viewpoints. These are all skills and qualities your course has been fostering throughout and are the hallmark of a graduate. Success, though, relies, as ever, on reading and grappling with academic perspectives, because this offers you particular viewpoints and issues to think about.

DOING DISSERTATIONS AND RESEARCH PROJECTS

An independent project or dissertation is a typical assessment in the final year of any childhood degree. This usually involves collecting some 'real-world' data, gathering the views, opinions and perspectives of stakeholders (such as parents, teachers, children, health visitors, nursery officers), or exploring dimensions of practice, such as work with children in classrooms.

You often get to choose your own topic, which can seem daunting. But remember, the idea is that your explorations get more complex and focused as your degree progresses. Your lecturers assume that, by the final year, you will want the chance to delve into something that particularly interests you. So, be prepared. Always be on the lookout for critical issues that you're studying: they frequently reveal themselves as live debates in real-world situations. If you are alert to these, you'll easily spot lines of enquiry you want to pursue in your finalyear research project.

In fact, doing a dissertation or project is very similar to doing a good assignment. You need a good focus and an 'angle.' On childhood degrees, a good research question typically involves finding an area or issue you want to explore, not a question that you can answer in a straightforward, unequivocal way.

Remember, if your course has encouraged you to consider and engage with different perspectives, no-one will expect you to suddenly change tack and undertake a strict scientific exercise where you set out to prove something right/wrong. As in assignments, they will continue to want you to dig deep. It's just that now, you get to delve into something with a 'real-world' dimension.

Your course will also provide you with the research methods and 'tools of the trade' which help you actually carry out the research. There isn't time or space to go into detail here, but make sure that you follow any advice and guidance with regard to data-collection, analysis, ethical approval and so on. There are also lots of helpful published guides you can look at.

Make sure, too, you use wisely your support mechanisms, including your dissertation supervisor. Lecturers have oodles of experience of what works and what doesn't in relation to student projects, so run your ideas past them sooner rather than later, and expect your initial plans to develop and evolve as you go along.

Finally, more detailed, specific advice on matters such as generating manageable research questions and writing up projects can be found in our study guide (Sambell et al, 2010), together with illustrative examples.

Most successful childhood students claim that learning in real-world environments brought an air of authenticity, enjoyment and motivation to their studies. Above all, then, enjoy this aspect of your work and see it as a means of developing your own particular interests and expertise.

While it can be challenging, it's also hugely worthwhile, as the following student makes clear: 'I think research is about learning how to find things out - being critical and being able to analyse. It's hard at first, quite scary, then it gives you confidence. It gives you more confidence in yourself as a person because you feel you can put your point across more strongly, with reasons for your views.'

By Professor Kay Sambell, Professor of Learning and Teaching, School of Health, Community and Education Studies, Northumbria University, and author of Studying Childhood and Early Childhood: a Guide for Students (2nd edition, Sage, 2010).

With thanks to Marsham Street nursery, London, for their help with photographs

REFERENCE

Sambell, K, Gibson, M & Miller, S (2010) Studying Childhood and Early Childhood: a Guide for Students. 2nd Edition. London: Sage