Educating young children: scripted instructions for measuring outcomes vs. learning opportunities for development

In a context of political and economic transformations, globalisation and marketisation, high quality early childhood services have been widely recognised by nation states, international bodies and economists as significant for both children’s development and learning and for a country’s economic growth and prosperity (e.g. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD] 2001; 2006; Heckman and Masterov 2007). Undoubtedly, the first years of a child’s life are the most formative years, when the foundations for development and learning are laid. Hence the need to promote early childhood education (ECE) and related services for the benefit of young children as well as the societies in which they live seems undisputed. According to the World Bank, ‘The potential benefits from supporting early childhood development range from improved development to better schooling outcomes and increased productivity in life’ (World Bank 2017).

Over the years, many countries have invested in the development of the education for the youngest citizens. Likewise, research on the young child and early childhood education has grown substantially not least as manifested in the number of articles submitted to this journal. However, in recent years, in a context of increased attention to measurable outcomes and student performances such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test (OECD 2015) criticism has been levelled towards various agencies and policymakers against the use of and reference to research in order to emphasise measurable outcomes, returns on investment and the benefits which ECE offer societies rather than on the nature of the learning experiences and education in the best interests of the child (see for example Vandenbroeck 2017).

Despite promoting ‘Education for All’ (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] 1990) for the past decades, early childhood education was only recently included in the Development Goals. According to the fourth of 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, (United Nations [UN] 2015, 2016) which are to be achieved by 2030, all countries must ‘Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning’. ECE is explicitly referred to in target 4:2, ‘By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education’ (UN 2015, 19).

These are challenges for ECE policymakers worldwide and raise important questions to reflect upon and debate. What constitutes quality early childhood education for the youngest citizens in different cultural contexts? What does ‘ready for primary education’ entail? According to Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN 1989), every child has the right to play, rest and access a wide range of recreational and cultural activities. So, ‘What kind of curriculum and pedagogy would best support the child’s wellbeing and good health, development and learning?’ These are highly contested debates in the current climate and early childhood researchers and practitioners have a responsibility to reflect deeply on how such questions should or could be answered.

As a consequence of the increased marketisation of education and a neoliberal, outcomes-driven discourse, there is a risk that being ‘ready for primary education’ can be associated with a curriculum which decontextualises knowledge and offers scripted instructional frameworks with narrow measurable outcomes often offered, even in developing countries, by international for-profit enterprises at a relatively low cost. This comes at the expense of a holistic perspective and as a threat to what is most beneficial for children's learning, wellbeing and development, where play in itself and play as an important aspect of learning and teaching is included in everyday activities (Hayes and Filipovic 2017).

While living conditions are good and quality early childhood education from an early age is universally available and accessible in some countries, in other countries, for example in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia, there is only limited access to quality early childhood education. In 2014, about two thirds of all children worldwide participated in education in the year prior to official entry age for primary school. The corresponding number in the least developed countries was 4 in 10 children and to even offer one year pre-primary education may seem out of reach and require increasing efforts (UN 2015; Pramling Samuelsson and Park 2017).

One solution for some countries may be to turn to international for-profit enterprises. Supported by the World Bank and well-intentioned philanthropists, they purport to partner with governments, communities, teachers and parents to deliver ‘great schools and high quality’. This can sound very promising indeed. However, according to a recent evaluation conducted by Education International, a global network of Teaching Unions, and Kenya National Union of Teachers (2016), this can sometimes lead to children being under the tutelage of ‘unqualified, overworked, teachers using teaching scripts (developed in the US) read from tablets’ (p.6). Such evidence sounds a wake-up call to those concerned with quality ECE for all. We need to reflect on what we might learn from these scenarios, which raise moral and ethical questions, as well as professional ones.

Robust evidence from research highlights the importance of having qualified teachers to facilitate offering quality education (e.g. Sylva et al. 2010). Likewise, the importance of taking the social context into consideration and developing culturally sensitive and appropriate education programmes respecting diversity in children, families and communities is widely recognised. The marketing activities of some international education providers call for professionals in the ECE world to pay attention and be critical in the responses to how these providers construct and define quality education and qualified professionals involved in the delivery of the education (Johansson 2017).

In order to help policymakers take informed decisions and offer alternatives to the ‘measurable outcomes’ tendency, the international research community must be active in its role in supporting an early childhood education discourse where the focus is not on return of investment, but rather on one where children are seen as competent learners, where children's rights are taken into account and where learning and teaching take place in a social context in interaction and communication with qualified adults (Hayes and Filipovic 2017; Vandenbroeck 2017).

The 10 articles in this issue come from eight countries and cover a wide range of topics representative of the richness of research conducted within the early childhood community, worldwide. Different themes, perspectives and methodologies are presented with the common denominator being the lived experiences of children, practitioners and families in early childhood education. Even if not explicitly, the articles all address and explore aspects of and preconditions for quality early educational experiences both in the educational settings and in the family context. Topics such as play, peer relations and friendship, young children's perspectives, teacher's roles and beliefs, foreign language teaching, teacher education, early intervention strategies, children's creative engagement and parenting experiences provide the reader, whether a researcher, practitioner or policymaker, with interesting and thought-provoking evidence of early childhood education practices and policies.

In the first article Leandra Coelho, Nuno Torres, Carla Fernandes and António J. Santos examine the relationship between children's play behaviour, social acceptance in the peer group and number of reciprocal friendships of 128 children aged three to five years. Findings indicate that children's play behaviour was associated with peer acceptance. From the perspective of the young child it is essential to be included in play. However, not all children are skilled players and being excluded from participation in play can provoke feelings of loneliness and in extreme cases, even depression.

Children challenging adult-initiated rules in play is the focus of the next article by Sara Margrét Ólafsdóttir, Susan Danby, Jóhanna Einarsdóttir and Maryanne Theobald. Play behaviour of children aged three to five years in two preschools in Iceland was video recorded. Children were subsequently asked about their activities when watching the video. Findings suggest that although children accepted many of the adult-initiated rules they also resisted some of the rules, one of which was ‘everybody should play together’. Whilst this is a very common rule in early childhood education research proves that not allowing other children to enter existing play does not necessarily imply exclusion. It can simply be a matter of protecting the ongoing play from disruption (Löfdahl 2010).

The third article brings to the fore another important aspect of children’s play – rough and tumble play. Rune Storli and Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter explore Norwegian ECE practitioners’ perceptions and practices regarding children's outdoor and indoor rough-and-tumble (R&T) play from a gender perspective. Employing a mixed methods design with both questionnaire and semi-structured interviews, findings show that practitioners acknowledged both positive and negative sides of R&T. It was more accepted indoors than outdoors. Much to the surprise of the researchers there was not a great difference in the attitudes between male and female practitioners, possibly as a result of females gaining knowledge about and experiences of R&T play from their male colleagues over time.

Taking young children's perspectives into consideration and the challenge of interpreting their perspectives is the focus of the next article by Yeshe Colliver. The presented study is part of a larger investigation on educators’, family members and children's perspectives on learning through play. Using stimulated video recall findings from the study with 28 children aged two to five years indicate that children's perspectives were very different from those of the adults. The author concludes with suggesting a ‘ … move from trying to listen to children to truly understanding them’.

Moving from children to the adults, the next article by Ibrahim H. Acar, Soo-Young Hong and ChaoRong Wu presents a study on teacher presence, social scaffolding and children's peer interactions across classroom contexts. From observing 22 four and five-year-old children in seven public preschools three main findings emerged: (1) a negative link between teacher presence and positive peer interaction, (2) children’s positive peer interactions was higher in child-directed activities than in adult-directed activities and (3) teachers social scaffolding was positively related to peer interactions.

The two following articles also focus on the adult, namely student teachers and practising teachers, respectively. The article by Sigrid Blömeke, Simone Dunekacke and Lars Jenßen examines various determinants of beliefs and possible gender stereotypes of prospective preschool teachers about the relevance and nature of mathematics during various stages of their education in different kinds of schools. Findings from statistical tests on a heterogeneous sample of 1851 student teachers, indicate that preschool student teachers believed more strongly in the relevance of mathematics at the end of their studies. Likewise, students in pedagogical colleges believed in the relevance of mathematics to a larger extent than students in vocational schools. Based on the findings, the authors suggest including subject knowledge, e.g. mathematics, in teacher education programmes alongside pedagogical content knowledge.

The article by Mihaela Brumen, Fanika Fras Berro and Branka Cagran presents and discusses an action research project on foreign language teaching in Slovenian kindergartens by the Network Innovation Project (NIP). The project lasted from 2008–2015 with the aim to examine and practice the most effective way to teach foreign languages in preschools. The focus was on preschool teacher's language teaching and preschool children's foreign language behaviour. Findings show that children were highly motivated by their foreign language learning and so were their parents.

The responsibility of staff in Norwegian kindergartens to initiate intervention for children in need is the focus of the next article by Ann Christin E. Nilsen. Employing institutional ethnography, the aim was to explore how kindergarten staff and other involved professionals interpret and implement intervention. In her concluding remarks, Nilsen claims that a number of factors, such as promoting social cohesion and equality of opportunities, imply a standardisation of children and childhood and involves classification of children as normal or deviant in textual representation of children. According to Nilsen, it is important to critically reflect on such texts, what they do and the possible gap between political goals and practical realities.

The aim of Naomi McLeod, Denise Wright, Katy McCall and Michiko Fujii's article was to demonstrate children's creative engagement at Tate Liverpool Art Gallery in England and how this was facilitated. Using artworks as provocation for children to become engaged, a group of 12 children in the ages three to four years and some accompanying parents participated in 10 workshops with artists over a one-year period. The most significant finding was a new phenomenon called ‘visible rhythms’ or signs of creative engagement. Signs of engagement can be transferred from one activity to another if facilitated. In this respect, the adult role is crucial. Further, repeated visits over a long period were significant in supporting children's creative engagement.

The final article addresses an important aspect of young children’s education and upbringing – the home environment. Kyung Eun Jahng and Seung Hee Song presents a study on parenting experiences of divorced mothers in South Korea. Observations and semi-structured interviews were conducted with four divorced mother-headed families with children in the ages six to 12 years. Main findings indicate that mothers’ relation with their ex-spouse had implications for the mother-child relation. The mothers had low expectations of their children’s academic performance and future career. Financial stability and cooperative parenting helped reduce the pressure of raising children in a divorced family and reduced the mothers’ psychological vulnerability. This study shows how the home environment and the early childhood setting are mutually interrelated. What happens at home has implications for the young child in the early education setting and vice versa.

The articles in this issue contribute to increasing our understanding about what constitutes quality early childhood education and what ‘readiness’ for primary school might mean. Quality early childhood education is about giving voice and genuinely listening to young children and their ideas, providing opportunities for play and learning, safeguarding dedicated and qualified professionals and fostering cooperation between the home and the ECE setting.

It seems unlikely that the answers for the future about quality provision that make children ‘ready for primary education’ lie in decontextualised, outcomes-driven instruction. Rather, I believe the answer must be to focus on the child’s wellbeing and development through education programmes which take local cultures and languages into consideration while offering challenging play and learning opportunities. Having access to contextualized learning experiences and participatory approaches organised by highly qualified adults, enables children to engage in purposeful learning and meaning-making processes. In addition to encouraging children to engage with each other and with adults, participatory approaches create opportunities for children to understand the world around them and assist ECE teachers to nurture and support children's holistic growth and development. Unlike scripted instructions I believe such learning environments will positively contribute to making children ‘ready for primary education’.