Three things I learn at sleep-time: children’s accounts of sleep and rest in their early childhood education programs

ABSTRACT

The international quality-improvement agenda for Early Childhood Education (ECE) directs attention to maximising children’s learning experiences. Yet routines, and particularly those relating to sleep-rest provision, are not well conceptualised as learning opportunities. Often children who no longer sleep in the daytime are required to lie down without alternative activity. Educator discourse frames these practices as ‘teaching self-regulation’, yet these experiences afford little opportunity for child-directed learning, and both observational and cortisol studies suggest the potential for negative learning experiences. Prior studies have examined children’s emotional response and identified sleep-rest time as disliked, but have not examined children’s accounts of learning. In this study, we analyse accounts of learning from 54 children (mean age = 56 months). Collectively, the children identified three learnings. Most children learned that adults regulate sleep-rest opportunities through instruction, reward, punishment and priveledge. Some children reported learning coping strategies including imagination and subversion. A rare few identitfied learning to self-regulate. The findings identify a discrepancy between policy aspiration and educator intent, that foreground self-regulation and the de facto lessons children draw from their sleep-rest experiences. Our findings identify standard sleep-rest provision as sub-optimal and the imperative to view care routines, such as sleep-rest, as opportunities for learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood education
• child voice
• learning
• self-regulation
• sleep
• rest

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the children, educators and centres who participated in this study. We also thank Michaela Nothard, Catherine Thompson and Liz Neil for their skilled work in conducting the interviews.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Dr. Staton reports grants from Queensland Government, during the conduct of the study and has been previously commissioned by the Queensland Department of Education to develop resources and professional development programs for the childcare sector. Dr. Irvine reports grants from Queensland Government, during the conduct of the study; Prof. Thorpe reports grants from Department of Education, Queensland Government, during the conduct of the study. Emma Cooke’s research is supported by a Commonwealth Government of Australia Research Training Program scholarship.