This issue includes nine papers, from Argentina, Belgium, Canada, England, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Wales, ranging from a very close analysis of 62 seconds of interaction between a practitioner and two children to a review of the impact on policy of a series of linked research projects over a period of more than 10 years.
The first three papers present a range of perspectives on how adults and children engage with more and less constrained interactive spaces. Trisha Maynard, Jane Waters and Jennifer Clement worked with a small group of Foundation Phase teachers in Wales to explore ways in which adults’ perceptions of children’s behaviour differ in different kinds of space – specifically indoors and outdoors. The teachers engaged in conversations about how changes in their own approach could change the way they evaluated children’s behaviour (‘what counts as naughty outside is different’). These conversations created a space in which the teachers could understand the socially constructed nature of their judgments about children who were more likely to be seen as underachieving in the more constrained, regulated context of the classroom than when they were ‘let out’ to play outside.
Our second paper, by Claudia Opdenakker, Sarah Wilke, Stef Kremers and Jessica Gubbels, is again based on conversations with practitioners, this time child care workers in the Netherlands, about the factors which constrain and regulate the extent to which they are able to encourage very young children (from two to four years old) to be physically active. The practitioners recognised tensions between rules intended to protect the youngest children (e.g. no running indoors) and growing concerns about lack of opportunities for young children to be active. The study highlights the importance of social factors shaping the attitudes and behaviours of adults – staff who have few opportunities to interact with colleagues see time outside as a chance to catch up and the authors suggest that these practitioners tend to demonstrate a more external locus of control – they have little confidence in their ability to effect changes in how children’s activity is encouraged and constrained.
The third paper, by Alice Matthews and Jonathan Rix, addresses the complex relationships between children, parents and professionals in the context of early intervention to support children with special needs. The paper focuses on two young children with Down’s syndrome and aims to construct a first person narrative of the children’s experience of what various adults encourage them to do. Consciously trying to see activities from the child’s perspective allows the researchers to offer parents different ways of interpreting the child’s behaviour, so that resisting having a shoe put on can be seen as a success. One parent expressed some concern about playful interaction being turned into ‘homework’ by the perceived pressure to fit in a daily schedule of therapeutic activities. This concern may resonate with early years professionals who recognise how different children’s play can be in the more constrained indoor context and the more ‘unruly’ outdoor environment.
The next three papers focus on some of the ways in which adults can help children as they try to make sense of the cultural devices, conventions and rules which both constrain and enable social interactions. Helen Bradford and Dominic Wyse write about a study which compared young children’s perceptions of themselves as writers with their parents’ views. By examining examples of families in which both parents and child thought of the child as a writer, where neither did and where parents did but the child didn’t, the authors explore some of the ways in which cultural values may be transmitted, shaping the context in which a child makes sense of what adults do. In most of the families in this small sample the children confidently asserted their status as writers despite the more cautious evaluations made by their parents. It is probably not surprising that no families were found where the parents saw their child as a writer but the child didn’t.
Olga Peralta, Analía Salsa, María del Rosario Maita and Florencia Mareovich report on a series of studies in Argentina which have examined the effect of different kinds of adult support on young children’s ability to learn how symbolic objects (models, photographs, diagrams) can be used as tools to mediate activities. These studies show that ‘teaching’, understood specifically as offering contingent feedback immediately after a child has experienced difficulty in completing a task, is more effective than the most careful, detailed explanation offered before the child attempts the task. Children are particularly sensitive to the intentions of others and an explanation offered ‘out of context’ may, therefore, prove much less effective than support provided in the moment – when the child is jointly engaged with an adult in a shared task.
Amanda Bateman’s paper presents a very close focus on just over a minute of interaction between a New Zealand early years practitioner and two three-year old boys. Using the techniques of conversation analysis she examines the options open to adults when responding to a child’s response. The traditional ‘initiate, respond, evaluate/feedback’ pattern found in many teacher–pupil interactions around the world, tends to close down opportunities to sustain a conversation – converting the play of conversation into something more like work. This paper examines alternative kinds of response which acknowledge the emotional context of the interaction as well as the task context – a challenging feature of the early years professional’s role in shaping spaces which support both emotional and intellectual development.
The last three papers in this issue address the more outward facing aspects of the role of the early years practitioner, exercising leadership in the shared development of practice and contributing, through membership of advocacy organisations and participation in research projects, to the development of policy. Janet Murray and Rory McDowall Clark report on the experiences of some of the first practitioners to undertake training for the English Early Years Professional (EYP) status. This role, now to be replaced by a new Early Years Teacher status, highlighted the EYP’s responsibility for leading the development of pedagogical practice, regardless of the official position or status which the EYP might hold in a setting. The EYPs seem to share a vision of passionate care and participative pedagogy – a ‘leading from the middle’ approach which contrasts with traditional, hierarchical models of authoritative leadership. Their emphasis on taking small steps, working with colleagues to help them to move from where they are, echoes some of the approaches identified by Bateman to support conversation. How do you respond to the responses people give you?
Rachel Langford, Susan Prentice, Patrizia Albanese, Bernadette Summers, Brianne Messina-Goertzen and Brooke Richardson were interested in how a changing political and economic climate and increasing professionalization of early childhood education and care might affect the kinds of issues identified in documents produced by different kinds of social movement organisations (SMOs) in Canada. They analysed the annual reports and media releases produced by both grassroots practitioner organisations and more structured official associations over the course of 2008. Drawing on Social Movement Theory and a version of Resource Mobilisation Theory, they expected to find some variations in the issues and frames adopted by typically more militant, challenging activist groups and more conciliatory, more professional ‘social movement entrepreneurs’ employed in larger associations. They were surprised by the absence of any real challenge to the market approach to childcare provision and the almost universal appeal to ‘business case’ arguments about the economic benefits of better provision rather than arguments based on human rights and addressing social inequalities. The ‘outdoor’ feistiness of grassroots organisations seemed to have gone indoors as childcare work became more professionalised.
In our final paper, Jan Peeters offers an overview of the work of VBJK, the Resource and Research Centre for ECEC at the University of Ghent, Belgium. Peeters considers the role of research in bringing practitioners, academics and policy-makers together in communicative spaces which can function as ‘islands of democracy’ where meanings and intentions can be explored and contested. A series of studies focusing on gender and professionalism and a study of the deprofessionalisation of childcare in Flanders helped to contest the traditional view of childcare as a highly gendered and uncomplicated process, contributing, over a period of more than 10 years, to a political shift which resulted in the introduction of a BA qualification in childcare. By engaging with practitioners, parents and policy-makers, researchers can ‘dream of a better world’ and, sometimes, lead policy development from the middle.
Each of these papers contributes to the development of a richer understanding of the complexity of the work involved in helping children to find their way into a world of cultural rules, constraints and policies which they can challenge, interpret and co-construct. By providing opportunities for both ‘outdoor’ and ‘indoor’ learning practitioners can support the playful loosening of constraints while attentively supporting children’s access to cultural tools and rules, enabling them to engage in the communicative spaces which may help to shape a better world.