How Children Learn: The Characteristics of Effective Early Learning

©Nancy Stewart 2011

The right of Nancy Stewart to be identified as the author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any other form or by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying or otherwise without the express permission of the publishers.

The British Association for Early Childhood Education

136 Cavell Street, London, E1 2JA

Charity registered in England and Wales no. 313082

Charity registered in Scotland no. SC039472

A company limited by guarantee registered in England no. 395548.

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful for the assistance of a number of people who contributed suggestions, observations, and critical reflections. Thank you to: Sue Rothwell at Meole Brace Primary School; staff and children at Meole Brace nursery class; Tammy Griffiths; Debbie Loynton of Mount Lane Day Nursery; Dr. David Whitebread; Helen Moylett.

Contents

Chapter 1

Introduction

Chapter 2

Playing and Exploring

Finding out and exploring

Playing with what they know

Being willing to ‘have a go’

What might it look like?

Key messages

Chapter 3

Active Learning

Being involved and concentrating

Enjoying achieving what they set out to do

Keeping on trying

What might it look like?

Key messages

Chapter 4

Creating and thinking critically

Having their own ideas

Making links

Choosing ways to do things

What might it look like?

Key messages

Chapter 5

Learners for life

Resources

Resources

Index

Foreword

What children learn is important, but how children learn is even more important if they are to become learners for life in today’s society. Governments are becoming more aware of the early years as the foundation for future life chances and achievement. This timely and much needed book will help policy makers and practitioners articulate the importance of early childhood as a valuable stage in its own right as well as a preparation for the future.

Respect for babies and young children informs the whole text, together with the recognition that learning is about feelings and relationships as well as thoughts and actions. Engagement in learning through play, the motivating power of children being active agents in their own learning and the role of creativity in learning how to think are all explored. All these are complex and well researched areas. Nancy Stewart brings her wealth of experience and clear thinking to bear on unravelling some of that complexity, and explaining the overarching theme of self regulation, whilst never over simplifying. This is a scholarly approach, but also a practical one – there are examples of what playing and exploring, active learning and creating and thinking critically might look like, as well as key messages for how adults can support children’s development as learners.

This book takes us ‘back to basics’. There is nothing more basic to effective early years practice than understanding how children learn and early years practitioners have long been proud of being ‘child centred’. This book gets to the heart of what that child centeredness really means and why it really matters.

Helen Moylett

President, Early Education

November 2011

People are remarkable learners. The depth and breadth of our learning is what sets us far apart from all other living creatures, as we develop complex ways of interacting with and thinking about the world around us. At the very beginning of life we learn astonishingly quickly about the physical world, about other people, about who we are and what we can do, and about communicating and using language to shape and share our thoughts.

But beyond what we learn about, in our earliest years we are also building habits of mind that will support us to continue to learn and be successful throughout our lives. Given the right opportunities, we are expanding our powers as learners: We develop belief in ourselves as people who can make things happen. We discover the satisfaction of being interested and involved in activities which puzzle or challenge us. We build confidence to experiment and try things out, knowing that we can learn from what goes wrong as well as what goes right. We don’t give up easily when we encounter problems. And we learn not to react just from instinct, but to make decisions about our actions – based on thinking about possible consequences and judging the best way to reach our goals. We learn to picture the future, to predict what might happen, and to control our first impulses if we think waiting will pay off later.

A newborn baby has the roots of all these powerful approaches to learning, and starts to put them into action from day one. Far from the image widely held a century ago of an infant as a ‘blank slate’ who started out with no abilities, we now know that infants are putting ideas together and making sense of their world from the very beginning. But how strongly children go on to develop as learners is another matter. A child’s development in all areas depends on how inborn genetic patterns interact with their experiences – the stimulation and support that come from other people and the physical world. This is true for becoming an effective learner for life, just as it is for becoming physically strong and healthy.

Childhood is a lengthy period for humans. A wildebeest stands on its own legs within a few minutes of birth and runs with the adult herd in less than two hours, and a newly hatched chick needs only to be shown what to eat and is able to seek food for itself. But a baby is at the beginning of a period of years of being dependent on others. Throughout this long ‘apprenticeship’ to joining adult society, the young brain is being shaped by experiences that cause frequently-used neural connections to become strong and lasting – giving humans the advantage of great flexibility to develop the abilities and capacities that are proving to be the ones needed in the society in which the child lives. We develop the brains and the minds that our experiences call for.

As adults, we are responsible for ensuring that a child’s early experiences are an action call for robust development as a learner. It is important for early years educators to have a clear understanding of what children need to learn – the curricular areas that are needed for success in their society such as language, literacy, ICT, mathematics and so on. But it is not enough for a child to have a particular skill or know some facts. These are of little value in the end without the desire, confidence, motivation and control to use them, and the mental abilities to look at something in a new way, link ideas together and plan and manage the ways forward. To truly support children in their early years to reach their potential, it is fundamentally crucial for the adults who care for and work with children to understand how children learn, and the key role which they play in fostering children’s lasting ability to be effective learners and doers across all areas.

Becoming a learner for life

Early years practitioners are committed to providing warm, caring relationships and stimulating opportunities so that young children are happy and engaged in early years settings. At the same time, there is a recognition that children are both being and becoming, and the impact of these early experiences on a child’s future is also taken seriously. To enable all young children to reach their full potential is an aspiration commonly stated in early childhood programmes. Early childhood is becoming increasingly recognised by public policy makers as the critical foundation of future development¹, with early experiences having lasting repercussions on social, emotional, physical and cognitive development. Early foundations affect not only how the child succeeds in mastering the immense body of knowledge and skills they will be exposed to throughout their education, but also how successful and fulfilled they will be in their adult lives.

There is a large and growing body of evidence that individual differences in how children approach learning are a major source of differences in their achievement in school.² Children vary in their dispositions for learning – the habits of mind which include such things as believing in one’s own ability to succeed, maintaining a curious outlook, and having a strong motivation to learn. Children also have different patterns of thinking, such as to what extent they set personal goals, make plans, consider how to do things and monitor how well things are going. There is evidence that these differences determine which people will succeed at school and in their careers while others of similar intellectual ability will not.³ An individual’s store of ‘grit’ – persisting in pursuit of long-term goals – has been found to have no relation to intelligence, and explains why some people are successful while others of equal ability fall by the wayside.⁴

The long-term effects of developing these traits in the early years are profound, and they can be fostered or hindered by their experiences in educational settings.⁵ We know that attending early years settings before the age of three boosts children’s early attainment⁶, and a number of approaches to early education have shown that they can support children’s early learning. But supporting children’s future development is not just in order for them to make a prompt start with learning in primary school. Looking far beyond to their success as adults is even more important. There is evidence that it is particularly high quality provision which confers lasting benefits for children’s achievement as they progress through school⁷ and beyond.⁸

So what type of provision will support children as lifelong learners? There are some indications that different approaches to pedagogy bring different results. One study followed disadvantaged children in Chicago and compared the effects of formal direct instruction of skills with a developmentally appropriate approach based on play. The direct instruction group initially showed higher achievement in reading and maths, but as the children progressed into school that advantage disappeared. In the long run, though, there was a strong benefit for the children whose early years experience focused on play: nearly three-quarters graduated from high school, compared to less than half of those with a direct instruction pre-school experience.⁹

One of the strongest sources of evidence of a boost to lifetime success comes from the High/Scope Perry Pre-School project, a rigorous controlled study over a period of 40 years, comparing outcomes for children who participated in the High/Scope programme to those with no pre-school experience and either direct instruction or traditional free play provision. The children were followed from the age of three or four until adulthood. Again, the direct instruction group showed early achievement gains which soon disappeared. By age 15, however, other differences emerged. The direct instruction group were less than half as likely to read books, had engaged in twice as many delinquent acts, and showed more social and psychological signs of trouble than did those who had attended either a free-play or High/Scope preschool.¹⁰ By age 23, children from the direct instruction group were three times more likely to have been arrested for a felony as those from the other groups, and had eight times the rate of emotional impairments.¹¹ By the age of 40, the High/Scope children showed significant positive effects across many areas of their lives compared to children who had not attended pre-school. They were more motivated to achieve success in school and willing to work hard in employment. They experienced fewer suspensions from work, fewer arrests and custodial sentences, more stable marriages, less drug use, higher earnings, and higher