Looking back, looking forwards

10 min read:

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

Maya Angelou

Significant transitions are an opportunity to pause and reflect. Hopefully, we can do so with gratitude and not regrets. I believe that being grateful in all things is fundamental to our wellbeing. To live with regrets is to be stuck in our past, just as anxieties, grudges or unforgiveness prevent us from living full and free lives in the present. We are better off letting them go. I say this as someone who has experienced my share of personal tragedy and heartache and professional frustration, stress and injustice. I choose to appreciate all that I have now and all of my many positive memories, with thanks.

To look back over a career offers a special perspective. Rather than evaluate the highs and the lows, perhaps it is more helpful to consider what I now know better so I can do better. My personal and professional journey through early years care and education has been a case of trying to do the best I could until I knew better. I am sure many of us can attest to this. Isn’t it what life is for? To discover our vocation, to live it and learn from our experiences so we can do it better? We are, after all, well known as a sector for our reflective practice. I suppose I had never considered how this applies to life in its fullest sense, not just in the nursery.

What have I learned?

Perhaps the most valuable lessons are not taught but discovered through experience. I would say my most important insights have been gained by getting down to a child’s level and waiting to be invited into his or her world; to relate to children as a partner in their exploration and play. It is possible to do this in our role as teacher, I believe, with no set agenda other than to build connection. One of the challenges faced by practitioners in the absence of ‘planning’, is the lack of confidence in being able to articulate intent: What are you doing with the children and why? “Just being together”, doesn’t seem to be an appropriate or sufficient response and yet in this moment it is perfectly possible to assess, to teach and to scaffold development by being present in the child’s life and responding to them. I don’t explicitly teach my 3 year old granddaughter, I spend a lot of time being her play partner. In the absence of planned learning outcomes, running round the park, jumping on my back, putting bows in my hair or stickers all over my face, she has somehow managed to develop an extraordinary range of skills, capabilities, personality, vocabulary, dexterity, imagination, self-regulation (a work in progress) and so many more wonderful characteristics. Our learning journey together has been and continues to be relational. Whilst children need to hear language in order to develop their speech, it is serve and return dialogues, for example “using language to entertain or connect, rather than just have children perform their knowledge” (Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, professor of education, University of California, Los Angeles), that makes the difference.

David covered in stickers with his granddaughters.

According to Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, (Senior Fellow at the Center for Universal Education, Temple University, Philadelphia), “the psychological research is clear that it’s the ‘dance’ of interaction between caregiver and child that is crucial to learning speech.” (Hirsh-Pasek, 2018)

Similarly, each child’s growing knowledge base and acquisition of skills and characteristics, are moderated and supported through dyadic relationships. We adults model, nurture, extend and celebrate each unique child’s development from where they are right now onto the next step of their limitless potential, through active and authentic engagement with them.

In considering my own learning, I do so in relation to the underlying theory and principles contributed by the people who have pioneered, and those who continue to contribute to, the body of knowledge on child development. It is a really interesting exercise to go back and reflect on the original reference materials that document some of their findings and recommendations and to evaluate these against our current level of knowledge and understanding supplemented by all of the intervening discoveries in, for example, neuroscience, psychology and physiology and to assess whether our current policies and practice reflect a society that is ‘doing better’ now that we ‘know better’.

How has Early Years changed?

Reflecting on changes to the Early Years education principles and practice, how far should we go back? To Comenius (1592 – 1670) who advocated for all children to receive an education; to Rousseau (1712-1778) who believed in the innate goodness within each individual, that education should start from birth and is best achieved through exploration and experience of the child’s environment; to Froebel (1782-1852) who based his own educational philosophy partly on his study of Comenius and who, in establishing the first kindergartens, focused on learning for the youngest children through activity and play.

Moving into the 20th century, the 1908 Acland Report on ‘School Attendance of Children Below the Age of Five’ includes the following resolution, that:

“Formal lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic should be excluded from the curriculum of younger infants – freedom of movement, constant change of occupation, frequent visits to the playground, and opportunities for sleep are essential.” (Acland, 1908)

What can we learn from Margaret and Rachel McMillan who opened their first open-air nursery school in Deptford in 1914? The McMillans placed importance on health, learning through play and exploration outdoors and partnership with parents.

The 1933 Hadow Report entitled ‘Infant and Nursery Schools’ (Hadow, 1933) is an interesting read containing powerful principles to guide the teaching of ‘nursery’ and ‘infant’ children. It references Froebel, Dewey and Montessori, amongst others. Here are some of its recommendations:

– Nursery children should be encouraged to experiment and explore and should not be expected to perform tasks that require ‘fine work with hands and fingers’.

– The fundamental purpose of the nursery school or class is to reproduce the healthy conditions of a good nursery in a well-managed home, and thus to provide an environment in which the health of the young child – physical, mental and moral – can be safeguarded.

– When children are admitted at the very early age of two years, the school must have even more the character of the home.

– The curriculum is to be thought of in terms of activity and experience rather than of knowledge to be acquired and facts to be stored.

– As far as possible, the child should be put in the position to teach himself, and the knowledge that he is to acquire should come, not so much from an instructor, as from an instructive environment.

– There should be little or no formal instruction before the age of six at the very earliest

John Dewey (1859-1952) promoted learning through exploration, with the teacher as facilitator both in providing the physical environment and supporting children’s journey of discovery within it.

Janice Hale (1948 – 2017) was the founding director of the Institute for the Study of the African American Child. What can we learn and apply in our context from her pioneering work to close the achievement gap affecting African American children?

And of course there are so many other familiar names who have contributed vital and compelling insights to the collective wisdom on the effective care and education of young children. There are also other names of those from different races and cultures across the world, yet to be made known to ‘Western’ audiences. This is surely one way we can strive to know better.

Where are we now?

In 2015, Dr Angela Davis of Warwick University wrote – “For over a hundred years nursery education has suffered from the reluctance of governments of all political persuasions to invest in nursery education. There have been numerous moments when nursery education was expanded or looked set to expand before a retrenchment occurred due to changes in the country’s economic fortune.” (Davis, 2015)

She comments on what was then the issue of the day – plans for increasing funded hours to 30, “Current Conservative government policy seems to be characterised by the desire to increase the number of children attending nursery education, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, but a reluctance to fund it.”

Moving forward to today, Angela’s words are dispiritingly still relevant. Despite warm words, reports, consultations, public rhetoric that Ministers understand the vital importance of the first few years of life and recognise the essential work performed by our sector, there has been and continues to be reluctance to fund early years education and we live with an attainment gap between the most and least disadvantaged children. It is not a political priority. Cheap childcare is seen as an expedient to support women returning to the workforce but there is a failure to really understand the significance of quality early years education and a lack of will to invest in it.

Hopes for the Future

Looking forward, I first reflect on the past and the present. Reading the Hadow Report from the 1930’s, within it there are recommendations based on theory, intuition and observation of practice, that stand the test of time and which are validated by all that we have discovered subsequently. In general, we know what children need in order to thrive. These are the same things our forebears learned for themselves through trial and error and have passed on through the generations. Froebelian practice persists as a model of all that is good in providing for our children’s development needs.

How, in 2022, should we best provide “an environment in which the health of the young child – physical, mental and moral – can be safeguarded?”

How do we inform parents of the importance of early years, when the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood has found in its recent survey (IPSOS, 2022) that just 17% of the public understand the unique importance of the early years relative to other development stages?

How do we overcome successive governments’ reluctance to fund early years sufficiently? Who do we need to convince of the validity of the Heckman curve which “shows the economic benefits of investing early and building skill upon skill to provide greater success to more children and greater productivity and reduce social spending for society.” (Heckman, 2017)?

How do we stem the tide of neoliberalism pushing an ever more developmentally inappropriate formal academic curriculum into the earliest years of education? And how do we overcome the entrenched and widening achievement gap between so-called advantaged and disadvantaged children – whatever the causes are?

How do we reclaim childhood?

In an increasingly uncertain future for successive generations, we must continue to advocate for all our children. I remain an optimist and an activist, confident that there are like-minded people across the World who will stand up to fight for our children’s future, in the knowledge of what is already known. There are so many examples of good practice across continents. It’s time that we take the initiative to create the political will for change, to re-establish the principles that should underpin early years care and education.

Now we know better, we must do better. We owe it to our children.

References:

Acland, A, (1908),’ School Attendance of Children Below the Age of Five’, http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/acland1908/index.html (accessed 17 July 2022)

Davis, A (2015), ‘Nursery Education- a hundred years of expansion and cuts’, https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/expertcomment/nursery_education_150/ (accessed 17 July 2022)

Hadow, W, (1933), ’Infant and Nursery Schools’, http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/hadow1933/hadow1933.html (accessed 20 July 2022)

Heckman J.(2022), ‘The Heckman Curve’, https://heckmanequation.org/resource/theheckman-curve/ (accessed 22 July 2022)

Hirsh-Pasek, K, (2018), ‘Let’s Stop Talking About The 30 Million Word Gap’, https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/06/01/615188051/lets-stop-talking-about-the-30-million-word-gap?t=1658481739988 (accessed 10 July 2022)

IPSOS, (2022),’ Seven in ten people say the early years should be more of a priority for society’, https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/seven-ten-people-say-early-years-should-be-more-priority-society (accessed 22 July 2022)

Scott, W. (2015),’ A short history of early education’, https://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/features/article/eyfs-best-practice-a-short-history-of-early-education (accessed 22 July 2022)