The Characteristics of Effective Learning

Creating and capturing the possibilities in the early years

Annie Woods

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317618737
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

The characteristics of effective learning – playing and exploring, active learning and creating and thinking critically – underpin young children's learning and development and are central to the revised Early Years Foundation Stage. Practitioners need to be confident of planning, observing and assessing characteristics of effective learners and understand how they support children's learning and development.

The book explores what the characteristics of effective learning look like and how practitioners can create opportunities for children to express them. It considers the ways in which they connect with children's natural explorations, play, enjoyement and the environments created by adults. Throughout the focus is on building on children's own interests as practitioners plan for, observe and assess playing and exploring, active learning and creativity and critical thinking.

Including encounters from authentic settings and provocative questions for reflective practice, the book covers:

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• children's well-being and motivations

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• creating effective learning possibilities for all children

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• engaging children's interests

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• the role of the adult and environment

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• sustained shared thinking

This timely new text aims to help practitioners and students develop their understanding of the charactersitics of effective learning and show them how they can support young children in become effective and motivated learners.

Chapter 1 Children are naturally playful

10.4324/9781315752631-2

Vicky McEwan

In this chapter, we will explore child development through children’s everyday play encounters with people, places and things, and begin to consider play in the womb and continue using encounters of children as they grow and develop. Although this book is not intended as a child development text, it is essential we read the following chapters with an understanding of children’s development, using a range of key theories and scientific understanding of the development of the body and the brain as a lens through which to understand children’s playful learning and the characteristics of effective learning.

Pre-natal play

Forbes (2004) suggests that babies begin to play in the womb, and scans of the foetus show how early babies appear to play. The encounter below supports Forbes’ thinking.

Encounter: the 20-week scan

An expectant mother is being scanned at 20 weeks. As the image comes to life on screen, the baby is seen to extend her arms above her head and then move down as if on a slide; this action is repeated several times, and the baby appears to be playing, stretching her arms and legs before sliding down to bended knees and arms at the sides.

This encounter demonstrates the playful nature of foetuses as they explore their body and movement in their environment, the womb. Children are observed to be naturally playful from birth; from only moments old, a young baby will look at and focus on the mother’s face and will make attempts to copy her facial movements (Murray and Andrews, 2000). These early encounters with people demonstrate how the human species is pre-programmed to interact in order to both survive and to develop; the second encounter highlights these amazing capabilities from a newborn baby.

Encounter: the new arrival

In a busy labour ward, a new baby has just been born. She lies cradled in her mother’s arms, next to her mother’s skin; the baby turns her head towards her mother and begins to root, searching for her first feed; she finds the nipple and grasps it, sucking hard. After a few moments of sucking, she releases and looks up towards her mother’s face; she looks intently as her mother speaks to the midwife and then, as the conversation ends and her mother falls silent, she turns her face towards the breast and begins to root again.

This early encounter in the first few moments of life shows us some of the very early learning that has already taken place in the womb. The rooting reflex is essential for survival: babies need to latch on to be fed, and the baby has been practising this skill in the womb. At around 25 weeks, in the womb, a baby’s hand co-ordination allows them to bring their hand to their face; at this stage, the face and lips are an area of high sensitivity and provide the baby with an early sensory experience (Blott, 2009). The mouth continues to be the tool the baby uses to explore for many months to come, both inside and outside the womb. In the human foetus:

The first region … [to develop] is the part that will represent the mouth and tongue in the motor and sematosensory areas of the brain. The cortex then goes on to develop in concentric zones outward from this core region.

(Goddard Blythe, 2005: 51)

We can see that this early rooting is not only associated with the primitive need for food for survival, but is a key tool in a baby’s explorations of the world, both inside and outside the womb.

This encounter also shows us how a newborn baby is able to tune in to sounds that are familiar, as the baby stopped sucking to look at her mother who was speaking. The baby has heard her mother’s voice for many months in the womb, and it is a very familiar sound to her. The human foetus can hear from about 24–26 weeks, as the fluid that surrounds the baby in the womb allows sound to pass to the baby from the outside world, although the sounds they hear may be slightly different, because of the fluid and tissue that have surrounded them. The fluid and tissue only allow lower frequencies to be passed through, and, therefore, babies are unable to hear higher-pitched sounds. Although not all sounds are fully heard, babies in the womb still respond to sound, and mothers often report that the baby will move suddenly in response to a loud noise; ultrasound scans also show the foetus will give a ‘blink-startle’ response to a sudden loud noise (Blott, 2009). Research has also shown how babies as young as 4 days old respond to the language spoken by their mother, which has surrounded them in the womb, above other languages. Karmiloff and Karmiloff-Smith (2001) cite a study by French researchers who found that babies sucked harder when hearing French voices over Russian voices, but that there was no change in their sucking pattern or rate when they heard Russian and then English voices.

Early language

If we look at the second encounter, we can see many of the characteristics of effective early learning being displayed when the baby is only moments old. This baby was showing an interest in people, in this instance her mother, as she stopped sucking and turned to listen; she also used her senses to explore as she rooted; both of these are key elements of playing and exploring.

This next encounter also focuses on hearing, along with the connection between hearing and production of sound.

Encounter: Twinkle, twinkle … all join in!

At bedtime, two siblings are settling down for sleep; one is aged 3, the other only 4 months. The 3-year-old is in bed and requests the mother to sing a well-known song; the mother is feeding the 4-month-old in a chair by the bed. The mother begins to sing ‘Twinkle, twinkle’, and the 3-year-old joins in with her; after the first few lines, the baby stops sucking and drops away from the breast; she listens and then begins to make vocal sounds, as if joining in with the familiar song. The sounds the baby makes are like a little melody and vary in pitch. Once the singing is finished, after ‘Twinkle, twinkle’ has been sung through three times, the baby stops her melody of cooing sounds and returns to feed. The older child comments, ‘Oh that was good, we all joined in, she can sing now, soon she will be able to talk too.’

From birth, babies communicate by crying, making eye contact and bodily movements; for example, a baby who is very distressed will not only cry but will kick their legs and wave their arms, to show just how cross and distressed they are, whereas a baby who wants to be picked up will cry and look towards the caregiver, trying to catch her attention. Carers of young babies are able to recognise the different cries their baby makes and what they are trying to communicate through their cry. Babies will coo (produce a sound) at about 3 months and babble (repeating the same sounds) at about 6 months. Chomsky (1965) suggested that children are born with a language acquisition device, meaning we are pre-wired to learn language patterns and grammar; however, Bruner (1983) believed that language is developed as a consequence of the social and emotional relationships we have with those closest to us, our main caregivers and siblings.

This encounter links together hearing and the production of sound, as the baby responded verbally to what she heard. Her communication of sound was meaningful: she was clearly joining in with the singing, a song she had heard many times, previously as a member of the audience, but this time she was a participant. This was acknowledged by the older child as she commented on her sister’s sound production as joining in and the precursor to talking. The use of the voice for sound production during children’s play and encounters is essential in developing orientation of sound, attention, sound discrimination and memory (Goddard Blyth, 2005), but it is also about the need to communicate, to develop a voice, to be part of a group and to share encounters. Murray and Andrews (2000) demonstrate how young babies soon show a preference for the people who are connected and familiar to them, and that they do not just want to spend time with them and be physically close, but they want to interact and share experiences.

This encounter illustrates the coming together of all this theoretical under-standing: developmentally, the baby was cooing and moving into babbling, and she chose to demonstrate this new-found voice by interacting with those to whom she is emotionally connected at a time of day when everyone was calm and relaxed and there were no external distractions.

Heuristic play

Looking at the characteristics of effective learning, we can see many elements of playing and exploring here, in this third encounter. The young baby was involved in a new experience and showing an interest in the activity going on around her. We can also see elements of active learning, as she maintained her focus until the singing had stopped.

Encounter: playing with treasures

Thomas is a baby of 8 months old and he can sit unsupported. He is sitting with a treasure basket containing various objects, such as a shell, a metal whisk, wooden balls, keys, corks, wicker coaster, etc. His childminder sits close by, observing his play. Thomas picks up a few items and quickly discards them, putting them at the side of the basket; he then tries to pick up the shell, but it is too heavy; he looks towards his childminder, who smiles her encouragement, and he tries again, but it just rolls over. He then turns his attention to the metal whisk: he picks it up and brings it to his mouth, pulls it out, looks at it and then puts it back in his mouth. He drops it, and it makes a noise as it hits a metal dish he has already taken out of the basket; he smiles and picks up the whisk and bangs it on various items at random; he smiles when the whisk connects with an item that makes a noise. He then brings the whisk once again to his mouth, mouthing it while looking around. He then turns his attention to other objects and, as he picks out a wooden ball, it rolls away. He tracks it with his eyes and then looks towards his childminder and makes a grunt; she acknowledges his sound by saying, ‘Oh did it roll away, didn’t you want that to roll?’ He then picks out the whisk once again and continues to explore it in his mouth and by turning it in his hands. After several more minutes’ play, he starts to rub his eyes and make a whining sound. This signals that he has finished, and his childminder acknowledges this and picks him up.

We can relate this encounter to the second encounter in this chapter, as Thomas is using his mouth to explore, just as the baby does during rooting and feeding. As Thomas uses his mouth and other senses to explore the objects during his play, messages are sent to his brain. Young children’s brains are unfinished at birth and are very malleable, and, therefore, it is essential they have rich learning and development opportunities in secure, safe relationships to allow the brain to reach its full potential. The messages that flood the brain from sensory activities allow cells to signal to one another, strengthening the neural pathways in the brain (Gopnik et al., 1999). The more the pathways are used, the stronger they get. This process of connection between the cells is called a synapse; synapses are essential in wiring up or connecting the brain, and those connections that are not used will be pruned away. In this encounter, we can see the potential to support healthy brain development, through the baby’s interaction with people – his childminder – and things – the objects in the basket. Thomas is clearly connected to his childminder: she acknowledges his cues and responds to him, and this relationship provides him with a safe place to explore his treasure basket. The materials in the basket provide Thomas with a variety of sensory explorations as he creates sound, turns objects to examine what they look and feel like and discovers properties such as heavy and light. Robinson (2008) cites a 2003 study by Nielsen that explains how a young baby, between 4 and 8 months, learns about the existence of objects through their early explorations, which provide them with sensory feedback. We have already discussed how babies in the womb obtain sensory feedback as they bring their hands to their face and lips; this sensory feedback continues to be a vital tool in children’s learning about themselves and their world. The key here is repetition, as demonstrated by Thomas returning over and over again to the whisk; he explores it in a range of ways, mouthing it, moving it, looking at it and feeling it, giving him a sense of that object and how it differs from the other objects in his basket. He also begins to use it for a purpose, when he recognises it makes a sound and then repeats the banging action. Using objects for a purpose, Nielson (ibid.) suggests, emerges at between 6 and 15 months. Thomas, at 8 months, is just starting to understand this concept.

We also see Thomas tracking objects here, as the ball rolls away from him and he follows it with his eyes. Babies generally begin to track a moving object from about 3 months old; at 8 months, Thomas has the ability to see objects that are further away, allowing him to track the ball as it rolls some distance. This becomes a great motivation for movement as he develops crawling to retrieve the ball.

Relationships with people, places and things

In the second and third encounters, we see how very young babies are interested in others and are capable of forming close relationships; in the second encounter, we clearly see how a baby of 4 months is able to participate in an activity and enjoy being together. In the third encounter, we see Thomas grunt to gain the attention of his caregiver, who in turn acknowledges and verbalises what has happened. Manning-Morton and Thorpe (2001) identify important aspects of the key person’s relationship, which includes providing a safe base by being both physically and emotionally available, interacting with words and acknowledging babies’ feelings. The relationship Thomas has allows him to feel secure enough to explore independently for a sustained amount of time, allowing him to reach high levels of involvement in his activity (Laevers, 1994), which in turn provides him with the opportunity to gain more sensory feedback from the objects in the basket that have captured his curiosity.

In considering the characteristics of effective learning, we can see elements of all three here. First, playing and exploring, finding out and exploring: Thomas is curious about the objects, he uses his senses to explore in an open-ended way and he shows interest for one object over the others. Second, active learning – being involved and concentrating: Thomas maintains his focus for a sustained period of time; he is fascinated and involved. Finally, creating and thinking critically – making links: Thomas notices that some things he bangs the whisk on make a noise, whereas others do not; his smiling te...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction—ANNIE WOODS
• 1 Children are naturally playful—VICKY McEWAN
• 2 Exploring children’s well-being and motivations—LORNA WARDLE AND SHARON VESTY
• 3 Creating effective learning possibilities for all children—VAL HALL
• 4 Children’s engaging interests—ANNIE WOODS
• 5 Playing with thinking—CATHERINE GRIPTON
• 6 Guiding children’s participation—ANNIE WOODS
• 7 Sustained shared conversations—VICTORIA BROWN
• 8 Capturing the possibilities—MOIRA MORAN
• Index