How to Use Work Group Supervision to Improve Early Years Practice

Stella Louis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429589911
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

How to Use Work Group Supervision to Improve Early Years Practice presents a new model for supervision as a collaborative process, and explores how this process can benefit practitioners at all stages in their career to reflect on and improve their own practice. Supported by detailed case studies which contextualise Work Group Supervision, Louis offers practical support which will help practitioners develop their knowledge and skills, and to work together to develop a shared understanding and more successful practice.

Louis covers a range of insightful topics to help practitioners utilise the Work Group Supervision method to improve their practice, including:

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• What Work Group Supervision is and how it can help practitioners

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• How to develop self-understanding and professional practice

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• Theories on child observation, and using observation to tune into children

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• The importance of respectful interactions as a leader and among peers

How to Use Work Group Supervision to Improve Early Years Practice is ideal for Early Years practitioners and teachers, managers of Early Years settings and students on courses for leadership in Early Childhood settings.

1	Theorists of child observations

How do we know how children develop and learn? Why are children so challenging at 2 years old? Why do children need to repeat things? These questions have all been studied by Johann Pestalozzi, Friedrich Froebel, Margaret McMillan, John Dewey, Rudolf Steiner, Maria Montessori, Susan Isaacs, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, John Bowlby, Loris Malaguzzi and Chris Athey. They have given us useful theories about how children develop and learn and have also contributed to our understanding of the subject. These theorists provide educators with a useful framework for encouraging them to reflect upon their own practice – and their ideas are still very relevant today.

Friedrich Froebel’s (1782–1852) contribution to Early Childhood education

Born on 21 April 1782, Friedrich Froebel was a German educator. He studied as an apprentice fosterer where he developed his ideas about nature and children and the importance of engaging in it. In 1799, he first studied mathematics and began teaching at the Anton Gruner school in 1805. Two years later, aged 25, he outlined his desire to open his own school. From 1808–1810, Froebel studied and worked under Johann Pestalozzi in Switzerland.

Pestalozzi believed that education was the key to creating a just society. He developed a whole child approach that focused on “heads, hands and hearts”. However, Froebel believed that spirituality was missing from Pestalozzi’s theory. He eventually abandoned some aspects of Pestalozzi’s approach due to a disagreement over the compartmentalisation of subjects, believing instead that all learning was integrated, as each area of learning affects and influences others. Unlike Pestalozzi, Froebel advocated that learning starts at birth. Froebel was interested in the wholeness and unity in all things and in 1814 spent two years studying crystallography and mineralogy. By 1816, Froebel had founded the Universal German Educational Institute and formed a school in Keilhau. At this school, Froebel introduced worthwhile educational toys which he named gifts and occupations. Drawing on his knowledge of mathematics and crystallography, Froebel developed a set of wooden “gifts”, which he numbered 1–6. Carefully thinking about children’s development and learning, the gifts have a developmental sequence. On their progression and order he says: “I have already intimated that each following play thing is necessarily presupposed in and required by the preceding” (Froebel, 1899:319).

Froebel’s educational toys are:

• Gift 1: Set of multi-coloured yarn balls with strings (for the infant)
• Gift 2: Wooden ball, cylinder and cube (for the 1–2-year-old)
• Gift 3: Set of eight small wooden cubes (blocks) (for the 2–3-year-old)
• Gift 4: Set of eight small wooden planks (blocks) (for the 2–3-year-old)
• Gift 5: Set of wooden blocks that includes cubes, planks and triangles (for the 3–4-year-old)
• Gift 6: Set of more complex wooden blocks that also includes cubes, planks and triangles (for the 4–5-year-old) (Quinn, 2013)

What Froebel calls “occupations” are activities such as peg boards, pin boards, weaving, stick and pea work, sewing, paper folding, chalk and slate work, clay, and tessellations – these offer a variety of activities for helping children to learn. Froebel in Lilley (1967:155) notes:

Singing, drawing, painting and modelling at an early stage must, therefore, be taken into account in any comprehensive scheme of education. The aim is not to make each pupil proficient in one or all of the arts – though in a sense this is true – nor to turn them all into artists, but to enable every person to develop all sides of his nature, while recognising and appreciating true artistic achievement.

Froebel’s philosophy of Early Childhood education is based on four ideas – free self-expression, creativity, social participation and motor expression. Ten years after establishing his school he published his first book, Education of Man (1826). Froebel was invited to open schools in Switzerland in 1831, where he stayed for five years. In 1837, he relocated to Bad Blankenburg in Germany and opened the “play and activity institute”, coining the term kindergarten three years later. In 1849, Froebel began the first training college for women kindergarten teachers. Froebel in Lilley (1967:53) states that the “structure of play needs to be known by adults if it is to be used for educational purposes”. Froebel believes that the learning of infants and young children should be focused around play and their interests. He notes that “a child’s play is his work … because the child learns easily through play it must not be left to chance but has to be an integral part of the curriculum”. He also believes that observation of infants from birth is important, again in Lilley (1967:75): “The feeling with which a child is first welcomed should surround him always and should lead to careful observation of the way in which he develops and expresses his thought.” He considered observation of children’s self-activity to be a fundamental part of practice.

However, Froebel felt an important contribution to Early Childhood education is that of the Mother Songs, a book containing 50 songs, each providing guidance for parents on exercises to do with children, plus a symbolic introduction to the abstract values in life. Each song is printed on one page surrounded by pictures illustrating the song in different ways. A pair of hands at the top of the page shows the hand or finger exercise which accompanies the song. In essence, Froebel aims to introduce physical play between mother and child, knowledge about the surrounding world and symbolic meanings of life.

He also recognises the central role of children’s first-hand experience, as well as play, families, communication and language; understanding that children are mutually symbol producers and symbol users; their need for movement; and engagement with nature and outdoor learning (Bruce, 2011). Froebel also understands the importance of allowing children the freedom to discover things for themselves and not to discourage them from doing something – even if adults think that it might not be safe, such as climbing trees.

Bruce (1987, 2011) articulates the Froebelian principles as:

• Childhood is part of life, and not simply preparation for it
• The whole child is considered to be important. Health – physical and mental – is emphasised as well as the importance of feelings, relationships, thinking and spiritual aspects
• Learning is not compartmentalised, for everything links
• Intrinsic motivation, resulting in child-initiated and self-directed activity, is valued
• Self-discipline is emphasised
• There are especially receptive periods of learning and sequences of development
• What children can do (rather than what they cannot do) is the starting point for the child’s education
• There is an inner life of the child, which emerges under favourable conditions, such as pretending and imagination through play
• The people (both adults and children) with whom the child interacts are of central importance
• The child’s education is seen as an interaction between the child and the environment, including the physical, material, other people and knowledge itself

These principles are universal and can be applied to any curriculum framework that supports holistic development and learning.

Susan Isaacs’ contribution to Early Childhood education

In 1924, aged 38, Susan Isaacs replied to an advert in the New Statesman for a teacher/researcher. Geoffrey Pyke, a wealthy businessman of the day, had placed the advertisement as he wanted to open a school for his son to attend which was free from rules and one that ensured children were learning in a natural environment. Isaacs (1885–1948), an infant teacher, researcher and trained psychoanalyst, was appointed to run the Malting House School in Cambridge, from 1924–1927. Influenced by Froebel’s theory on active learning and John Dewey’s (1859–1952) emphasis on social interaction, Isaacs believed a natural environment to be the starting point of any child’s education.

Susan Isaacs was one of the first educators to use psychoanalytic methods of observation and theoretical analysis in nursery education. Her progressive and modern ideas could be described as being ahead of her time. Her major contribution to Early Years education is a systematic and methodical record-keeping system for gathering qualitative and naturalistic data about children’s development. Her psychoanalytic background deeply influenced the observational techniques that underpin much of her work (Graham, 2009). Isaacs’ (1952:70) theory is based on three principles – attention to details, observation of context and study of genetic continuity. One of her techniques was to present her staff with the observations of children separately from her analysis and interpretations of each child’s social development or intellectual growth. This provided her staff with an opportunity and permission to tap into their values and beliefs and to consider their own interpretation before reading and discussing Isaacs’ thoughts. Along with her team, Isaacs (1933:5) tried to capture the entire behaviour of the children. The following ongoing observations by Isaacs (1930:182–183), carried out over three days, capture the children’s social and cognitive development, particularly illuminating their continuous learning and how the past affects the children’s current interests and preoccupations.

• 13.07.25: Some of the children call out that the rabbit was ill and dying. They found it in the summer-house, hardly able to move. They were very sorry and talked much about it. They shut it up in the hutch and gave it warm milk. Throughout the morning they kept looking at it; they thought it was getting better, and said it was “not dying to-day”.
• 14.07.25: The rabbit had died in the night. Dan found it and said, “It’s dead – its tummy does not move up and down now.” Paul said, “My daddy says that if we put it into water, it will get alive again.” Mrs I said, “Shall we do so and see?” They put it into a bath of water. Some of them said, “It’s alive.” Duncan said, “If it floats, it’s dead, and if it sinks, it’s alive.” It floated on the surface. One of them said, “It’s alive, because it is moving.” This was a circular movement, due to the currents in the water. Mrs I therefore put in a small stick, which also moved round and round, and they agreed that the stick was not alive. They then suggested that they should bury the rabbit, and all helped to dig a hole and bury it. Later on, seeing the puppy lying on the grass in the sun, Duncan called out for fun, “Oh, the puppy is dead!” All the children went to see it and laughed heartily when the puppy got up and ran at them.
• 15.07.25: Frank and Duncan talked of digging the rabbit up, but Frank said, “It’s not there – it’s gone, it’s up in the sky.” They began to dig, but tired of it, and ran off to something else. Later, they came back, and dug again. Duncan, however, said, “Don’t bother – it’s gone, it’s up in the sky” and gave up digging. Mrs I therefore said, “Shall we see if it is there?” and also dug. They found the rabbit and were very interested to see it still there. Duncan said, “Shall we cut its head off?” They reburied it.

The sheer breadth and depth of Isaacs’ observations provide a fascinating and compelling insight into children’s never-ending quest to make sense of their world (Abbott & Nutbrown, 2001). For this reason, her work resonates well with the types of ongoing observations that practitioners are expected to gather, based on their first-hand study of young children in action. Over time these create continuous formative observations, revealing children’s thoughts and feelings. Many of Isaacs’ theoretical methods of observation and data analysis in a child-centred approach have become embedded in the foundations of Early Childhood education (Drummond, 2003; Nutbrown, 2011).

The Malting House School

An underlying principle of the experimental school at which she was employed was to allow children freedom to use their playthings in their own way – much value was placed on play that was free and based on the child’s own interpretation of his or her experience. However, Isaacs was deeply interested in how children apply knowledge that they already possess to new situations. Her main interest was in the analysis of children’s scientific thinking and understanding. Drawing from a range of methodologies and disciplinary approaches, which included clinical studies and analytic techniques, she pioneered a child-centred approach on engaging with children. Isaacs meticulously recorded the details of children’s investigations, explorations, trials and errors and analysed how they showed their feelings, expressed themselves, followed through on their own interests and questioned the what, why and how in all aspects of their development. Isaacs used Freud’s term “super-ego” to stand for the uncompromising need for self-expression displayed by the children in her care. In an attempt to understand the whole child, her work focused on observing children in group care situations, made over time and in a range of contexts, using a theoretical frame she devised (1930:52) to help classify her observations.

• 1. Application of knowledge
• A.1. Formal and theoretical application
• 2. Imaginative and hypothetical application
• 3. Make-believe and dramatised knowledge
• 4. Comparisons and analogies
• B. Practical insight and resources
• 11. Increase of knowledge: problems and experiment, observation and discovery
• 111. Social interchanges of knowledge
• A. “Whys”, “becauses” and other logical questions and reasoning
• B. Discussions: corrections and self-corrections
• 1V. Miscellaneous

Isaacs recognises that these broad types of cognitive activity overlap – that many of her formative observations are difficult to assign to any one form and that this is psychologically significant. Children’s cognitive behaviour is not considered as “a set of single unit acts of relation-findings, but as a complex series of adaptive reactions and reflections”.

Through her detailed observational notes, she builds up a picture of the whole child and shows a thorough acknowledgement of the importance of the emotional and social development of each individual. Cognitive development also becomes an important factor in her work. Her observational work is illustrated in two books – Intellectual Growth in Young Children (1930) and Social Development in Young Children (1933). Her work is systematic and methodical and explores children’s relationships with their peers and adults, their emotional, social, physical and intellectual development, their interests and attitudes to learning, and their skills and understanding. Their individual ability to solve problems independently ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• About this book
• Introduction
• 1. Theorists of child observations
• 2. The role of the Early Years educator and observation
• 3. What do we see when children play?
• 4. Schemas: The key to patterns of behaviour
• 5. What is supervision?
• 6. Implementing Work Group Supervision and bringing observational practice into focus using Work Group Supervision
• 7. Group consultation
• 8. Work Group Supervision in practice: Developing pedagogy, self-understanding and teamwork
• 9. Using observation to tune into children – and its challenges
• 10. Respectful interactions are everything
• 11. Developing professional practice through Work Group Supervision
• Index