TACTYC Conference, 2014

Our Our nets define what we catch?Learning in early childhood

Kathy HallUniversity College Cork

Plan of Presentation

• Hallmarks of ECCE: sociocultural nets

• Policy nets: early c/h curriculum, pedagogy & assessment

• A ‘new’ net: neuroscience• Critical questions for the field

Hallmarks of ECCE: sociocultural nets

1. Historical: ECCE as pioneering2. Nurturing children: a moral and ethical

objective in its own right; ECCE3. Experience & Relationships: opp to learn4. Engagement and Creativity5. Active participation in own development6. Minimal hierarchy: democratic processes7. Still individually-oriented assessment

practices

ECCEECCEExperienceExperience

Family /Family /Community andCommunity andCultural BridgingCultural Bridging

PersonalPersonalMeaningMeaning

IdentityIdentityActive

Participation

What childrenbring

Agency

Intentionality/Negotiation

ECCE: sociocultural nets

Policy nets mediating ECCE: Economic value a global trend?

1. Learning outcomes , audits, testing, comparing, readiness: the universal, typical child?

2. Individualisation: independent of setting

3. Convergence in ECCE internationally- curriculum, assessment

4. WSEs/Self evaluation: transparency, accountability, quality enhancement

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Policy nets mediating ECCE and becoming conditions for children’s learning and

development

• A hierarchy of knowledge and children as future workers: maths

• Devaluing of play and informal learning: rush to early maths and literacy

• Devaluing of arts and PE• Growing emphasis on children as consumers

and users with rights: being good choosers6

Shift from home as ideal to school/daycare as site of socialisation

‘In Norwegian policy documents on ECCE the metaphor of bazaar is used to argue for the need for a new architecture related to the institutional building. … The new kindergarten has special rooms designed for specific learning activities. This is described as providing the children with possibilities to choose activities such as buying goods at a market. …As part of the new pedagogical practices, a ‘Children’s Meeting’ with large groups of children (40) aged 2-5 is arranged everyday in order for children to decide what they want to do for the next couple of hours. This is an example of children’s rights to participation, interpreted as individual freedom of choice from the age of 2’ (Kjorholt, 2013, p248-9)

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Policy nets mediating ECCE: children as capital, investment in chn

1. OECD’s ‘Starting Strong’ refers to how starting early offers the highest rates of return and says learning starts at birth

2. Schoolification: earlier and earlier3. Shift from family to state4. To guarantee returns on investment

requires high levels of monitoring

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‘Early is forever’‘The instrument assesses children’s learning in 5 domains of early

learning and sorts children into 3 categories: ‘appropriate development’, ‘experiencing some difficulty’, and ‘evidence of significant difficulty’. Each category is represented by a colored square, green for ‘appropriate development’, yellow for ‘experiencing some difficulty’ and red for ‘evidence of significant difficulty’. This traffic light metaphor appears to be intentional as children who receive a red square are certainly stopped before they ever start school while the green square indicates ‘good to go’. After taking the [screening test] families are sent a Report ... coding their child as green, yellow and red ‘lights’, which on the basis of this approximately 30-minute screening, indicates whether they are in need of intervention prior to school… Programs are available in June for those children needing ‘intensive intervention’, i.e. those scoring in the ‘evidence of significant difficulty’ category....And the downward pressure for an even earlier start is on. (Hunt and Nason, 2012, p158)

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Early Years Foundation Stage Profile Handbook (STA, Oct. 2014)

The judgment must say whether the child’s learning and development is:

• best described by the level of development expected at the end of the EYFS (expected)

• not yet at the level of development expected at the end of the EYFS (emerging)

• beyond the level of development expected at the end of the EYFS (exceeding)

What ECCE is and is for

1 adaptation & adjustment?2 The early years child as a ‘consumer

in waiting’ (Woodrow et al, 2008)3 What do we mean by self-

regulation?4 The pedagogized home (Stephen

Ball)

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Enter the Brain: a new net

‘Neuro-imaging is a tool to see inside and provide a sense of the self’ (Immordino-Yang, AERA, 2013)

‘Neuroscience is perfectly positioned as a discipline not only to help explain why we are as we are, but to explore how we might change and be changed’ (Greenfield, 2008, p x Preface)

The Brain Activity Map(Obama’s Presidency)

• 10-year scientific project to examine the brain and ‘build a comprehensive map of its activity’ (Obama, 2013)

• Goal is to map the human brain with initial funding of 100 m US$

• 3 billion US$ to be triggered over the next 10 years

• Changes in how science is practised and indeed what science is funded

• Humanities globally declining?

Deterministic nature of the early years?‘The early years of a child’s life – when the human brain is forming – represent a critically important window of opportunity to develop a child’s full potential’ (Obama, 2013)

Brain is now everyday!

Hall, K., Curtin, A. and Rutherford, V. (2014) Networks of Mind: learning, culture, neuroscience London: Routledge

How NS influences Early Childhood

• Conception to Age Two: the age of opportunity (DfE, 2013)

• Supporting Families in the Foundation Years (DfE, 2011)

• Families in the Foundation Years: evidence pack (DfE, 2011)

• Early Intervention: next steps (2011)• The Foundation Years: preventing poor

children becoming poor adults (2010)

Conception to Age Two: the age of opportunity (DfE, 2013)

‘At a universal level and across the early years workforce, promote an awareness of: the importance of the parent/baby relationship and how this will influence the baby’s brain development’(para21)‘Good quality relationships and secure attachment enable a growing brain to become socially efficient ‘ (para44)

Early Intervention: the next steps

2011 HM Government

Early Intervention: the next steps(Graham Allen MP)

In Chapter 2, I examine the phenomenal growth of children’s brains in the first years of life, and show how this creates exceptional opportunities, especially for mothers, to provide children with the social and emotional foundations that are key to personal development and achievement and the best single way to tackle inter-generational dysfunction.

The Foundation Years: preventing poor children becoming poor adults (2010)

• Frank Field MP says by the age of 3 a baby’s brain is 80% formed and his or her experiences before then shape the way the brain has grown and developed’

• Independent review on poverty and life chances

Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science (OECD, 2007)

Can neuroscience truly improve education? This report suggests a complex, but nonetheless definite answer; “yes, but....

OECD, 2007: 21

Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science (OECD, 2007)

In the early life period, interactions and experiences determine whether a child’s brain architecture provides a strong or a weak foundation for their future health, wellbeing and development.OECD (2007)

A Prescription for Learning: inclusions and exclusions

• Educational neuroscience is generating valuable new knowledge to inform educational policy and practice

• Neuroscientific insights can be employed to contribute to our understanding of learning disorders such as dyslexia, dyscalculia and dementia.

• Key areas identified for further research include the “better understanding of such matters as the optimal timing for different forms of learning, emotional development and regulation, how specific materials and environments shape learning, and the continued analysis of language and mathematics in the brain” OECD, 2007: 6 which “would, if realised, be well on the way to the birth of a trans-disciplinary learning science” OECD, 2007: 6 • Absence of insights and research from other lines of inquiry: SCT and even developmental psychology

Social and Cultural Neuroscience

• Human brain fundamentally a social brain adapted for social learning, interaction and transmission of culture

• But the social is not homogenous or static: scientists, labs, media, agencies, governments, pharmaindustry etc.

• Where attention is focussed

What view of culture and social?

• Stable and shared• Group and geographically based• Can be established by questionnaires • Can be measured and represented as brain

images of activation: fMRI• Promissory nature of SNS and CNS: scans as

matters of fact and ‘types of brains’

Colonization and the potential demise of a SCT/ECCE net

• CN in its infancy but…• Explaining the allure: an exact, all

encompassing science• Authority of NS and how it speaks to us• What can be ignored and allowed fall

out of the account?• Only some of the social world gets

represented in the brain’s networks

Implications for the ECCE community: check the nets!

• Build better alliances, new partnerships across research and practice?

• What sets of relations, whose voices?• What has to be explained: what the brain

does or what the person does?• What kind of person is it possible to become?

What is available to be learned?• How do the nets mediate what people do?• Avoid excessive enthusiasm and excessive

skepticism

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