Introduction
Learning science begins with babies looking around, gradually acquiring manipulative skills they can use for a definite action and then play. Learning is gradual and begins with intuitive ideas but is consolidated by noticing a phenomenon, talking about it, and thinking about it again and investigating where appropriate and sharing with someone else. Learning does not occur in a linear manner but in a constructive way, sometimes referred to as a spiral curriculum context, being developed increasingly in more depth (Bruner, 1977). The starting point for science is observation (Sylva et al., 1980). We strive as educators to encourage young children and their associated adults, parents, relatives, other carers and teachers, to share their observations, talk about them and increase their own self-esteem and literacy. Moreover, children are intuitive scientists (Gopnik, 2009).
Children, we now know, need to talk, and to experience a rich diet of spoken language in order to think and learn. Reading, writing and number may be acknowledged as curriculum âbasicsâ but talk is the true foundation for teaching.
(Alexander, 2008, p. 9)
However, when engrossed in activity children do not necessarily talk. Very young children who play do not talk, but they do play and investigate whilst they play. When being involved in imaginative activities, they might tell the story out loud of what, for instance, their Lego figures or toy cars or dolls are doing and provide an oral narrative. On other occasions when they are involved in observations and investigations they often do not talk (Tizard and Hughes, 1984); sometimes they say a statement out loud that is really a hidden question.
Furthermore, it is now accepted that there is an intimate link between language and thought and thus the cognitive development of a child is affected to a considerable extent by the nature, context and forms of language, which s/he hears and uses (Halliday, 1993). We now recognise that play is crucial to the development of a child (Moyles, 1989) and that society should promote awareness of and work to change the attitudes towards play. Whitbread at al. (2012) point out that play is the work of children and essential for intellectual achievement and emotional wellbeing. Learning through experience is developed in both spontaneous and directed play and introducing inquiry-based science fits well into extended play activities progressing to challenges to solve. Play, after all, is often very much problem solving (Moyles, 1989). âJust playingâ, is a phrase that has been used in a derogatory sense by educators, and some parents and other adults, unfamiliar with early years learners. Parents who recollect their own education assume this is how it should be for all as their own usually secondary stage experience means they fail to understand the essential and critical values that link a childâs learning through play.
The starting point for the learning of science and engineering, at this early age, is play. As such these early learners are making observations and asking questions, albeit to themselves and devising their own strategies for eliciting an answer. Such working out by the child is them asking themselves hidden questions even though in the earliest years their thoughts are not verbalised. The only evidence we, as observers, have is we can see the actions of the children, which are thus the expressed model of their science investigation. Moreover, such learning occurs in the immediate environment of the child, in his/her community, with the people with whom s/he spends their time, and begins long before any formal educational interaction. Starting children on their path in learning science as in other subjects is a community endeavour. These places of potential learning are where they live and the immediate environment outside. In these locations children witness everyday activities such as cooking, cleaning, washing, various activities with materials such as textiles, wood, clay, as well as identifying and being involved with basic life processes such as moving, breathing, eating, excreting and the human activities associated with the life processes and beyond. Children are immersed in their environment, including natural structures or built, human constructs such as their village or adjacent areas, which all contain various amounts of technology, maths and science. This can range from a simple cooking vessel being used on an open fire to mobile phones; from natural vegetation to a manicured garden and the everyday non-built areas. Moreover, the natural environment comprises physical, geological and biological matter, and features of this, such as rocks, plants and watercourses, may be observed. Additionally, the culture and particular uses of science and technology by the community with whom the children live are evident and noticed, pointed out by members of the community, for instance, buildings, transport and water sources.
As children acquire early language they begin to label phenomena. This naming is an inherent human need (Bruner, Goodnow and Austin, 1956; Markman, 1989). Additionally, young children ask questions incessantly when given the opportunity (Tough, 1977), a behaviour that often disappears in the formal education environment where class triadic dialogue takes over. In order to talk and express themselves, children will need to know the relevant vocabulary. If they do not know the word they will use the ânearest fitâ. My eldest grandson noticed the reflections of trees on the flat surface of a body of water, across which a boat was passing. He remarked on the shadows of the trees, not knowing the word âreflectionâ. In England a curriculum for the early years is laid out in a government document (DfE, 2012).
