Flourishing in the Early Years

Contexts, practices and futures

Zenna Kingdon, Jan Gourd, Michael Gasper

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317555056
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

If young children are to flourish and become happy, confident and motivated learners, they need to develop in an environment that gives them the opportunities and freedom to play and learn, along with the support of parents and practitioners who are flourishing themselves.

This invaluable text looks at the conditions that enable all those engaged in the early years sector to flourish, covering themes such as the outdoor environment, the curriculum, parent partnership, equality and ethical practice. Divided into three sections, each part covers:

• Concepts: A consideration of how flourishing is framed by political, historical and policy frameworks.
• Practices: Exploring the issues that early years practitioners are faced with when engaging with parents and multi-agent professionals within their setting.
• Futures: Examining some of the long-term issues that may need to be revisited on a regular basis to enable continual and flourishing development to occur.

With key points and reflective tasks, this book will be valuable reading to all students and practitioners working in the early childhood education and care sector who want to ensure that the children in their care are given the best possible start in life.

PART
1 Concepts

CHAPTER
1 The conceptualisation of flourishing

Zenna Kingdon and Jan Gourd

Introduction

In our last book we looked at how early years policy contributed to flourishing in the early years. Previously we based our conceptualisation of flourishing on Seligman’s PERMA. While this suited our purpose at the time, the aim of this book and this first chapter is to further explore how flourishing is conceptualised more broadly in the early years context. The linkages between flourishing, well-being, happiness and pleasure form the basis of this chapter. We will firstly look at a number of theories of flourishing and a number of theorists who do not necessarily discuss flourishing but its constituent attributes including happiness, resilience, self-esteem, interpersonal relationships and values. We then seek to relate each of those to common early years themes.

We open with a discussion of the notion of the theoretical foundations of flourishing. This includes a consideration of flourishing in the contexts of classical philosophy utilising the work of Aristotle. We then consider flourishing in terms of learning theory drawing on the work of Margaret McMillan and finally we consider flourishing through the lens of positive psychology examining the work of Seligman.

We move on to consider flourishing and well-being and the interrelatedness of these two concepts with a particular focus on mental health. We recognise that in order for individuals to enjoy good mental health particular conditions need to be in place. These are often also related to attachment theory (Bowlby and Ainsworth 1991), recognising that children need to be enabled to develop effective relationships with those around them in order to be able to flourish.

In looking at flourishing we then consider aspects of happiness as a significant contributory factor to long-term flourishing. Moments of happiness, however, do not necessarily lead to flourishing. Flourishing comes from values and relationships developed and deepened over time, which develop and strengthen the receptive capacities of the brain that enable an individual to respond appropriately and emotionally to life events. We investigate the emerging relationship between flourishing and neuroscience.

Greishaber (2008) and Murris (2013) provide challenge to some of the current educational practices in which there is a focus on norms and expected ways of developing and achieving, often at the detriment of other aspects of being that are linked to flourishing. Current educational practices are often focused on outcomes and achievements in the short term rather than on long-term activities that will support the flourishing of the individual child. These concerns are investigated in order that we can consider alternative educational practices that may support the development of flourishing.

Much of the developmental psychological approaches to education focus on a becomings model. More recently, sociology of early childhood has developed an integrated model in which children are seen as both beings and becomings. Cross (2011) takes this a stage further by integrating three selves: beings, becomings and having beens. This model is considered and its relevance to flourishing is explored.

Recent iterations of flow suggest that creative pedagogies that offer opportunities for self-direction and agency within stimulating environments maximise the opportunities for the development of flow within play. Subsequently, they influence the happy ethos of the childcare environment. We conclude by discussing the necessity to establish a positive ethos within all early childcare settings.

Foundations of flourishing: Aristotle, McMillan and Seligman

In considering flourishing in all its forms it is essential to try to establish the development of flourishing as the concept with which we are now familiar. In doing so we look back as far as the Ancient Greeks who were concerned with philosophical concerns of epistemology, the notion of how we develop knowledge and understanding and ethics, the notion that actions and pursuits should be moral and in the quest of some good (Aristotle 1925). He (ibid. 1925, p. 1) states that, ‘every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good.’ Noddings (2012) suggests that almost all of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics were concerned with the good life – something that we can directly relate to the notions of flourishing. Watson et al. (2012) equally suggest that Aristotle was concerned with what constitutes happiness and well living. Aristotle (1925, p. 11) states that in seeking good in one’s life, ‘we call that which is in itself worthy of pursuit more final than that which is worthy of pursuit for the sake of something else.’ He argued that that something was happiness. He (ibid., p. 15) goes on to suggest that, ‘the happy man lives well’ Noddings (p. 152) further argues that Aristotle was concerned with seeking a better way than those that had come before, saying that, ‘human beings are persistently seeking better ways than their ancestors’. She (p. 156) suggests that one of the strengths of Aristotle was that he sought to consider questions of everyday life and therefore had relevance for all, he did not, ‘confine his philosophy to the analysis of abstruse language or the elaboration of a formal system’. Aristotle was concerned with the ethics of virtue in which individuals were concerned with the conduct of their everyday lives and the ways in which moral education should be developed.

Aristotle was not without his critics given that he argued in favour of a system that supported slavery and infanticide (Noddings 2012; Singer 1993). He supported the leaving of deformed newly born infants on mountainsides to die, suggesting this as a natural and humane solution for such sick and deformed babies (Singer 1993). He equally defended slavery because he felt that it was an essential element of a well-run society (Noddings 2012).

Despite these concerns it would seem that Aristotle is enjoying a renaissance and the ideas contained within his work are being used to support aspects of moral education including, citizenship, social and emotional learning, character education and positive psychology, the last being where current notions of flourishing are being developed (Kristjansson 2013). Kristjansson explores why Aristotle’s philosophy is enjoying such resurgence and how it links with current concerns about flourishing and the good life. He (ibid. 2013, p. 51) suggests that many theorists have now, ‘returned to the common-sense paradigm of the flourishing child, in Aristotle, where the simple and easily observable truths of the matter lie.’ He (ibid. 2013) goes on to suggest that Aristotle’s approach is appealing in that it addresses both human flourishing and a universal approach in which it is not possible to develop one’s own virtues without at the same time benefitting others. Watson et al. (2012) support this idea suggesting that Aristotle introduced notions of morality and virtue from which value judgements needed to be made. Likewise, Noddings (2012) suggests that Aristotle addressed questions that concerned everyone and everyday life, his philosophy was therefore for everyone. Hence Aristotle’s approach depends on an interrelated society in which happiness and flow occur as a result of individuals’ happiness, well-being and pleasure.

■ Aristotle’s work is seen as common sense and it is for this reason it is enjoying a resurgence.

■ Aristotle considered questions about everyday life and living well.

Margaret McMillan

Like Aristotle, McMillan can be considered to be having a renaissance and that her work has underpinned much of what is currently considered to be important in early years policy and practice. There are clear links between her concerns around diet and outdoor provision and aspects of the EYFS (DfE 2012). Margaret McMillan can be considered to be deeply concerned with flourishing, demonstrating concerns with children’s ‘physical, mental and moral well-being’ (Read 2011, p. 423). Margaret was a Christian Socialist who became a member of the Independent Labour Party where her views were taken forward as the views of the party, focusing on the promotion of nursery education particularly for the children of the poor (Brehony 2009). In her early career she worked with older and privileged children, however, Du Charme (1992) suggests that having been influenced by a Russian revolutionary she became interested in the plight of the poor. From then on her career was spent firstly in Bradford and later in London concentrating on the children who were growing up in slum situations considering how their lives could be improved (Giardiello 2013). In Bradford she was elected as the ILP member of the school board, where she worked closely with Dr James Kerr, the School Medical Officer. She became interested in the physiology of growth. She campaigned for improved ventilation in schools, for correct breathing to be taught, for school baths and for the provision of wholesome school dinners (Bradburn 1989).

In 1897, the first school in Bradford had its own swimming bath and 12 slipper baths were seen. McMillan was concerned about how the childrens’ opportunities to get clean, something that her research allowed her to understand, impacted on children’s health and well-being (Bradburn 1989). On returning to London McMillan concerned herself with the development of outdoor nurseries and night camps for children in Stowage Deptford where the children were once again living in extreme poverty.

To let them live at last and have the sight of people planting and digging, to let them run and work and experiment, sleep, have regular meals, the sights and sounds of winter and spring, autumn and summer . . . to get these things we sacrificed everything else.

(McMillan 1919 cited in Bradburn 1989, p. 142)

McMillan sensed, and her research evidence supported this, that children would flourish when they were well fed and clean, when they engaged in an environment that was appropriate for them and met their needs, when they were enabled to gain a sense of the seasons and were able to understand the relationship between what was sown in the ground and what they cooked in the kitchen. These holistic and cyclical relationships with those around them and with nature were at the heart of McMillan’s work. These relationships extended to those who cared for them in the nurseries. McMillan believed that the staff should be well qualified and trained to work with young children. She stated that:

The new thinkers, the psychologists . . . Began to show why the first five years of life are the most important of all . . . They told us how the first five years was the time of swift events and that destiny was settled then.

(McMillan 1932, cited in Bradburn 1989)

McMillan’s pedagogical approach included three notions that set her work apart from others, which was training women to work with young children. Firstly, she stated that young children needed teachers, secondly, that the staff working with the children should be immersed in their lives in such a way that they could understand the childrens’ experiences, this included living within close proximity of the nursery settings in order that they were able to visit the children in their homes. Thirdly, practice needed to precede academic work. McMillan was insistent that the women who worked with the young children were vocationally inclined to do so. Through these three principles she felt that she would be enabled to develop practitioners who were in turn enabled to support young children to flourish; physically, emotionally and intellectually through both education and care (Giardiello 2013).

■ McMillan was concerned that young children were well fed, clean and in a suitable environment.

■ These three aspects when taken together appear to support flourishing.

Seligman

Seligman initially studied philosophy before undertaking postgraduate research in animal psychology before, at his students’ behest, undertaking a two-year psychiatric residency (American Psychological Association 2006). He has now been concerned with what he refers to as positive psychology for more than 20 years. During that time, he published a number of papers and books that explored his notions of well-being. Positive psychology has not been without its opponents and in 2001 Eugene Taylor, whose own work concerns the history and philosophy of psychology, published a damning attack on Seligman’s work under the guise of a response to Seligman’s assertion that Humanistic Psychology was not Positive Psychology. Taylor (2001) argues that Seligman’s assertions are not appropriately researched and that a simple undergraduate literature review would demonstrate the extent to which Humanistic Psychology is grounded i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction
• Part 1 Concepts
• Part 2 Practices
• Part 3 Futures
• Conclusion
• Index