Young Children's Behaviour

Guidance approaches for early childhood educators

Louise Porter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000248449
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Behavioural Management

'The book provides a comprehensive, yet practical discussion of guidance strategies that can be implemented in a variety of situations. These strategies promote a respect for children and their rights, enhance children's self-esteem, and help to foster pro-social skills. This book is a must-read for both students and practitioners who work with children and families.' - Dr Laura McFarland, School of Education, Charles Sturt University Drawing on the latest research evidence, Young Children's Behaviour outlines the beliefs and values that underpin the guidance approach to managing the behaviours of children from birth to eight years of age. In contrast with rewards-and-punishment systems, guidance believes that children do not need incentives to behave well, but instead need skills. Rather than punishing them for lacking skills, guidance teaches young children self-regulation skills so that they can behave considerately.The author provides practical strategies that both meet children's needs and safeguard the rights of surrounding adults and children. These methods include listening, being assertive, giving positive instructions, solving problems collaboratively, and coaching children to self-regulate their emotions and impulses. The text also offers advice on responding to many common challenges including separation distress, meltdowns, aggression, and social withdrawal. Finally, the book suggests how educators can provide educational and behavioural support for children with atypical development and describes how to foster effective relationships with parents whose children display challenging behaviours.Dr Louise Porter powerfully argues that behaviour guidance is the most effective approach to working with young children and reflects the deepest values of early childhood education and care.

CHAPTER ONE
PRINCIPLES OF EARLY YEARS EDUCATION

Early years education is vital because of its capacity to meet young children’s current needs and to shape their futures. It is not just child minding while parents are in paid employment; it is not an add-on to ‘serious’ education; and it is not a luxury. The early childhood years provide the foundation for children’s neurological development and, consequently, their lifelong learning.

The brain is the only organ that is not completely developed at birth: in the first year of life, it triples in weight as it develops a network of neural connections; by the age of three, it is two and a half times more active than an adult’s brain.¹ This explosion in brainpower is intimately reliant on the quality of the stimulation that babies, infants and young children receive. Accordingly, high-quality early care has been shown to improve children’s exploratory behaviours, initiative and problem-solving skills, and to enhance their overall cognitive, language and literacy skills, contributing in turn to their adaptive functioning in the early years of school.² When followed up with responsive programs in the school years, these gains can persist at least into the middle school years.³

In other domains of development, the benefits of early education are less consistent. They depend on the population being studied (such as whether or not it is impoverished), the data-collection methods (whether the researchers actually observe the children, or simply gain teachers’ ratings), the country in which the study is based (which affects the quality of services) and even how dated or recent the research is, given the evolving nature of early childhood care and education.⁴ Nevertheless, the predominant conclusion is that children who attend early childhood services are typically more sociable, have higher self-esteem, are more assertive, are less likely to initiate conflict with peers and are less aggressive than children with little or no centre-based care experience.⁵ In high-quality settings, compared with girls, boys make more gains in behavioural self-regulation⁶—although children attending low-quality child care are rated as being less compliant with their teachers.⁷

Findings with respect to age of entry are mixed, but it is possible that, compared with babies or older children, toddlers (aged one to three years) are at more risk of negative behavioural outcomes of long hours in care when that care is of poor quality; however, these same children make the most developmental gains from high-quality care when they enter at two or three years of age.⁸

A consistent finding is that children living in adversity benefit the most, especially when they enter a high-quality program as infants and attend for some years.⁹ The mechanism for improved developmental outcomes seems to be positive interactions with—that is, emotional support from—educators.¹⁰ However, not all child care is of a high quality, and those parents with the lowest education and inflexible working hours tend to be least able to be selective about the quality of the centre where they enrol their child.¹¹ Their choice tends to be dictated by cost, location and opening hours, rather than by the quality of care and education made available to their children.¹²

As for the quantity of time that children spend in care, some research has found that attending early childhood centres for more than 30 hours a week accrues no extra cognitive gains compared with attending for fewer hours, and may be detrimental to middle-class children’s behavioural compliance. On the other hand, longer attendance hours are beneficial across all skill domains when children’s families are enduring adversity.¹³

Early education guidelines

All over the developed world, education authorities have drafted guidelines for early education and care based on how young children learn. These guidelines all have a remarkably consistent philosophical stance, which recognises that what children learn is—and must be—embedded in their social and cultural context; therefore, the guidelines are not prescriptive about curricula: they have to be interpreted and applied by educators.¹⁴ Although this generates tensions, this is only right given that professionals must have discretion to be responsive to the particular children who are in front of them.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, the priority for the national early childhood curriculum policy statement Te Whāriki (roughly pronounced Te Far-ee-kee) is empowering children to enable them to direct their own lives.¹⁵ To that end, we might liken the role of an early childhood educator to that of a midwife: at the end of the process, those producing the outcomes need to be able to say that they did it themselves.¹⁶ Te Whāriki encompasses five strands: wellbeing, belonging, contribution, communication and exploration.¹⁷ It calls on educators of young children to provide a rich bank of experiences for creative expression, symbolising and representation, and to engage in sustained conversations with children.

In Australia, the desired outcomes are for children to have a strong sense of identity, to be connected with and to contribute to their world, to have a strong sense of wellbeing, to be confident and involved learners, and to be effective communicators.¹⁸ The vision is that children will be given the best start in life so that they can create a better future for themselves and for the nation.¹⁹ To that end, the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) emphasises the three strands of belonging, being and becoming.²⁰ Its view of children as competent beings replaces deficit notions that children are only becoming human, although the use of that word in its title might undermine this message. However, the notion of becoming refers to the fact that early childhood is a time of rapid and significant change as children learn and grow.²¹ The Framework’s principles are: secure and respectful reciprocal relationships; partnerships with families; high expectations and equity; respect for diversity; and reflective practice.²²

In England, the intended outcomes of the Early Years Foundation Stage are that children learn and develop well, are kept healthy and safe, and are prepared for school.²³ The Early Years Foundation Stage has four principles that are similar to those of the Australian policy:²⁴

• Every child is a unique person, who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured.
• Children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships.
• Children learn and develop well in enabling environments, in which their experiences respond to their individual needs and there is a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and/or carers.
• Children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates.

The stated aim of the Singaporean policy is the opposite of the UK goals. Its guidelines state that preschool should not be an attempt to accelerate children’s learning or to provide children with a simplified primary school curriculum.²⁵ For this country, the object of early years education is ‘to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives’, for which they need to acquire a love of learning.²⁶ Its guidelines see early childhood as forming the basis for lifelong learning.²⁷ Its broad aim is to promote a community of citizens who will lead fulfilling lives.²⁸

Unlike in the other jurisdictions, US guidelines do not carry any legal weight. To be licensed, early childhood centres need only meet basic licensing requirements, which vary from state to state, with as few as 10 per cent being accredited on the basis of having satisfied the guidelines of the National Association for the Education...