Developing Learning in Early Childhood

Tina Bruce

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781446226445
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Frühkindliche Bildung

`This book is useful for students and lecturers of early childhood. It provides concise overviews of relevant research of early childhood development, theories of play and can be utilised as a contemporary, reference book by a range of professionals? - Debate

`The chapter on young children becoming symbol users make a valuable contribution to the literature, and I shall be inspired and haunted in equal measure by the plea that epitomises this book and its story? - Marian Whitehead, Early Years

`It?s an excellent and easy-to-read text to read, blending theory and research with practice. Each chapter format is clear, with the key themes outlined at the beginning the main body, followed by useful and thought-provoking questions for good practice to ponder and relevant further reading at the end? - Nursery World

`

Tina Bruce clearly loves children and delights in their development. She has produced an academic work which is both sensitive and stimulating but decidedly unpreachy? - Kirsty Wark, Broadcaster

This book shows how adults can support children and actively help them develop their learning in early childhood. Drawing on traditional approaches as well as recent research and theories, Tina Bruce shows the need for balance in early years education and care between the biological and socio-cultural aspects of the development of learning. The book includes a wide range of examples from practitioners, including nursery teachers, health visitors, and community workers.

Features include:

- what does it mean to develop learning?

- learning by doing real things

- how language helps

- creativity and imagination

- diversity and inclusion.

This book is essential for students, practitioners and tutors of Foundation Degrees and Early Childhood Studies Degrees.

The 0-8 series edited by Tina Bruce, deals with essential themes in early childhood, which concern practitioners, parents and children.

Titles in the 0-8 series

Marian Whitehead: Developing Language and Literacy with Young Children Second Edition

Rosemary Roberts: Self-Esteem and Early Learning Second Edition

Cath Arnold: Child Development and Learning 2-5 - Georgia?s Story

Pat Gura: Resources for Early Learning

Chris Pascal and Tony Bertram: Effective Early Learning: Case Studies in Improvement

Mollie Davies: Movement and Dance

Second Edition

John Mathews: Drawing and Painting

Second Edition

1

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How does learning develop?

Key themes

This chapter connects with the central themes of developing learning through the senses, movement, communication, spoken and signed languages, relationships, feelings, thoughts and ideas, becoming a symbol user and being a whole person. Developing learning can only occur with other people, but children need personal space as well as companionship. The chapter emphasizes the importance for adults working with young children of understanding about the following:

• Critical and sensitive periods of development
• The senses and feedback from movement
• Communications without words
• Walking, talking and pretending
• Other people’s roles

Christopher’s mum has wrapped him up warm because it is a cold, raw, wet day. She thought about whether she would go out with her two year old son because of the unpleasant weather, but the thought of seeing Lyn and June at the Family Centre urged her on. Christopher sits quietly, looking around him from under his hood. When he turns his head, one eye goes under the hood. His ability to look has come a long way since he was born, and before he was born.

The basic ‘wiring’ of the visual system is innate, but the brain needs proper early visual experiences to refine the connections and achieve adult levels of performance. There are two major requirements for proper early visual performance:

• that the eyes form clear images;
• that both eyes are stably aligned so that they are pointed at the same target in space and send nearly identical, non-conflicting images to the brain (Tychsen, 2001: 67).

Christopher has both of the requirements. If he did not, then there would need to be intervention within the first six months of his birth, so that he could see in depth with normal eye tracking and achieve what is called binocular vision (both eyes working together).

Critical periods

Researchers argue about what are (and are not) critical periods in development. The development of binocular vision takes place within a specific time span (the first three months of life) which cannot be missed. It is genuinely a critical period.

Bruer (2001: 4) argues that: ‘The core idea is that having a certain kind of experience at one point in development has a profoundly different impact on future behaviours than having that same experience at any other point in development.’ Bruer and Symons 2001, p.4

All humans benefit from seeing clearly with binocular vision because it allows them to follow the movements of people and objects, see them in depth and reach out for them. When something, like binocular vision, is important for any human anywhere in the world, despite the diversity of situations in which human beings live, then critical periods are found in relation to that part of developing learning. This is not the case when cultural influences are stronger in their impact on development.

For example, whereas everyone benefits from binocular vision, not everyone needs the same language. Depending on where they grow up and who they meet, they need to be able to relate to different people differently, and to deal with changing cultural contexts. These aspects of development are facilitated by being given windows of opportunity which keep doors open and allow further language learning.

Interestingly, Bruer (in Bruer and Symons, 2001) does not consider the study of the development of sensitive periods in language (Lenneberg, 1967) or relationships (Harlow, 1958) as central to studying the development of the brain: ‘we should note that, for the most part, this was behavioural research, not brain science.’ (Bruer, 2001: 8)

Meade (2003: 14) suggests that this means that Bruer ignores the development of language, self, knowledge about relationships, and the impact of experience of culture and relationships with other people on the development of the brain

Sensitive periods

Sensitive periods refer to times when, for example, humans learn sitting, walking and talking to become a symbol user.

The same principles apply also to these periods as they do to critical periods, but the window of opportunity lasts longer. Colin Blakemore, in a lecture at the RSA (2001) said that the windows of opportunity during critical and sensitive periods vary in their function. In the case of binocular and depth perception, the window slams shut when the critical period for that development has passed. With sensitive periods, such as the time frame for learning to walk, the window gradually creaks shut over a much longer time, which may be years (see below). This has important implications for those working with young children and their families.

Throughout this book we shall return to the fact that children are biologically driven to develop in certain ways, whether they live in Edinburgh or anywhere else in the world. Gopnik, Meltzoff and Kuhl (1999) suggest that, unless there is a disability or delay in development, it does not matter where children grow up, they are born with the brain potential to:

• study and remember faces;
• use facial expressions to show feelings;
• learn how objects move;
• work out how objects disappear;
• link cause and effect;
• work out how to categorize objects;
• work out how the sounds of language divide;
• link information from the different senses by forming images;
• transform two-dimensional pictures into three-dimensional objects.

However, individual children grow up in individual ways in different families and cultures. Bortfield and Whitehurst (2001: 188) say that: ‘If researchers are willing to expand the concept of sensitive periods to include … culturally framed windows of opportunity for learning, then the implications for early intervention and educational practice will expand tremendously.

Biologists, neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, anthropologists, social evolutionists and socio-culturalists and with experts in other disciplines, are finding areas where there is converging evidence, and this is enabling practitioners to help young children develop their learning.

Breathing in and smelling life

Christopher smells the wet air around him. Babies have a stronger sense of smell than adults. But adults often remark that a particular smell brings back a childhood memory. Perhaps the smell of the disinfectant in the corridor of the Family Centre in the Community High School his mother attends will bring back memories of his journey to get there, when he is older. It is more likely that the smell of baking, which is a regular activity offered to the parents, babies and toddlers will evoke later memories.

We more easily remember experiences in which we have actively participated and we will look at the importance of memory in the developing brain in Chapter 2. Here we can simply note that smells can evoke pleasant and unpleasant memories. Ratey, a clinical psychiatrist, writes (2001: 62):

Of all the ways of getting sensory information to the brain, the olfactory system is the most ancient and perhaps the least understood … Smells can have powerful effects. They can frighten us, intrigue us or comfort us. Because the olfactory system in the brain has a short and direct connection to the memory centres, smells can take us right back to a vivid scene from the past. Different people can detect the same odour and come away with vastly divergent experiences.

Moving and learning

Although Christopher is sitting quietly in his push-chair on the journey, a good observer of young children will see that he never stops moving. His hands and fingers are in a constant state of adjustment, as are his feet. His legs and arms move about all the time (Goddard-Blythe, 2000). He smacks his lips.

It is very difficult to learn or think when movement is constrained. Lying down actually causes the brain to slow down and relax.

For young developing brains, such as Christopher’s, it is particularly important that he is not in the push-chair for too long, and that he is given as much freedom of movement as possible when he reaches the Family Centre. For young children, freedom of movement means freedom to learn. (Davies, 2003). As Christopher moves, he receives kinaesthetic (physical) feedback to the brain through his body, limbs and head. This kind of feedback is his window on the world and is one of the key ways in which he makes meaning of his experiences and can learn from them.

A world of sound

All around him, the rain is falling. His mum used to draw a plastic cover over him when it rained, but he cried so much that she stopped doing so. Children often know what is good for them. Because his face is to the rain, he smells, can see more clearly, and he can hear the sounds of the rain falling on the pavement, and the sound of the wheels splashing through puddles, and cars swishing along. Life sounds quite different according to the weather.

All the senses interact with each other and work in synchrony. Some people find they cannot hear very well without their glasses, or perhaps they do not like to talk on the telephone because they cannot see the other person’s face. Senses do not work in isolation. ‘Making’ sense involves the different senses working together.

Christopher quite literally tastes the air. He eats it. This is one of the reasons why cigarette smoking is not allowed in the Family Centre.

Young children absorb smoke as if they are consuming it and smoking themselves, with a higher risk of cancer and respiratory and heart conditions. Taste and smell are closely linked.

Ratey (2001: 66) says: ‘One study of children who went to schools in areas with persistent air pollution even showed that the scents increase aggression.’

Children growing up in urban and industrial areas often suffer from blocked noses and ears. GPs in London report that children in the first five years have frequent colds and temporary hearing losses because of blocked tubes.

Orr (2003: 57) stresses the importance of learning through the senses and movement for children with complex needs, emphasizing how the sense of smell seems to be particularly important. Perfumes mask the information to the brain about a smell. He stresses that children learn through unpleasant as well as pleasant smells.

The sounds of recognition and arrival

They have arrived. Until now, Christopher’s mum has not spoken to him on the journey. But Christopher makes a pleased sound of recognition. He strains forward as if urging the push-chair on. ‘Careful Christopher,’ she says. ‘We’re nearly there.’ His mum knows that it is important to talk to her son. This is one of the reasons why she enjoys taking him to the Family Centre. It makes it easier to chat to him and the staff and other parents.

Because the push-chair faces forward, it is more difficult to chat to him as they go along (Griffin, 2003: 5). Most push-chairs are designed like this, and are not designed so that the child faces the person pushing. This would help parents and carers to have conversations with the child.

Communication with and without words or signs

As they reach the door, June greets them. There is a smile from Lyn, and Christopher’s legs flail about with excitement and pleasure, and he struggles to get out of the push-chair. He is quite literally reaching out to her with his whole self and body.

When we reach ...