How we used to live
There is a missing piece in the discussions around teacher education and research informed practice. That is the understanding of child development and its associated relationship with both broad pedagogical approaches and day to day teaching and learning decisions. As I write in Simplicitus, we take children in primary from the edge of toddlerhood to the cusp of adolescence which is a huge developmental trajectory. Overlaying teaching and learning approaches without considering the developmental needs of the child is akin to discounting the fork and just employing the knife.
Understanding child development is not just about knowing your Vygotsky from your Piaget, your Bruner from your Montessori, it is a recognition that there are elements of human development that we need to be respectful of when designing curriculum, tasks, relationship building, whole school experience and the broad and rich development of the human experience. Again in Simplicitus I talk of the need to ringfence the unique extended state of childhood and be respectful of it as an integral part of healthy human development. Developing and curating the curricularly cognitive is obviously a statutory part of teaching, but this needs to sit against a broader backdrop of understanding how children develop. Assuming an identikit model of pedagogical congruence throughout all year groups or phases does not recognise that teaching a class of six year olds is very different to that of a class of year 6s or indeed sixteen year olds. Whereas there is transferability in elements of teaching, it is too blunt an approach to think there is direct congruence and that what works with teenagers can or should work exactly with five or ten year olds.
In my early training in the 90s on a four year BSc Hons QTS course (which was quite a unique course for its time), child development theory, alongside an understanding of how children develop at different chronological ages and stages was taught alongside “how” to teach. I was as likely to be taught the thinking of Vygotsky as I was how to effectively manage a class’ attention, or plan an appropriate sequence for a KS1 class vs a KS2 class. Upon entering the profession in the late 90s, much of the ongoing training I received both in school and in external CPD was clearly, deliberately and closely aligned to understanding age and stage. There was a respect and a reverence towards the duality and interplay of child development with other aspects of research. As a result, I have a clear and well mapped timeline in my own head about what to expect of children’s development throughout primary in areas as broad as physical and neurological development, attentional development, executive function and memory, social and emotional development, and language acquisition. This helps to frame decisions as broad and wide ranging as what to put in the curriculum, task design, lesson duration and structure, resources and manipulatives, even the layout of furniture and the amount of time spent inside and outside. Every decision I make is therefore formed from the triumvirate of cognitive science, child development and primary pedagogy. This means I draw from multiple resource bases and that things are never a one size fits all.
In Initium, I explore some of the age and stage considerations of development; the attentional development continuum provides food for thought when then interpreting a model of memory. The need for play and the impact of playful pedagogy influences task design, as does the need for a sharp eye on physical and social development.
We simply cannot approach the teaching of our younger children with a homogenous approach; neither should we accept a partial or absent backdrop of deep understanding of child development as a basis for making system wide, school wide or even day to day decisions about teaching and learning. In the same way that paediatrics requires specialist knowledge and expertise when dealing with the developing body and mind, so too does teaching. Young children are not big kids in smaller bodies. Their brains, bodies, understanding of the world and their needs are different. If we do not understand and respect these differences then we are potentially doing these children a disservice. There is also the element of “just because they can, doesn’t mean they should.” This is a core belief of mine associated with primary pedagogy. Children are hugely adept at many things and can adapt to multiple approaches. However, this does not mean that they should. The over formalisation of EYFS and the creep of very formal provision in KS1 has meant that playful pedagogy alongside pure play has often been eroded. It is interesting that on my travels, dozens of schools and trusts are now exploring a return to a continuous or enhanced provision model, realising that an overly formal model for our youngest children really isn’t sitting right and are rediscovering the power and need for purposeful play based and play influenced pedagogy. It is also worth remembering that our youngest children in year 1 are the same age as our oldest in reception and so developmentally would benefit from the continuous provision model. The work of Julie Fisher is an excellent start point for anyone wishing to read more about this approach.
Child development also isn’t woolly or somehow aligned with low expectations. Child development is understanding the developmental trajectories of humans in childhood and building high quality experiences that complement and build on these. It is about having high expectations but rooting these in the science and reality of human development.
In my ideal world, everyone who works with children but especially those who work with younger children or who advise the primary workforce would understand the backdrop of child development theory, the chronology of human development, and the practices that align with and work with these. I would love to see more schools discussing their research bases to reference both CogSci and child development. I know from my own experience that this is “how we used to live” and if you understand that reference, then you probably qualified in primary around the same time as me.
Thinking Flexibly 