In this concise and accessible guide, the authors are sympathetic to the particular demands of teaching three to eight year olds and offer practical solutions to the complex issues that are currently faced by early years educators. In recognizing the demands on practitioners, they provide new and challenging frameworks for an understanding of the practice of teaching young children and draw upon international research to offer a sound model of early years subject-structured teaching which has the quality of children's learning at its centre. Their aim is to support teacher expertise through stimulating teachers' thinking about children's development, motivation, ways of learning and the subjects they teach. These topics are clearly set in the complex institutional settings in which practitioners work and ways of taking and evaluating action are offered.
Table of Contents
Contents
Preface
1 Introduction: education from three to eight
Effectiveness is not a simple matter
The language of early years practice
An early years curriculum?
Learning teachers in learning institutions
Early years practice as professional activity
2 Becoming a pupil
Schools create pupils
Developing a learner identity
The transition between home and school
The well-motivated pupil
Becoming an effective learner
Points for reflection
Further reading
3 Children's learning
We are all teachers
What are we teaching?
All children are learners
Learners need teachers
The relationship between language and concept acquisition
The shifting role of the teacher
The active engagement of the learner
Learning through play
Points for reflection
Further reading
4 A curriculum for the early years
Development or learning?
Elements of an early years curriculum
Curriculum and making meaning
Language and subjects
Subjects and integration
The power of the discourse
Conclusion
Points for reflection
Further reading
5 Subjects and the early years curriculum
Science and concept development
Religious education and concept development
Mathematics and learning through discovery
Geography and learning through discovery
History and the place of knowledge in the early years curriculum
Technology, re-presentation and progression
Music, re-presentation and progression
English and the integrated curriculum
Art and the integrated curriculum
Physical education and fitness and the integrated curriculum
Summary: subjects and the integrated curriculum
Cross-curricular themes
The one hundred-and-fifty per cent curriculum?
Effective curriculum: a summary
Points for reflection
Further reading
6 The organization of the learning environment
Order in chaos
Creating harmony
Setting tasks
The teacher as a resource
Managing learning through groupwork
Independent learning
Assessment in the learning environment
Managing other adults
Points for reflection
Further reading
7 Parents and professionals
Where the power lies
Parental involvement and equality of opportunity
Typical parents?
Ways and means
Parental involvement and whole-school policies
The open learning environment
Points for reflection
Further reading
8 Developing the curriculum
A technocratic approach to curriculum development
Curriculum development as action research
Curriculum plans and an integrated model of curriculum development
Points for reflection
Further reading
9 Developing the organization
The practitioner and the organization
Bureaucracy and early years education
Processes: people and effective organizations
Points for action
Further reading
10 Endpiece
References
Index