Saturday 11 April 2009

Bandura

B's social learning theory emphasises the importance of modelling.

Social learning theory explains human behaviour in terms of continuous reciprocal interaction between cognitive , behavioural and environmental influences.

It spans cognitive and behavioural frameworks as it encompasses attention , memory, and motivation.

In its appliation to education Bandura's theory has been applied to understand agression and behavioural problems.


Individuals are more likely to adopt a modelled beahviour if it has a valid outcome.

Bruner 1966

learners is active process learners construct new knowledge based upon current or past knowledge.

the practitioner should try to encourage students to discover principles by themselves. the practitioner is responsible for translating the information in to a format that the learner will understand in their current state of underdstanding.

The practitioner should organise the curriculum to scaffold the learning so that the student can build on existing knowledge.

4 major aspects that a theory of learning should address:

1. positive disposition to learning
2. the way in which knowledge is structured so that it can most easily be grasped.
3. the most effective sequence in which to present the material.
the nature and pacing of rewards and punishments.

Play talk and learning constructivism

Constructivists believe that human knowledge is acquired through a process of active individualised construction ot in other words learning is a process of building and understaning one's world. White p. 11. Constructivist believe that it happens in isolation or the child learns alone however social constructivists empahsise the social nature of learning or humans learn individually and in a social enironment.

Gagne (1966), strongly disagreed with constructivist theory

Sociology children & divorce

children's wishes considered following the 1989 Children Act however James et al say less effective than supposed because they identified two images that professionals use to idnetify childhood and they are: the child as an age based status and 2nd the child as a kinship /generational status p. 197 both firmly rooted in the developmental paradigm. so adults determine for children the right thing to do by the child thus denying them their agency.
Cases demonstrate where adults have made decisions that go against the child's wishes.

Friday 10 April 2009

Steedman

Steedman (1995), declared that the 19th century fixed childhood, not just as a category of experience but also as a timespan ..... p. 143 James et al

Sociology

Health _ BMA website http://www.bma.org.uk/

Tuesday 7 April 2009

Sociology children's rights

UNCRC- United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child- children should be rights bearing citizens Burr p. 142 Kehilly.

UNCRC contains 54 principles that make up the convention see p. 146

UNICEF- United Nation Children's Fund

Are all countries ready to implement it?

Burr's work in Vietnam highlights local culture prevails and children are expected to respect their elders and to show filial respect for adults thus contravening two of the intentions of the convention: firstly that children should have individual rights and that they are not required to be deferential. p.150 kehily

Thursday 2 April 2009

communitarian society

communitarian ideology - how to achieve social order and personal autonomy. complicated by ...p. 114 James et al

1st tension childrens present status as non citizens and their future rights as citizens p.119 James et al

2nd tension childhod as a space and the desires feelings ....p.120


Citizenship is to teach children the art of active citizenship

Sunday 4 January 2009

Reflective practice

Some good quotes for you, I used them in a short essay about reflective practice in my own setting :)

Sally Featherstone and Ross Baley (2002:56) stress “Nothing is too good for the youngest children, we must keep exploring all the avenues we can to improve what we already have, we must not be satisfied with second best. However difficult our individual circumstances there are likely to be things we can do to improve them.”

Margaret Edgington (2005) encouraged my enthusiasm to facilitate and stimulate colleagues learning and thinking; she affirms “Reflective practitioners are, outward looking and thrive on new challenges, enjoy and are committed to their work.” “It is essential to keep the functioning of your whole team under review” (Issue 52).

“Effective practice in the early years requires committed enthusiastic and reflective practitioners with a breadth and depth of knowledge, skills and understanding.” (DFES, 2005)

Ghaye and Ghaye (1998:3) define reflection not only as thinking about what you do, but as ‘practice with principle’; ‘Being professionally self critical without being destructive and overly negative’.

Meaningful, reflective conversations can sustain and nourish us. They can raise individual and collective consciousness. Above all else they involve a discussion of values. This is at the heart of the improvement process.
(Ghaye and Ghaye, 1998, pl.122)

The recent Speel (2005) research recognised that “Professional thinking includes the ability to reflect on practice and to make informed decisions through well-conceived examination and analysis of pedagogy. It involves the thinking practitioner in articulating and evaluating practice and a continuous striving to improve.” - “Practitioners who are reflective and on-going learners, recognise that principles are capable of adaptation” and “change in the light of further evidence.”- “Pedagogy is both the behaviour of teaching and being able to reflect on teaching.”

Speel (2005) noted, that in their research, Frede et al. (1993) identify a relationship between supported, reflective practice and effective teaching, and additional factors are suggested (curriculum content, learning processes, teacher-child ratios and relationships with parents).

Shulman (1999) defines reflection as “this what a teacher does when he or she looks back at the teaching and learning that has occurred, and reconstructs, re-enacts, and / or recaptures the events, the emotions, and the accomplishments.”

As practitioners working with young children, and their families, we need to challenge ourselves, our assumptions and our ways of working if we are to achieve effective relationships. Most importantly, we need to address how we interact and communicate with others. We need to promote the importance of working together and to improve our ability to do so. Some of us may need to reconceptualise the way we regard young children. We need to be aware of how we renegotiate the roles and relationships we have with existing partners and how we integrate new ones. Most importantly of all, we need to develop trust between all who are working together for young children.
(Willan et al, 2004:141)


References
Edgington, M. (May, 2005) What makes a reflective practitioner? Practical Pre-School:
Step Forward Publishing.
DfES (02/2005) Key Elements of Effective Practice (KEEP): Crown Copyright
Featherstone S. & Bayley R. (2002) Foundations for Independence, Developing
independent learning in the Foundation Stage, Featherstone Education p53-64
Ghaye, A. and Ghaye, K. (1998) Teaching and Learning Through Critical Reflective
Practice. London: David Fulton Publishers.
Moyles J, Adams S, Musgrove A. (2002) SPEEL Study of Pedagogical Effectiveness
in the Early Years, Brief No: RB363, DFES.
Shulman, L. (1999) Knowledge and Teaching: Foundations of the New Reform. In Leach, J. and Moon, B. Learners and Pedagogy. London: Paul Chapman in association with the Open University.
Willan, Parker-Rees, Savage: (2004) Early Childhood Studies, Learning Matters ltd


Carla Booth x
Carla Booth
Hi, I've also pasted from some research notes about experential learning, they may be helpful :)

Experiential Learning: 'learning from experience' or 'learning through experience'.
‘Kolb (1984) provides one of the most useful descriptive models of the adult learning process available, inspired by the work of Kurt Lewin’

This suggests that there are four stages which follow from each other: Concrete Experience is followed by Reflection on that experience on a personal basis. This may then be followed by the derivation of general rules describing the experience, or the application of known theories to it (Abstract Conceptualisation), and hence to the construction of ways of modifying the next occurrence of the experience (Active Experimentation), leading in turn to the next Concrete Experience. All this may happen in a flash, or over days, weeks or months, depending on the topic, and there may be a "wheels within wheels" process at the same time.
(Pickles T, n.d.)

Reflective Practice

“The importance of reflecting on what you are doing, as part of the learning process, has been emphasised by many investigators. Reflective Observation is the second stage (in the usual representation) of the Lewin/Kolb learning cycle.

Donald Schön (1983) suggested that the capacity to reflect on action so as to engage in a process of continuous learning was one of the defining characteristics of professional practice. He argued that the model of professional training which he termed "Technical Rationality"—of charging students up with knowledge in training schools so that they could discharge when they entered the world of practice, perhaps more aptly termed a "battery" model—has never been a particularly good description of how professionals "think in action", and is quite inappropriate to practice in a fast-changing world.

The cultivation of the capacity to reflect in action (while doing something) and on action (after you have done it) has become an important feature of professional training programmes in many disciplines, and its encouragement is seen as a particularly important aspect of the role of the mentor of the beginning professional. Indeed, it can be argued that “real” reflective practice needs another person as mentor or professional supervisor, who can ask appropriate questions to ensure that the reflection goes somewhere, and does not get bogged down in self-justification, self-indulgence or self-pity!

The quality and depth of the reflection, however, is not specified within this formulation: and it is interesting that two different traditions of professional development emphasise seemingly contradictory aspects. Reynolds (1965), and particularly Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986) discuss how developing practitioners come gradually to take for granted aspects of their practice which initially preoccupied them, and move on to be concerned about (reflect upon) wider matters. This taking-for-granted on the one hand, and reflection on the other, offers a view of how reflection-on-action deepens in the course of a career.

Argyris and Schön (1978) differentiate between "single-loop" and "double-loop" learning, drawing on a distinction made by Ashby (1960) in a seminal work on cybernetics. For our purposes, single-loop learning is a simple version of the Lewin/Kolb cycle, in which performance is evaluated through reflection and then corrected or improved. In double-loop learning, the whole activity is part of a larger cycle, in which the reflection takes place on the fact of engaging in the activity and the assumptions implicit in it. This is the kind of reflection explored in Boud, Keogh and Walker (1985), and relates to Bateson's learning II and even learning III.”
(Atherton, 2005)

Effective early years practitioners are those who both possess and apply to their practices specific values, qualities, knowledge and thinking which ensure they have a positive effect on children’s learning and development.
(SPEEL 2002)

High/Scope, which developed from the Head Start project, is a structured approach based in children being active learners; through a process of Plan → Do → Review, children are encouraged to assume responsibility for their own learning
(Hohmann and Weikart, 1995).

“The ability to be critical and to examine children's learning is dependent on practitioners being sufficiently informed so that they can be discerning.”
(SPEEL:121, 2002)

Schon (1983) distinguishes between reflection in action, reflecting while doing something; and reflection on action, reflecting following the action.

Reynolds (1965), and particularly Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986) cited by Atherton (2005) discuss how developing practitioners come gradually to take for granted aspects of their practice which initially preoccupied them, and move on to be concerned about (reflect upon) wider matters. This taking-for-granted on the one hand, and reflection on the other, offers a view of how reflection-on-action deepens in the course of a career.

“Reflecting on practice enables practitioners to discover, rediscover or understand the complex range of knowledge, skills and understanding they have and to develop and use the intellectual and emotional power within themselves to try and improve their situation”
(Ghaye and Ghaye 1998).



References
Atherton, J. S. (2005). Learning and Teaching: Reflection and Reflective Practice. Retrieved September 24, 2006, from http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/reflecti.htm
Hohmann, M. and Weikart, D. (1995) Educating Young Children. Ypsilanti, US:
High/Scope Press.
Ghaye, A. and Ghaye, K. (1998) Teaching and Learning Through Critical Reflective
Practice. London: David Fulton Publishers.
Moyles J, Adams S, Musgrove A. (2002) SPEEL Study of Pedagogical Effectiveness
in the Early Years, Brief No: RB363, DFES.
Pickles, T. (n.d.). http://reviewing.co.uk/research/experiential.learning.htm. Retrieved September 24, 2006, from http://reviewing.co.uk/: www.reviewing.co.uk
Schon, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner. New York: Basic Books.
Shulman, L. (1999) Knowledge and Teaching: Foundations of the New Reform. In Leach, J. and Moon, B. Learners and Pedagogy. London: Paul Chapman in association with the Open University.


Carla Booth x (PS I'm a huge believer in Reflective Practice so GOOD LUCK in inspiring the team x)
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observations

Ofsted say obs are important to ' ensure breadth, balance and continuity of learning' p182 para 1 working with children

Partnership with parents: 'Wise practitioners look to learn from the parents of the children they are trying to help'(Draper and duffy,2001 p149) as cited in intro to EC

different perceptions of obs based on:
Environment
Mood
Experience p108 Intro To....

track kids progress according to 6 area of development

Smidt points out why it is important to have some knowledge of the children's language in order to understand early mark making. With knowledge of writing styles, different scripts and the direction in which they are writren; this can aid practitioners with understanding what they may be observing.

She also points out Vygotsky believed assesment to be the starting point and that it needs to point to a learning potential or in other words children need to be helped on to the next step in the learning process rather than concentrating on what they already know. However she warns us to be careful of 'outcomes based' assessments as practitioners outcomes may not be what the children want to learn

Stierer et al 1993

4 Key proposes for observations are:

1. Gaining Knowledge of children strengths and areas for development
2. Reviewing provision
3. Forward planning
4 For summative reporting

The gathering of information on children allows for a 'stock take' for use when the children change settings such as going to nursery or school. (Stierer et al) p183 Working with children .....

Saturday 3 January 2009

H. Rudolph Schaffer

5 qualities of well organised research Lindon p59

also sums up the problem of not offering clear cut answers in research with " Lindon p73

Margaret Donaldson

Her team in Edinburgh challenged Piaget Lindon p71

Sara Smilansky

Sara Smilansky Socio dramatic play developed the method of 'play tutoring''

Peter Smith in the 80's carried out research and found it was due to extra adult attention and not specifically play tutoring' Lindon p69

aconyms

EPPE The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education

Team building

Handy argues that teams need to be kept motivated or in other words challenged and reinvigorated (Read et al, 2003, p35)

Handy 1990 Team building

Handy's stages of team growth 'Forming' 'Storming' 'Norming ' and 'Performing' (Mary Read, and Mary Rees, 2003 p33 in Working with children in the early years