This is the first in a series of four articles about the Characteristics of Effective Learning (CoEL), which describe how children learn. Early years teaching is not a transmission process, feeding knowledge into children’s minds with children as passive receivers. Children must do the learning work, and the educator’s role is to work with the process of learning itself.
Therefore, being a successful early years practitioner involves being a partner with children, enjoying with them their curiosity and the ‘skill’, ‘will’ and ‘thrill’ of finding out what they can do.
The ‘skill, will and thrill’ represent the characteristics of effective early learning:
Readers in England will recognise these characteristics as Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) terminology. The Statutory framework (DfE, 2023; 1.13 [childminders], 1.15 [all other settings]) requires practitioners to reflect them in their practice and explains them as:
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