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There is huge value in both child-led and adult-led experiences, and how to achieve an appropriate balance between the two is a concern for all early years providers – but particularly Reception staff facing ever-increasing pressure to tip the balance towards more formal ways of learning.
This pressure comes from people who neither have experience of young children and how they learn, nor appreciate the damage that can be done to the hearts and minds of young learners when experiences are inappropriate. The result is that ‘adult-led’ becomes ‘adult-insisted’, causing some children to resist learning that an adult deems more important than the learning that children would choose for themselves. This article will consider how to manage the learning day particularly in schools and settings where adult-led learning takes precedence.
BALANCING ADULT- AND CHILD-LED LEARNING
The balance between child-led and adult-led learning cannot be neatly determined by a mathematical formula. While early childhood experts believe that the majority of children’s learning day should be child-led in their early years (Fisher 2013, Ephgrave 2013), the balance between these two different ways of learning is dependent on a matrix of interconnecting conditions for teaching and learning.
Whether learning from an adult or learning independently is more appropriate depends entirely on the individual child and what is to be learned. Consequently, the balance of an individual child’s learning day will vary from one moment to the next – let alone one day to the next.
The balance will vary according to the level of scaffolding needed by that individual child for any given purpose; according to whether it is October or June in the learning year; according to whether it’s morning or afternoon, a sunny day or windy and wet… and many other variables besides.
In other words, the balance between adult-led and child-led learning depends on the uniqueness of the needs of each individual learner and on the sensitivity and responsiveness of each individual practitioner.
To establish which kind of experience is better, the practitioner must ask themselves two crucial questions: What do I want this child to learn? And how will they best learn it? If planning and provision are responsive and flexible, then the learning day can be adjusted constantly to provide learning situations that address both of these questions. But the learning environment must be fit for purpose.
LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
Many children struggle to understand the more abstract learning situations that often arise in settings that have tipped the balance of children’s learning towards greater adult-led experiences. It is frequently the more active, dynamic learners, who prefer to move as they think and learn, who struggle most.
Struggling, and sometimes failing, to achieve an adult’s expectations can lead all too often to a lessening of self-belief, which in turn leads to a lack of motivation and interest in learning itself (Rogers and Kutnick 1990, O’Connor 2017). This is an unforgiveable situation at a stage in a child’s life when so many have not yet reached statutory school age.
A child cannot fail
When engaged in child-led learning, a child cannot fail if:
- the challenges they set belong to them
- the situations in which they put themselves are within their own control
- the motivation to persist and succeed is intrinsic
- at any moment a goal can be changed, efforts can be abandoned and the child doesn’t lose face and doesn’t feel a failure because the purpose, the process and any outcomes of the child-led activity are in their hands.
That is why child-led learning should have prime place in an early years setting and classroom.
Child-led learning:
- acknowledges the child’s successful learning from birth
- offers learning opportunities that are not capped or limited by an adult’s expectations
- enhances self-confidence and self-esteem
- unleashes curiosity and the power of enquiry
- leads to a desire to be a learner for life.
How can we possibly allow this to be relegated to second place in the young child’s learning day?
ORGANISING THE LEARNING DAY
When faced with a senior leadership team that fails to value child-led learning – and, consequently, support its Foundation Stage staff in establishing an appropriate balance between adult-led and child-led experiences – practitioners need to try to minimise the negative effects of an overly adult-led agenda.
To achieve this, they need to think carefully about how to organise the learning day so that both kinds of learning take place effectively and so that sufficient time is created for child-led learning to be of the highest quality.
Timetable
The place to begin is with the school timetable. Many primary school timetables are organised in such a way that they stop children from learning. They compartmentalise the day when this is not the way in which young children understand the world. They move children from one learning focus to another when the child has not grasped a concept or mastered a skill to their own satisfaction.
So, practitioners can begin by creating long, uninterrupted periods for learning both morning and afternoon. This gives flexibility to the learning day and means that children move between adult-led and child-led scenarios without the arbitrary interruption of a bell.
Playtimes should be eliminated to create more time for learning, and high-quality free-flow learning indoors and out should be the norm.
Assemblies need to be limited. One a week – one that is meaningful and relevant for the youngest children – is all that is usually desirable (the daily act of worship does not need to be with the whole school).
Hall times for PE need to be rationalised as children should be experiencing high-quality daily physical development through provision in the outdoor environment.
If these interruptions to the learning day are eliminated, then children have the chance to:
- follow through their learning to a satisfactory conclusion
- make more sense of their explorations and investigations
- be satisfied, excited and proud of their achievements.
I find that senior leaders are very often open to considering such changes when it can be demonstrated how much time for learning is increased in the day.
Long uninterrupted periods
Having long uninterrupted periods also means that appropriate time can be given to the different ways in which children will be learning during their day. Child-led learning takes considerably longer than adult-led learning to reach a satisfactory conclusion.
High-quality play, for example, can often take 30, 40 or more minutes to get going to the child’s satisfaction, so there needs to be time in the day for child-led learning to take the time it takes. Conversely, the adult-led agenda needs to be short, sharp and highly focused.
We have seen that it is harder for many children to concentrate on what someone else wants them to learn than what they choose for themselves. Therefore, the more focused the practitioner can be, and the more skilfully they steer and guide children towards the learning that is planned, the more successfully this external agenda will be processed by young learners.
The joy of having adult-led and child-led learning taking place alongside each other in the learning day is that children remain motivated by and consequently engaged in their own self-chosen challenges, giving practitioners time to really focus on adult-led tasks.
However, the status of child-led learning will only be upheld if, once an adult-led activity is completed, practitioners move to observe and (perhaps) engage in what has been happening in both the classroom’s adult-initiated and child-led scenarios (see Part 3 of this series).
Children’s choice and control
Some teachers are sufficiently confident in their children’s ability to self-direct their own learning that they give the class the opportunity to plan their own learning day. Children are told (by way of lists or charts) the learning that is to take place independently that day, or that week. They can then decide in what order to complete their tasks.
Some will do all those initiated by the adult at the beginning in order to focus all their attention on their own self-led activity afterwards. Some go straight to child-led learning and may have to be ‘reminded’ to complete the adult-initiated tasks as the week progresses.
But having control over time and how it is used is a crucial element in the development of self-regulated learning. This has been shown to be a significantly stronger predictor of academic ability and emotional well-being than a whole range of other abilities, including early literacy (McClelland et al 2013).
It is when children have opportunities to make their own choices and decisions, solve their own problems, talk (to themselves as well as others) about what they are doing, and reflect on the processes of learning with a supportive adult that self-regulation develops and thrives.
The alternative is that children engage in learning that is directed by another, solves challenges set by another, arrives at outcomes determined by another, all of which is guaranteed to lead to learning that is dependent on another rather than driven by and motivated from within.
Literacy and maths programmes
Of course, some practitioners do not have the flexibility to allow their children this level of control. In some schools the adult-led agenda is now taught by way of a literacy or mathematics programme delivered across the whole school at the same time, which is not a way of teaching that suits many young children. However, if this is what a school has chosen, then the Reception teacher must do everything possible to minimise the potentially negative effects of such an inflexible approach.
One strategy is to ensure that the timing of this whole class/whole school initiative does not cut across children’s time for child-led exploration and play. As we have seen, child-led learning needs long periods of uninterrupted time to be of high quality. If that time is cut in two by a whole-school literacy session, for example, then children will not be able to settle and engage in deep-level child-led learning, as they will know their activity and thinking will be interrupted and put aside for the teacher’s agenda. Any whole school/class initiative should, therefore, be pushed to the edges of the learning day – preferably just before or after lunch.
The ideal scenario is that a teacher has the autonomy to teach an individual, pair or adult-led group as and when they believe that children are at their most receptive, rather than fitting children into the timetable of the school. For early childhood educators, the major concern should be with what is most effective for the individual child, not what is most efficient for the adults.
AND FINALLY… MONITORING AND EVALUATING
Finally, in this exploration of the changing role of the early years practitioner, I want to highlight the importance of the messages within this series reaching senior leaders – particularly in schools.
We have seen clearly that:
- young children benefit from both adult-led and child-led learning experiences, but that it is child-led learning that best suits the child, their attitudes and dispositions
- the adult role shifts according to context, leading in adult-led learning and following in child-led learning experiences.
It is imperative, therefore, that leaders judging the quality of teaching in settings and schools:
- acknowledge these complex shifts in the role of the early childhood educator
- ensure that the criteria used to monitor the quality of teaching are fit for purpose.
Criteria for judging quality of teaching
Criteria for judging the quality of teaching in a child-led session must be quite different from those used when judging a session that is adult-led. In actual fact, I have been told by literally hundreds of teachers that senior leaders never monitor the quality of child-led learning at all.
Considering that this is the learning that should take up most of a child’s day and influence most of a teacher’s time, then this is cause for real concern, and we have to ask why this is the case.
The obvious answer is that many heads and senior leaders lack the relevant experience to be comfortable monitoring child-led activity and so focus on what they know and where their own experience lies. If this is the reason, then it is up to early years practitioners to:
- be a passionate advocate for why child-led learning needs to be given status and attention in the monitoring programme
- explain what self-led learning offers the child that adult-led learning cannot
support senior leaders, where necessary, to create criteria that match the demands of observing child-led learning.
Making the case
To achieve this, practitioners will need to be clear themselves about why they value and provide for child-led activity and what they believe children will learn from such experiences. Here, practitioners may choose to:
- focus on children’s independence, their problem-solving, their initiative, their negotiations or their creativity
- draw on the Characteristics of Effective Learning contained within the EYFS.
Before senior leaders can be confident and knowledgeable about what to monitor, their early years staff must be confident themselves. Only when child-led learning is understood and monitored to the same extent as adult-led learning – or even more – will children (and their parents and others in the school) believe such learning has status, and the role of the early childhood educator in supporting such learning be fully appreciated.
The role of the early childhood educator is forever changing, perhaps due to a political agenda or the whim of managers or head teachers. However, effective early childhood educators are always strong advocates for young children and their learning and developmental needs – and courageous in justifying, explaining and fighting for the overwhelming benefits of a learning day that starts from the child.
KEY POINTS
Both adult-led and child-led experiences are essential in early learning, but practitioners in many schools and early years settings are under pressure to give precedence to adult-led learning. This is usually enforced by people with little or no early years training and experience.
The choice of experience depends on many variables such as the amount of scaffolding required.
Establishing an appropriate balance depends on a sensitive and responsive practitioner taking account of the uniqueness of the individual learner and their particular needs.
Many children struggle to understand the more abstract learning expected of them in more formal situations, which can demoralise and demotivate a child.
Child-led learning should have prime place in an early years setting and classroom, as it builds on current experiences, inspires and unleashes curiosity. In such a context, the child cannot be set up to fail.
To achieve a balance of adult-led and child-led experiences, and ensure that child-led learning can be of the highest quality, practitioners need to organise the learning day with care, paying particular attention to the school timetable.
The quality of teaching within child-led experiences needs to be monitored as much as within adult-led learning, using appropriate criteria for each context.
Where this does not happen, early childhood educators must inform setting leaders about the importance of child-led learning and become strong advocates for learning that starts from the child.
ABOUT THIS SERIES
Who should initiate and lead learning in an early years environment? And what is the adult role in supporting learning in different contexts? These are the questions that will be addressed in this four-part series looking at:
child-led, adult-led and adult-initiated learning (see ‘Leading or following’, Nursery World, 28 May and at: www.nurseryworld.co.uk)
the role of the adult and child in learning experiences (NW, 25 June)
the challenges of supporting learning (NW, 23 July)
balancing adult-led and child-led learning.
REFERENCES
Ephgrave A (2013) The Reception Year in Action. Routledge
Fisher J (2013) (4th edn) Starting from the Child. Open University Press
McClelland MM et al (2013) ‘Relations between Preschool Attention Span-Persistence and Age 25 Educational Outcomes’, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 28 (2), pp314-24
O’Connor A (2017) (2nd edn) Understanding Transitions in the Early Years. Routledge
Rogers C and Kutnick P (eds) (1990) The Social Psychology of the Primary School. Routledge