eye brings you another batch of the latest products and books on offerDigital Technologies and Learning in the Early Years Lorna Arnott (Editor) ISBN 9781412962438 £26.99. Paperback Publisher SAGE Publications Orders Tel: 020 73248500; www.sagepublications.com Review by Neil HentyBeginning Teaching, Beginning Learning in Early Years and Primary Education (5th Edition) Janet Moyles, Jan Georgeson, Jane Payler (Editors) ISBN 9780335236962 £28.99. Paperback Publisher Open University Press Orders Tel: 0203 4293400 emea_queries@mheducation.co.uk www.mheducation.co.uk Review by Neil HentyCrayons and iPads: learning and teaching of young children in the digital world Debra Harwood ISBN 9781473915992 £45.00. CHardback Publisher SAGE Swifts Orders Tel: 020 73248500; www.sagepublications.com Review by Neil HentyPerfectly Norman by Tom Percival [£6.99 from Bloomsbury; ISBN: 9781408880975]Big Brown Bear's Cave by Yuval Zommer [£11.99 from Templar Publishing; ISBN: 9781783706471]The Secret Life of a Tiger by Przemstaw Wechterowic and Emilia Dziubak [£11.99 from Words and Pictures; ISBN: 9781910277249]Tug of War by Naomi Haworth [£11.99 from Frances Lincoln Children's Books; ISBN: 9781847808509]Lulu Gets Cat by Anna McQuinn and Rosalind Beardshaw [£11.99 from Alanna Books; ISBN: 9781907825163]Fergal is Fuming! by Robert Starling [£11.99 from Andersen Press; ISBN: 9781910277249]Raising Happy Healthy Children: why mothering matters Sally Goddard Blythe ISBN 9781907359835 £16.99. Paperback Publisher Hawthorn Press Orders Tel: 01453 757040 info@hawthornpress.com www.hawthornpress.com Review by Neil HentyInvolving Parents in their Children's Learning: a knowledge-sharing approach Margy Whalley and the Pen Green Centre Team ISBN 9781473946224 £16.99 Paperback Publisher SAGE/Learning Matters Orders Tel: 020 73248500; www.sagepublications.com Review by Neil HentyListening to Young Children: a guide to understanding and using the Mosaic Approach Alison Clark ISBN 9781909391222 £18.99 Paperback Publisher NCB/Jessica Kingsley Orders Tel: 02078332307 www.jkp.com Review by Neil Henty

This paper draws upon research projects in which efforts have been made to find ways of listening to young children’s voices in early years contexts. This listening, namely in the mosaic approach, helps us to see how children make sense of their world, and adopt our planning and ‘being with’ young children. After setting the context of early years pedagogy and ideology of mosaic approach, this paper focuses on the researcher’s journey to turn her gaze inward before making any claims about her engagement with and listening to young children. Since this approach purposely leaves unanswered the question what kind of data is going to be collected, researchers have to decide what data is in the course of a research project, through their engagement with children. We argue for befriending uncertainty and dilemmatic thinking as it provides us with a different way of seeing, knowing and listening the hard to know. Through writing about phronêsis, this paper focuses on the process of decision-making and judgements that researchers undertake. The final argument calls for attentiveness and aims to acknowledge practical judgements as a fundamental part of researching early years.

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Crayons and iPads: Learning and Teaching of Young Children in the Digital World

10.4135/9781473916012 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Debra Harwood

Keyword(s):

Young Children ◽

Learning And Teaching ◽

Digital World

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Play-based Learning and Intentional Teaching: Forever Different?

Australasian Journal of Early Childhood ◽

10.23965/ajec.42.2.01 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 42 (2) ◽

pp. 4-11 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Susan Edwards

Keyword(s):

Early Childhood ◽

Early Childhood Education ◽

Young Children ◽

Social Interactions ◽

Early Years ◽

Curriculum Innovation ◽

Childhood Education ◽

Children’S Learning ◽

Children's Learning

PLAY-BASED LEARNING IS a cornerstone of early childhood education provision. Play provides opportunities for young children to explore ideas, experiment with materials and express new understandings. Play can be solitary, quiet and reflective. Play can also be social, active and engaging. While play is commonly understood as the basis for learning in early childhood education, this is not always the situation in all settings. Cultural variations in learning and play suggest that social interactions and observational learning also create powerful pedagogical learning environments for young children. International and national research highlights the value of sustained and reflective interactions between children and educators in promoting children's learning. Increasingly, the notion of quality in play-based pedagogy invites educators to integrate traditional beliefs about play with new insights into the role of social interactions, modelling and relationships in young children's learning. Overseas, the movement towards quality play-based pedagogy reflects debate and policy initiatives captured by the notion of intentional teaching. In Australia, the Early Years Learning Framework makes explicit reference to intentional teaching. Intentional teaching arguably engages educators and children in shared thinking and problem solving to build the learning outcomes of young children. However, the pedagogical relationship between play-based learning and intentional teaching remains difficult to conceptualise. This is because the value placed on the exploratory potential of play-based learning can appear to be at odds with the role of intentional teaching in promoting knowledge development. This paper reaches beyond binary constructs of play and intentional teaching, and invites consideration of a new Pedagogical Play-framework for inspiring pedagogical and curriculum innovation in the early years. This paper was a keynote address at the 2016 Early Childhood Australia National Conference addressing the theme Inspire-be inspired to reach beyond quality.

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Acts of pedagogical resistance: Marking out an ethical boundary against human technologies

Policy Futures in Education ◽

10.1177/1478210320976978 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 147821032097697

Author(s):

Lynn J McNair ◽

Caralyn Blaisdell ◽

John M Davis ◽

Luke J Addison

Keyword(s):

Early Childhood ◽

Action Research ◽

Early Childhood Education ◽

Young Children ◽

Early Years ◽

Action Research Project ◽

Research Project ◽

Childhood Education ◽

Children’S Learning ◽

Early Childcare

This article highlights an action research project that sparked transformation regarding how early years practitioners documented children’s learning. The dominant discourse of standardisation and narrowing of early childhood education, encapsulated in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s International Early Learning Study, has resulted in the ‘shaping’ and ‘testing’ of young children around the globe. The OECD has become very interested in early childhood education and is a very instrumental player today (Moss, 2018). Consequently, the testing of young children has been instigated by governments to ensure children gain the accepted knowledge, skills and dispositions required to be successful learners. Situated within this context of testing and standardisation, this article will share knowledge gained from a small action research project that took place in one Scottish early years setting. The study was stimulated by the early years practitioners of the setting, who strongly opposed the ‘reductionist’ formal ‘tick-box’ assessments produced by their local authority. These types of didactic formal assessments suggest that pedagogy is underpinned by a desire to tame, predict, prepare, supervise and evaluate learning. This article is of critical importance as it examines the imposition of didactic assessment from the practitioners’ perspective. The practitioners in the study contested that ‘tick-box’ assessments diminished children’s identities down to a list of judgements about their academic abilities, or lack thereof. The introduction of the ‘tick-box’ assessments presented a dilemma for the practitioners, in terms of the different views of the government and practitioners of what knowledge is worth knowing and what individuals and groups are able to learn. Many of the practitioners from the early childcare and learning setting positioned themselves and their work as being consciously different from what was going on in the wider sector. The early childcare and learning setting employed in this article introduced a new method to capture children’s learning, which they named the ‘Lived Story’ approach. In this article, we argue that Lived Stories are a form of narrative assessment which are designed to track children’s progress whilst respecting the complexity of their learning, their position within the learning process, the flow/fluidity of their ways of being and their ability to act in radical, creative and innovative ways. We conclude that by using ‘Lived Stories’ practitioners were able to lessen the surety of the language we use. The article highlights that as practitioners write Lived Stories and assess children’s progress they are freed to use language such as ‘wondering, puzzling, thinking, exploring’. In turn, we demonstrate that this language, and the ideas it enables, are on a continuum; a journey that spans a lifetime.

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Early Years: young children deserve the best possible start in life

FORUM ◽

10.15730/forum.2015.57.1.31 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 57 (1) ◽

pp. 31 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

LEENA ROBERTSON

Keyword(s):

Young Children ◽

Early Years

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Risk Management Aspects of the Learning and Teaching in the School Network Phokaram Suphanburi Primary Education Service Area Office 2

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.3137119 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Oraphan Toujinda ◽

Pongthep Jiraro

Keyword(s):

Risk Management ◽

Primary Education ◽

Service Area ◽

Learning And Teaching ◽

Education Service ◽

School Network

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An Interview with Associate Professor Margaret Plunkett

Australasian Journal of Gifted Education ◽

10.21505/ajge.2020.0015 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 47-53

Keyword(s):

Primary Education ◽

Gifted Education ◽

Teacher Educator ◽

Associate Professor ◽

Professional Experience ◽

Teaching Excellence ◽

Learning And Teaching ◽

National Office ◽

Vice Chancellors

Associate Professor Margaret Plunkett, Federation University, Australia, has over 30 years' experience in education. She currently coordinates and lectures in a range of courses and programs in both secondary and primary education, related to gifted education and professional experience. Margaret has won a number of awards for teaching excellence including the Monash Vice Chancellors Teaching Excellence Award (Special Commendation, 2010); the Pearson/ATEA Teacher Educator of the Year Award (2012); and a National Office of Learning of Learning and Teaching (OLT) Citation in 2014.

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