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Parental involvement in education
Importance of parent involvement in children's education
Importance of parent involvement in children's education
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Fleer (2007) refers to the important contribution the practitioner makes with regards to initial scientific exploration in the early years. This is concurred by Cowie & Otrel-Cass (2011) who also discuss the importance of planning horizontal learning to enable deeper understanding by the child. However Gee (2004) warns of how this may appear like ‘mucking around’ to the untrained eye. This was found to be the case when the child was seen to throw the leaves in the air time and time again singing ‘autumn leaves are falling down’.
The school woodland area where the activity took place is referred to by the EYFS (EE,2012) as an enabling environment, placed within the four themes. The provision of which provides a safe and secure place within which the child can interact and explore, to enable independence. The Reggio Emilia approach, (1945) as evoked by Miller, Cable and Devero (2005) refer to the environment as the third educator. This is concurred by Niklasson & Sandberg (2010) who refer to the outdoor nursery environment as the representation of the world of the child. This was found by the practitioner when features of the natural environment triggered reflection by the child on a previous investigation into leaf varieties during a family walk.
Nevertheless Maynard and Waters (2007) discuss how merely being outside is not enough. The interaction by the practitioner is paramount as referred to by Rogers (2012) who discusses how the confidence of the practitioner to deliver such activities, impacts greatly on the quality of pedagogy the child receives. However this is further discussed stating that the practitioner who self reflects on unknown knowledge and researches this, is found to increase in confidence, resulting in the practitioner allowing the child more free exploration, rather than being driven by the end product of the activity. This was found to be the case when in the practitioner’s experience, through the confidence to allow the planning to be led in a different direction, the focus became the texture and sound of the leaves while collection took place, leading to deeper discussions and heuristic understanding by the child.
Farmery(2002) refers to how for the child, science is about the heuristic exploration, involving independent discovery and questioning which in turn places ownership on child’s own learning. The use of open ended questioning used during the activity is discussed by Kawalkar & Vijapurkar (2013) as the key to quality pedagogy and the scaffolding of scientific knowledge and sustained shared thinking.
Ecology in early childhood education means the study of the relationships and interactions between human groups and their surrounding conditions that impact on the child’s development and learning. Any changes to the surrounding conditions start from the most intimate home ecological system moving outward to the larger school system and the most expansive system which is society and culture. Each of these systems inevitably interacts with and influences each other and every aspect of the child’s life. According to famous psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, ‘he divided the person's environment into five different levels: the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, the macrosystem, and the chronosystem’ (Study.com
In this assignment I am going to describe a child observation that I have done in a nursery for twenty minutes in a play setting. I will explain the strengths and weaknesses of naturalistic observation through the key developmental milestones based in Mary Sheridan (2005) check-list and provide a theoretical explanation to support the naturalistic observation.
The article uses photographs as a way to bounce information between the child and the researcher. This is a good example of children using meaning-making and narrative to make “sense of the world and of experiences” (Wright, 2012, p. 18).This allows the adult to see “through the eyes of the child” (Wright, 2012, p. 18). This helps the adult gain information about what is engaging and challenging about the children’s learning environments from the child (Smith, Duncan, & Marshall, 2005) to then make a difference in the children lives to make it more engaging and challenging. This is also seen in Childhood studies where children are seen as rights holders. Children need to have the opportunity to express their opinion and voice their thoughts on any subject/experience that interests or provokes them. It’s the role of the adult to be able to understand what the child is saying and advocate for them. The documentation approach is making the children’s learning visible (Clark & Kinney, 2006). It’s seen in the article where the children’s learning is visible through photos and through their interpretations of those photos. At the core of the documentation approach is the belief that “children should be at the centre of decisions about their learning and development” (Clark & Kinney, 2006, p. 4). This approach allows children’s voices, views and understanding (Clark & Kinney, 2006, p. 4) to be heard helping adults to better understand the children to help make the right change/difference in the children’s lives. The Mosaic approach is about enabling children to “explore their perspectives” (Clark & Kinney, 2006, p. 9). This approach embraces children as social actors who are social beings in a social world who’s “interaction[s] make a difference”
On the contrary, it was often as good as many adult scientists. However, children’s limited life experience meant that they had not assembled and processed enough information about the natural and social world to come to the same conclusions that adults do. But Piaget concludes that children should not be oppressed with more facts at an early age, he believed the opposite. That such oppression would condition children to expect the answers to come from outside themselves, robbing them of their creativity. He also believed that adults must use caution about correcting children’s “mistaken notions.” If done too harshly, or in a patronizing manner, such correcting shames them into intellectual passivity, causing them to abandon their innate urge to figure things out for themselves and to come up with new and creative
As I was reading all theorists I became more interested on how each theory manifest in children. I decided to try Piaget’s theory with my 20-month old nephew. I gave him some play dough and asked him to play with it. He touched it and cut it into pieces. When I began to rolling it and making small balls of play dough he tried to do the same thing. He took my balls from my hands and began playing with them, smashing and making other things with it. By building and creating different shapes he moved the concept of conservation while playing.
Since being developed by Bronfenbrenner in 1979 social ecological perspectives have been widely used to formulate practice guidelines and government policies when planning service needs for children, young people and their families. This essay will discuss what a social ecological perspective consists of, what limitations it may incur and how it can assist us in developing best practice and understanding when working with children, young people and families. It will draw on examples from K218 for illustrative purposes.
Education (2008) agreed that collaboration and argumentation will help children in building their knowledge as they reformulate the ideas based on their intuition. Wellman (1990) as cited in Edition (2003) mention that “Children begin in the preschool years to develop sophisticated understandings (whether accurate or not) of the phenomena around them”. This understanding is one of the foundations that realize, children are able to integrate new concepts and information then construct new knowledge.
I believe children should be encouraged to learn, that as a teacher it is my job to help them find the way of learning that works best for them. I feel that students should be able to explore the world around them and learn from hands on activities. This type of learning style goes along with both Piaget and Vygotsky’s theories on learning. My theory leans more closely to Vygotsky’s theory due to the fact that I believe that the “play and exploration” should be structured and directed so that as a teacher I can help to guide the information that the students are learning. Such as in the case of the students exploring the playground outside, I feel that I should tell them what we are focusing on the insects that we can find in the playground. This directing helps to keep the students on topic and task while
The location of the observation was at the Community Center (Early Childhood education program) at 11:00am to 12:30pm on April 15, 2014. The meaningful experiences in early childhood education can positively shape children's development. With a teacher is guidance authentic child-art activity can educate enrich young students' learning abilities, encourage positive attitudes toward other children, and more importantly, learn to interact with people around them in the contemporary world. However, art for young students often takes many diversified approaches and emphasizing questionable practices. Observation is a part of meaningful and authentic early childhood art education. Observation enriches children’s experiences in their environment, gives them motivation to study, interact with other children and follow the practices of their adult models. Moreover, they develop strategies and skills to represent objects in their environment.
The main concept of Jean Piaget’s theory is that he believes in children being a scientist by experimenting things and making observations with their senses. This approach emphasizes on how children’s ability can make sense of their immediate everyday surroundings. Piaget also proposed that children perceived to four stages based on maturation and experiences. Piaget’s theory was guided by assumptions of how a learner interacts with their own environment and how they integrate new knowledge and information into existing knowledge. Briefly, he proposed that children are active learners who construct knowledge from their own environment. They learn through assimilation and accommodation in complex cognitive development. Furthermore, interaction with physical and social environments is the key and development occurs in stages. An example of Jean Piaget theory carried out in the classroom is that giving children a great deal of hands-on practice, by using concrete props and visual aids. Taking into consideration and being sensitive to the possibility that
The ability for children to discover is innate. From birth children discover all sorts of different things about the world around them. It has even been said that "babies are as good at discovery as the smartest adult" (Gopnik, 2005). Discovering is the natural way that children learn. By interacting with the world around them, they ar...
Furthermore, by introducing shared open spaces with other classes, we can bring out the full potential of the children physically, mentally and emotionally. They will have more sensory play when exposed to a wider range of materials outdoors more often. The importance of sensory play is supported by Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development in the sensorimotor stage which states child’s intelligence is developed by the basic motor and sensory explorations of the world around them.
They also need this relationship to be able to plan their lesson effectively. For children, understanding the nature and process of science is dependent upon their developmental level and the experiences teachers provide for them. Children can begin to understand what science is, who does science, and how scientists work through classroom activities, stories about scientists, and class discussions. Teachers should provide children with many opportunities to make observations with all their senses, to look for patterns in what they observe, and to share with others what they did and what they learnt from their
In Science, teachers serve as the facilitator of learning, guiding them through the inquiry process. Teachers must ask open-ended questions, allow time for the students to answer, avoid telling students what to do, avoid discouraging students’ ideas or behaviors, encourage to find solutions on their own, encourage collaboration, maintain high standards and order, develop inquiry-based assessments to monitor students’ progress, and know that inquiry may be challenging for some students so be prepared to provide more guidance. There are three types of Science inquiry: structured, guided, and open. Structured is the most teacher-centered form of inquiry. This type of inquiry is mainly seen in laboratory exercises where the teacher needs to provide structure, however the students are the ones who conduct the experiment and find conclusions. Guided inquiry is where the students are given tools to develop a process and find the results. As an example, the teacher would instruct the students to build a rocket, but not tell them how to design it. This leaves creativity and uniqueness for the students to be able to apply their knowledge and skills. Open inquiry is when students determine the problem, i...
One of the widest used methods is learning through discovery. Discovery is finding out information using hands on experiments. The children can discover what happens in science and why. They answer the problems for themselves. They use their schema, prior knowledge of science, to search for information. The cycle of scientific discovery is first a question or series of questions are raised. Second, through a discussion a problem is identified and narrowed so that the kids can solve the problem. Third, with the assistance of the teacher, the children propose a way of looking at the problem and then collect the...