Jane Payler

The social experience of early childhood for children with learning disabilities: inclusion, competence and agency

This paper tells of the social experiences of three four‐year‐old children with learning disabilities as they negotiate their daily lives in their homes and early education settings in England. We apply a social model of childhood disability to the relatively unexplored territory of young children and use vignettes drawn from video observation to explore the interactive spaces contained in settings with different cultures of inclusion. Using a multimodal approach to the data we show the nuanced ways in which the children enact their agency. We explore the relationships between agency, culture and structure, and argue that children with learning disabilities are active in making meaning within social and relational networks to which they contribute differently depending on the barriers to doing and being that each network presents. Thus, the paper provides an original use of the notion of distributed competence.

Opening and closing interactive spaces: shaping four-year-old children's participation in two English settings

This paper draws on an ESRC‐funded study (Payler, 2005) of the sociocultural influences on learning processes of 10 four‐year‐old children in their second year of the Foundation Stage in England (DfEE, 2000). The children, very close in age, were in one of two early years settings: a pre‐school playgroup with a largely invisible pedagogy (Bernstein, 1996) and a reception class in a primary school with a more visible pedagogy. In this paper, children′s experiences in specific teaching and learning episodes are used to examine how the pedagogies of the settings created open or closed interactive spaces; inviting, building on or limiting children′s contributions. The study considers a range of communicative modes (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001) used in creating interactive space. It draws on diagrams, outline drawings from video stills and detailed transcription incorporating gaze, body positioning, tone of voice and use of resources to explore factors involved in shaping children′s interactive learning experiences. The findings suggest that although both early years settings worked to the same Foundation Stage curriculum, their sub‐cultures of pedagogy ensured that the curriculum was differently enacted in each, offering quite distinct interactive opportunities for children in which learning was mediated in different ways. This resulted in different learning outcomes according to children′s positions as the youngest or oldest in a cohort and to adults′ perceptions of their abilities.

Multiagency working in the early years: confidence, competence and context

Research and development with regard to interprofessional practice have extended over recent decades to early years services in children’s centres (CCs). However, most children in England attend private and voluntary settings, rather than CCs. where early years practitioners have varying amounts of opportunity, training and experience to work interprofessionally. Developing our Social Practice analysis of case studies, we propose a theoretical framework for interpreting early years interprofessional practice that takes account of specific contexts, noting conditions which promote boundary-crossing competence. This paper presents selected findings from a survey of 52 early years practitioners from England about their experiences of interprofessional working, woven together with case study exemplars. Their extensive responses to open-ended survey questions showed great variation in work with other professions and in reported levels of confidence and competence. However, there were also differences depending on the setting type. Findings suggest the need to tailor training to individual contexts, and argue for securing space for practitioners to gain experience of interprofessional working through mentored opportunities.

Positioning Children’s Voice in Clinical Trials Research: A New Model for Planning, Collaboration, and Reflection

Following the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, there has been considerable growth in research with children about health and services that affect them. Creative methods to engage with children have also been developed. One area where progress has been slower is the inclusion of children’s perspectives in qualitative research in the context of clinical trials or feasibility studies. Addressing this gap, this article discusses experiences of, and reflections on, the process of researching children’s views as part of a clinical feasibility study. The article considers what worked well and highlights remaining dilemmas. A new continuum of children’s engagement in research is presented, designed to assist researchers to make explicit the contingent demands on their research, and to suggest a range of techniques from within the broader fields of health, childhood studies, and education research that could be used to forward qualitative research in clinical contexts.

The professional development of early years educators – achieving systematic, sustainable and transformative change

Within this special issue on professional learning and development (PLD) in the early years sector, we aim to do three things: to highlight the state of play in PLD in early years internationally; to challenge all involved to consider carefully how scarce resources are used, review the PLD on offer and demand what is most effective; and to move the field forward with regard to developing and evaluating effective PLD. This editorial begins by addressing the question of what is distinctive about PLD in the early years and the contexts within which it takes place. We then outline what is current in early years PLD and discuss the themes addressed in the papers presented. While authors of the chapters have adopted local terminology to describe those who work in the early years sector, we have taken the term ‘early years educator’ to include all those adults who are charged, as part of their professional role, with the care and education of young children. The age range spanned by the term ‘early years’ varies between countries from birth to five, from birth to six or seven, or from three to six or seven, depending on specific curricula, nature of provision and funding arrangements. Nonetheless, there is widespread agreement that whatever the policy determinants, ‘early years’ encompasses education and care of children from birth to seven years, wherever that may be located. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) has come somewhat later than other sectors of education to what Ball (2013) refers to as a global project to ensure economic productivity and competitiveness. Increasingly, early years has been brought into this discernible ‘global policy’ discourse that sets out to plan for a particular vision of productive and competitive nations. With it have come distinct ideas about the purpose of early years education and care and the form it should take, not least that it should provide childcare for an increase in the (female) workforce in the short term, ensure a cost-effective means of ensuring a productive and competitive workforce in the long term and reduce inequality by improving outcomes for children from disadvantaged circumstances (UNESCO 2000, 2006, Barnett and Masse 2007, Field 2010, Allen 2011, Barnett and Nores 2012, Heckman and Kautz 2012). Since one of the key factors considered to contribute to the quality of early years education is the quality of its workforce, including levels of qualification and training (SirajBlatchford et al. 2006, Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority 2012), there are clear implications of this global project for the initial training and PLD of early years educators to enable them to deliver the desirable results, most often measured by children’s learning and developmental outcomes. The question is therefore raised about the distinctive nature of the context for professional learning and development in ECEC. The following examples give a flavour of this distinctiveness. Historically, England’s ECEC sector, as in many countries, has been staffed primarily by educators who were vocationally qualified, as well as by unqualified educators. While England’s current statutory framework, revised in

Multi-agency working in the early years

by Michael Gasper, London, Sage, 2010, 176 pp., £21.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-1847875280 This book is an introductory-level text that aims to meet the needs of early childhood students and early yea...

An innovative methodology for capturing young children’s curiosity, imagination and voices using a free app: Our Story

ABSTRACT This study explores children’s narratives of their curiosity and imagination through innovative use of an information technology app – Our Story. Novel use of the app allowed children to express and record their opinions they considered significant to them. The research captured children’s approaches to everyday situations through their play. Introducing the notion of ‘narrative affordances’, findings show how the app facilitated a range of possibilities for recording children’s curiosity and imagination through pictures, text, sound and short video. Children added to and developed their narratives, putting them firmly in control of what they wanted to include and share, providing a unique insight into children’s perspectives.

Reflections from the TACTYC website

On the Training, Advancement and Co-operation in Teaching Young Children (TACTYC) website’s Reflecting on Early Years Issues pages (http://www.tactyc.org. uk/reflections.asp), you will see a variety of articles written mainly from a UK perspective. These short, sometimes experimental, papers are about current issues and are intended to prompt discussion, debate and response from the early years community. For example, a recent furore in England about phonics learning and teaching prompted Dr Dominic Wyse to write a paper, which then received three responses from interested TACTYC web-surfers. The article by David Whitebread and Jane Payler which we include in this issue also raises a very English issue, about the differential experiences of schooling received by the youngest children. We would like to encourage readers of the journal from other countries to contribute to TACTYC’s Reflections webpages. We feel confident there are many issues which would interest our readers and encourage responses from around the world. If you have something you would like to contribute, or if you would like to respond to one of the issues already raised on the website, please send a paper of no more than 2000 words to j.moyles@ntlworld.com.