Victoria Carr

Playscapes: a pedagogical paradigm for play and learning

Childrens playgrounds in the USA typically reflect an archaic view of children blowing off steam or, in schools, as a place for teachers to get a break from children. Even so, children are spending less and less time on playgrounds and even less time in play. A thoughtfully designed playscape with a focus on nature is an alternative to traditional playgrounds, one that is environmentally sound. Research indicates that children learn academic concepts, engage in physical activities, investigate scientific principles, and enhance development in all domains through nature play. Playscapes promote early science learning and demonstrate sustainability principles. In essence, playscapes can sanction play and recess as an academic learning venue while serving as an early educational model for the next wave of environmentalism.

Can playscapes promote early childhood inquiry towards environmentally responsible behaviors? An exploratory study

This paper investigates young children’s exploratory play and inquiry on playscapes: playgrounds specifically designed to connect children with natural environments. Our theoretical framework posits that playscapes combine the benefits of nature and play to promote informal science exploration of natural materials. This, in turn, is expected to lead to environmental science literacy, which in turn is likely to strengthen a child’s ecological identity and lead to environmentally responsible behaviors (ERBs). The following questions are of specific interest: to what extent do children go beyond observations and explorations and use science-specific representations and language during their play on playscapes? What locations on the playscape afford science-specific activities? And how do these activities relate to their play on the playscape? In an attempt to answer these questions, we describe data obtained from a video analysis of preschoolers visiting a playscape. As a means of initial comparison, we also analyzed data obtained from a traditional playground. We examine the intersection of children’s play and inquiry within specific areas of interest at the two sites. The two sites vary in many dimensions, including size, familiarity, and access to natural materials. Nevertheless, our data provide initial support for our hypothesis that natural environments promote explorations and inquiry, fostering ERBs.

Preparing Doctoral-Level Consultants for Systems Change: Implementing and Supervising Multitiered Practices in Early Childhood Education

Implementing changes that support a preventative approach in early childhood education (ECE) requires the collaboration of skilled professionals. The present case study describes a change effort to implement multitiered systems of support (MTSS) in early childhood settings that included collaboration of agency personnel, school psychology program faculty and trainees, and ECE faculty. It describes a competency-based training initiative that provides applied experiences in consultation, supervision, and change facilitation for systems change efforts. The implementation of a systems-level approach for promoting positive behavior at three ECE agencies is described, with resulting teacher and child outcomes. Implications for future consultation research, training, and practice are discussed in relation to a consultation training model that provides competency-based field experiences to support change in ECE.

Preschoolers Learning Science: Myth or Reality?

ion, because the fact’s relevant pieces of information are readily accessible in a single event. By contrast, the idea that caterpillars turn into butterflies is more abstract: caterpillars and butterflies need to be conceptually connected, while differences between the two need to be ignored (e.g., shape, behavior). Similarly, the idea that water can turn into ice is less abstract than the idea that materials consist of particles that are invisible to the naked eye. The latter requires the learner to ignore salient features of an object (e.g., the shape or size of a material), and instead note underlying patterns of how materials interact and change. Can young children learn low-abstraction science facts? This question is relatively trivial, as one might guess from every-day experiences with children (e.g., Cumming, 2003). For example, preschoolers can learn with little effort the names of new species, the names of the planets, and even the terms associated with material properties and chemical change (e.g., Fleer & Hardy, 1993). However, educators sometimes worry that children’s learning of facts is no more than passive rote memorization, far from reflecting ‘truly understanding’ the facts. At the crux of this concern is that young children might not be able to go beyond mere facts to interconnect them under a common concept. Even though there is evidence of spontaneous abstractions in young children (e.g., Hickling & Gelman 1995; Hickling & Current Topics in Childrens Learning and Cognition 48 Wellman, 2001), higher-order concepts pertinent to science knowledge might be too abstract for them. The more central question, therefore, is whether young children can learn abstract concepts. There is an interesting drawback when it comes to learning abstract concepts. Unlike what one would expect, findings show that overly detailed and richly embedded learning materials have a negative impact on children’s ability to abstract underlying concepts (e.g., Goldstone & Sakamoto, 2003; Goldstone, & Son; 2005; Kaminski, Sloutsky, & Heckler, 2008; Ratterman, Gentner, & DeLoache, 1990; Son, Smith, & Goldstone, 2008). For example, when the learning materials were colored shaped intricately, children had more difficulty discovering an abstract mathematical rule than when the materials were black-and-white simple shapes (Kaminski et al., 2008). When the shapes were such that they helped children intuit the rules, learning improved, but transfer to a new task nevertheless suffered, compared to using none-specific and generic shapes (see also DeLoache, 1995; Bassok & Holyoak, 1989; Mix, 1999; Ratterman & Gentner, 1998; Sloutsky, Kaminski, & Heckler, 2005; Uttal, Liu, & DeLoache, 1999; Uttal, Scudder, & DeLoache, 1997). Taken together, there seems to be a pronounced advantage of sparse contexts when learning abstract concepts. The advantage lies in minimizing distraction, undermining the possibility of forming mistaken ideas, and highlighting relevant pieces of information. Of course, when it comes to young children, a motivational factor needs to be taken into account (cf., Mantzicopoulos, Patrick, & Samarapungavan 2008; Zembylas, 2008). A setting without rich details might fail to engage the child sufficiently to prompt learning. For example, a young child might not be inclined to explore objects unless they vary in color, shape, and texture in interesting ways. Therefore, to make abstract ideas accessible to young children, it might not be possible to strip the context of any unnecessary complexity. A different approach to instruction is needed, one that helps make abstract ideas visible to children, while, at the same time, retaining a richly detailed context. Such approach might require a pedagogy that bootstraps the understanding of abstract ideas, rather than waiting for young children to detect them by themselves. Findings show that such approach is indeed possible. Take for example the abstract idea of object conservation, the idea that matter exists, even when it is not visible with the naked eye. To understand this concept, children have to ignore their phenomenological experience of an object’s presence and therefore engage in abstract reasoning. Immersing children into a richly detailed environment might not make this abstract idea salient. On the other hand, providing children with the opportunity to reflect on guided explorations of material transformation improved their understanding of object conservation (Acher, Arca & Sanmarti, 2007). In particular, 7to 8-year-olds were asked to observe possible changes in materials (e.g., stones, wood, water, metal) when they were trying to break them down, mix them in water, or burn them. After each manipulation, children were encouraged to draw the changes they observed in the materials. They also participated in group discussions designed to help them conceptualize their experiences. Findings show not only that children were able to express opinions and counter arguments, Preschoolers Learning Science: Myth or Reality? 49 but also that they could understand object conservation. Even 5-year-old preschoolers can appreciate the idea that water, when invisible to the naked eye, is nevertheless still present in some form (Tytler & Peterson, 2000). Replacing Existing Beliefs. Learning about a new science concept can be problematic, beyond the required abstract-reasoning skills. This is because in some cases, children’s naïve ideas about the domain conflict with the pertinent science concept. The detrimental power of mistaken ideas has been recognized for decades, leading to extensive research into understanding both the nature of the misconceptions across ages and how they can be changed (e.g., see Ohlsson, 2011; Vosniadou, 2008, for an extensive discussion). Indeed, existing misconceptions appear to be very difficult to change (e.g., Anderson & Smith, l987; Gunstone, Champagne, & Klopfer, 1981; Hannust, & Kikas, 2007; Kloos & Somerville, 2001; Linn & Burbules, 1988; Schneps, 1987). In many instances, children prefer mistaken ideas over correct ideas, even after extensive training and even after shortcomings of mistaken ideas have been pointed out explicitly. Take for example findings with 5to 7-year-olds who participated in an astronomy curriculum on the spherical properties of the earth (Hannust, & Kikas, 2007). The four-week curriculum involved hands-on mini-lessons designed to target several apparent contractions, for example why the earth is perceived to be flat, or why people living on the “down-side” of the earth do not fall off. Yet, despite this relatively extensive intervention, children’s understanding did not change significantly over the course of the instruction. While their performance on a pretest was below chance (11% correct), it stayed low even after the lessons (15% correct). In fact, results show that children relied more heavily on their phenomenological experience after instruction than before (see also Kloos & Van Orden, 2005 for similar counter effects of teaching interventions). Given such resistance to change, one might speculate that a child’s mistaken ideas are innate. But upon closer look into the nature of beliefs, it turns out that misconceptions arise when misleading pieces of information are more salient than pieces of information that are relevant to the particular science concept (cf., Kloos, Fisher, & Van Orden, 2010). Therefore, to change a child’s mistaken ideas in a science domain, a pedagogical approach is needed that can change the salience of relevant compared to irrelevant pieces of information (i.e., increase the salience of science-relevant pieces of information). With such change in making relevant information salient, misconceptions might be avoided altogether. Indeed, children who have benefitted from focused instruction seem to harbor fewer misconceptions in later years at school (cf., Novak & Gowin, 1984.) A promising approach in this regard is the use of conceptual models, also known as conceptual schemas, mental models, or scientific models (e.g., Glynn & Duit, 1995; Kenyon, Schwarz, & Hug, 2008; Mayer, 1989, Penner, Giles, Lehrer, & Schauble, 1997; Smith, Snir, & Grosslight, 1992; Smith & Unger, 1997, for a review see Vosniadou, 2008). Conceptual models are abstract representations of a science phenomenon – external diagrams of some sort that children can internalize. Models do not represent the real world in its full degree of complexity. Instead, they are schematics of the real world, designed to highlight only a selected number of relations (the ones that are relevant to the science concept of interest), Current Topics in Childrens Learning and Cognition 50 while downplaying other relations (ones that are less relevant or misleading). Importantly, models represent predictive and explanatory rules, thus making visible the components of science phenomenon that are difficult to be perceived on the basis of phenomenological experience alone. As such, they make relevant science facts salient, in effect decreasing the salience of irrelevant pieces of information. There are several studies that show the effectiveness of conceptual models in young children (e.g., Gobert & Buckley, 2000; Kenyon et al. 2008; Wiser & Smith, 2008; Baker, Haussmann, Kloos, & Fisher, 2011). An illustrative example uses the science domain of material density, a concept that is defined by the ratio of the two highly salient dimensions of mass and volume. Predictably, children often ignore density and use instead perceived heaviness of an object as the sole predictor of the object’s buoyancy (e.g., Piaget & Inhelder, 1974; Kloos et al., 2010). To help children overcome this mistaken focus on an object’s heaviness, a conceptual model of density was developed, also known as dot-per-box (e.g., Smith & Unger, 1997; Wiser & Smith, 2008). It involves a display in which the volume of an object is represented as a certain number of boxes, and mass is represented

Improving Instruction in Head Start Preschool Classrooms Through Feedback and Support to Teachers

This article discusses the use of data-based feedback and support to teachers in Head Start classrooms to facilitate increased use of effective instructional and managerial practices. The authors conducted a study to examine the impact of providing Head Start preschool classroom teachers with data regarding their use of established instructional and managerial practices, encouraging teacher self-selection of goals for improvement, and giving ongoing feedback and support related to goal attainment. Although the individual teacher outcomes varied, the results suggest that professional development accompanied by data-based individualized teacher feedback and support can improve teacher use of effective instructional strategies. Strengths, challenges, and implications for Head Start teachers are discussed.

Children’s right to play in Papua New Guinea: insights from children in years 3–8

ABSTRACT This paper describes children’s participation in and perceptions of a redeveloped playground in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The playground was a partnership between three western early childhood education academics and a teacher education faculty at the Pacific Adventist University (PAU), PNG to promote children’s right to play. Children in PNG are typically deterred from playing during school lunch and recess and school playgrounds mostly consist of open grassed areas. Three hundred children attending the PAU on campus primary school (Years 3–8) led the design, assisted with the build and reflected on their experiences and feelings about the playground. Both boys and girls overwhelmingly reported positive experiences and feelings towards the playground including students in Years 7 and 8 who were not permitted to use the playground. This study demonstrated that school playgrounds can enact children’s right to play and that children can participate in both playground design and research in PNG.