Self-regulation and its implications for best practice in the EYFS

Dr Julian GrenierHeadteacher, Sheringham Nursery School and Children’s Centre

East London Partnership Teaching School Alliancewww.eleysp.co.uk

Overview of this part of the masterclass• Some of the key messages of the EYFS which relate to self-regulation• The enabling environment: how this supports growing self-regulation• Does development happen naturally in a favourable environment?• Characteristics of effective learning: Sustained Shared Thinking,

Creating and Thinking Critically• The key person approach and promoting children’s personal, social

and emotional development• Why it matters

The importance of the enabling environment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGls-Z4e6OI

Self-regulation and autonomy• Helping children to develop independence

and autonomy is one of the most common aims practitioners propose for early education.• “For most practitioners the declared

priorities in the early years are on the development of positive dispositions to learning, self-confidence and independence.”• Researching Effective Pedagogy in the Early

Years • Siraj-Blatchford et. al., 2002

How does autonomy develop?• It’s not just about enabling

children to be free.• It’s not just about “training”• Smith (1999, p.86): “models of

development which emphasise the child’s natural and spontaneous development from within or of development as being shaped entirely through learning processes have been strongly criticised.”

Autonomy and teaching• As the adult has more

knowledge and experience, the encounter is necessarily unequal; but it is understood by the participants as a process of giving more agency to the child, rather in the manner that Bruner (1995, p.6) describes – “adults treating the child as an agent and bent on ‘teaching’ him to be more so.”

Agency and autonomy

• “Learning and development are facilitated by the participation of the developing person in progressively more complex patterns of reciprocal activity with someone with whom that person has developed a strong and enduring emotional attachment and when the balance of power gradually shifts in favor of the developing person.” (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 60)

Examples of adults creating the conditions for, and teaching, autonomy and creative thinking

Celebrating children’s learningwww.eleysp.co.uk/celebrating-childrens-learning

The EYFS: Creating and thinking critically

• A leading view from the 1970s• “In simple terms, we cannot and have

rarely tried to demonstrate that there are beneficial ‘effects’ of education. It is a matter of common sense and common faith that there are.” • (Webb, 1974, p. 25).

Oxford Preschool Project• “when the adult takes the child’s interest and

ideas as a focus and maintains the interaction contingently rather than programmatically.” Wood, McMahon and Cranstoun, 1980, p.205• adults tutor children to solve problems

through “scaffolding” or “‘controlling’ those elements of the task that are initially beyond the learner’s capacity” • Wood, Bruner and Ross, 1976, p.90

Oxford Preschool Project: programmatic approaches to learning• a child bursts out with the comment that “my

Daddy’s dead, but I’ve got a grandfather and he’s going to take me to school”, only for the practitioner to reply “is he?” and then continue “asking the children to recite in turn ‘it-is-Wednesday-the-thirtieth-of-June-hot-and-sunny’”. • Garland and White, 1980, p. 53

The EPPE Project and Sustained Shared Thinking (SST)• “An episode in which two or more

individuals ‘work together’ in an intellectual way to solve a problem, clarify a concept, evaluate activities, extend a narrative etc. Both parties must contribute to the thinking and it must develop and extend.”• Researching Effective Pedagogy in the

Early Years (REPEY) • Siraj-Blatchford et. al., 2002

SST• Not necessary to be extended/long

conversation. Key thing is “a contribution to thinking” • Can be child-to-child. • “May include ‘standing back’ and

allowing the child to explore, familiarize, solve problems, and think by themselves or in pairs as well as intervening and supporting the child”• Siraj et. al., 2015

The zone of proximal development

• “The distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86)

Guided play pedagogy (Dr Sveta Mayer, 2016)1. Adult creates and manipulates a learning environment for child to play within which will guide child’s learning experience. 2. Child self-initiates and self-directs their experience of learning within the environment through play. 3. Adult observes, monitors and presses (prompts) child’s play and thereby learning experiences when needed. 4. Adult co-plays with child or involves child-peer co-play and communication as child interacts within both the learning and social environment. 5. Adult extends or creates new learning environment for child to spontaneously play within which will further guide child’s learning experience. (based on Weisberg et al, 2013; Wood, 2013)

In reviewing the literature for this paper, the strongest theoretical resonances were found with Vygotsky (1978) who described a process where an educator supports children’s learning within their ‘zone of proximal development’. But interactions of this sort have also been described as “distributed cognitions” (Salomon, 1993), in terms of the pedagogy of ‘‘guided participation’’ (Rogoff, Mistry, Göncü & Mosier, 1993), and as ‘scaffolding’ (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976). Similar examples of participation and interaction also characterise ’dialogic teaching’ (Alexander, 2004), ‘dialogic enquiry’ (Wells, 1999), ‘interthinking’ (Mercer 2000, p141), and ‘mutualist and dialectical pedagogy’ (Bruner, 1996, p57). (Siraj-Blatchford, 2009)

The key person approach and promoting children’s personal, social and emotional development

• As we saw earlier, the experience of attuned, warm care helps children to regulate their emotions and, in turn, care for other children in the group.• Approaches rooted in the key person approach and the EYFS promote

what Kochanska, Coy and Murray (2001b) call “committed compliance” as opposed to “situational compliance”

• “Situational compliance is a superficial compliance with an adults wishes usually when the adult is present whereas in committed compliance the child has accepted or internalised the external agenda and acts accordingly irrespective of an adult’s presence. Kochanska et al. contend that this committed compliance is ultimately the more powerful since ‘the child embraces the caregiver’s agenda, and thus experiences compliance as self- generated and not interfering with striving for autonomy’ and is therefore more likely to lead to ‘voluntary, thoughtful adaptive and effective self-regulation’. (p. 1008)”• Evangelou et al. (2009)

…although• “…It is important to note, as Schaffer (2006, p.200) points out, that

some degree of non- compliance may also be important in development, particularly around the second year of life when the children are learning to assert their own autonomy and independence.”• Evangelou et al. (2009)

Not just behaviour management

Why are these approaches so important?• “As Snow, Tabors & Dickinson, (2001) have shown, extended discourse

and exposure to rich vocabulary in the home is a strong predictor of early elementary language and literacy growth and as I have argued elsewhere (Siraj-Blatchford, 2009), these practices are ubiquitous in middle class, western family contexts, but they can’t be taken for granted elsewhere. The EPPE research (Siraj-Blatchford & Sylva, 2004) provides only one of the most recent contributions to a growing body of evidence that shows that there are many disadvantaged children in even the wealthiest of countries that deserve our very best pedagogical efforts when they attend pre-school settings.”• (Siraj-Blatchford, 2009)