TELEVISION AND THE EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG

This paper, from the 1979 Conference, ‘Television In Society’ begins by defining the educational process as one of persisting, despite initial failures, to acquire understanding or mastery, and underlining the uniqueness of each individual learner. The author reports on the results of a one‐year study of the viewing habits of pre‐school children. Little ‘rising fives’ are such heavy viewers that they must feel a sense of loss when school attendance deprives them of ‘their’ television, perhaps the most valuable ‘child‐minder’ of all. Television delights these veteran under‐five viewers and provides an aid that parents and teachers can welcome; it also seems to stimulate little or no ‘participation’ and to inhibit language skills. Older children are also voracious viewers, but the author's experience suggests that television does not of itself inhibit reading and that to blame violent behaviour on viewing of violence is humbug. In conclusion it is suggested that educators are as yet failing to recognize the paramount importance of television in children's lives: there is an urgent need for education to acknowledge this in its curricula and for children (and adults) to find out more about how television is created. The Educational Television Association could play an important role here.     

Exploring the tactfulness of implementing play in the classroom: a Hong Kong experience

‘Learning through play’ in early childhood education is widely advocated, but studies show that play is not easily enacted in classrooms. The quality of learning through play has been questioned in various countries, especially when learning outcomes are a global concern. This paper examines how one teacher implemented learning through play within a formal and didactic Hong Kong pre-school classroom. Following this real-life adaptation of the play pedagogy, this paper aims to illuminate the practical theories of linking play with learning in the classroom. The findings support the adoption of ‘play’ in young children's learning and reveal tactful ways in which a teacher can encourage the evolving ‘flow’ of children's play while simultaneously scaffolding their learning. The paper analyses the tact involved in the above process and suggests key dimensions for realizing ‘learning through play’ in the classroom.     

Talk about texts at the computer: using ICT to develop children's oral and literate abilities

This article describes the outcomes of recent research on children's talk while engaged in joint literacy activities in primary school (Year 5). The research is based on a conception of talk as a tool for ‘thinking together’, with computer software being treated as a resource for organising and focusing children's involvement in collaborative activities. The results are used to discuss the value of classroom talk and computer‐based activities for promoting children's literacy development.     

Children's participation in school grounds developments: creating a place for education that promotes children's social inclusion

This paper advances the idea that ‘education for the social inclusion of children’ is similar but different to ‘inclusive education’ as it has come to be understood and used by some authors and UK government documents. ‘Inclusive education’ tends to carry an inward emphasis on the participation of children in the education system (with discussions on school culture, transitions, truancy, exclusion rates, underachievement, and school leaving age). In contrast, education for the promotion of children's social inclusion requires an outward emphasis on children's participation in ‘mainstream’ society while they are still children. The latter emphasis is seen to be lacking in educational policy discourse in Scotland though a recent shift in policy towards education for active citizenship is noted. Examples are provided to show how many policy statements enact a limitation on the scope for education to promote children's social inclusion by emphasizing children's deficits as social actors and focussing on the ‘condition’ of social exclusion. The paper draws on an empirical study of children's participation in changing school grounds in Scotland. The analysis shows how the enclosure of learning in books, classrooms and normative curricula was challenged. Learning from school grounds developments was constructed relationally and spatially, but the scope of what was to be learned was often delineated by adults. The paper closes with a discussion of how education that promotes the social inclusion of children will benefit from seeing both children and adults as current though partial citizens and using socio-spatial opportunities for the generation of uncertain curricula through their shared and/or differentiated participation.     

Playful talk: the interspace between home and school discourse

The paper reminds readers of the importance of ‘playful talk’ in bridging home and school discourses. Through a number of excerpts of bilingual and monolingual children drawn from homes and classrooms over the past decade, it illustrates how school discourse may be taken home and transformed into ‘home talk’ through play. During this transformation, children take ownership of both the language and cultural practice of the classroom. Similarly, it shows the importance of providing the interspace for children to bring home talk into classrooms during socio‐dramatic play. The paper also illustrates the role of family members, particularly siblings and grandparents, in enabling young children to construct bridges between home and school during play activities. Finally, the paper stresses the importance of teachers in recognizing children's different linguistic and cultural resources in their classroom practices and provision.     

Talk about texts: reading as a social event

Drawing on anthropological evidence that interactions with texts are often mediated through oral language practices and Vygotsky's ideas about the primacy of social dialogue for individual intellectual development, the authors argue that children's informal talk about both electronic and printed texts throws new light on the reading process as a whole. They analyse children's talk about a school library book, a piece of graffiti, a television programme and a film to show how readings are shaped by the social organization and personal relationships of the readers, whether in curriculum activities, friendship groups or at home in the family. Readings are constructed, contested and negotiated through talk at the point where texts are first calculated and reshaped again when they are jointly recalled. Talk also helps to construct the text's legitimate audience and the reader's position within it.     

Children writing funny stories: some reflections on the impact of collaborative talk

This article describes work undertaken with a class of Scottish Primary Six children (aged 10) that encouraged them to write humorous stories. It reflects on the impact of different teaching approaches, in particular exploring how teacher‐led input combined with opportunities for peer talk might serve to influence children's writing. The aims were first, to investigate whether, through ‘mini lessons’, children's story schemas could be expanded to include ideas about incongruity, and second, to discover how independent talking in pairs might encourage children to take up and reformulate ideas given in the initial teacher‐led input. During the sessions following the ‘mini lessons’, many opportunities for paired talk were offered. These were found to lead to a reinterpretation of ideas of incongruity, and to affect the selection and devising of voices for characters. The children's talk often gave evidence of a marked ability to describe humour and act it out orally, but analysis of the written stories reveals difficulties in writing down comic events. This has implications for the role of the teacher in finding ways to intervene sensitively to introduce new strategies.     

Education for responsibility: Fifty teacher staff‐colleges

ABSTRACT

This paper traces the way discourses within early years policy and practice impose meanings onto the signifier ‘play’. Drawing on Bernstein's conceptualisation of recontextualising strategies, we explore how these meanings regulate troubling excesses in children's ‘play’. The analysis foregrounds an underlying question about the hold the signifier ‘play’ maintains within discourses that appear antithetical to traditional understandings of ‘play’.     

What remains of history? Historical epistemology and historical understanding in Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence

This paper critically examines the framing of historical knowledge in the primary and ‘broad general education’ phases (ages 4–14) of Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence. The paper focuses on curriculum documentation, particularly the curriculum's aims and ‘Experiences and Outcomes’ and evaluates these in light of recent research on children's historical understanding. It is argued that the decision to frame historical understanding as ‘People, Past Events and Societies’ within the context of a ‘social studies’ curriculum area has been motivated by a misunderstanding of history's unique disciplinary identity. It is argued that history curricula must take account of the unique ontological and epistemological challenges posed by investigating the past and that by failing to do this, ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ offers children in Scotland a problematic representation of what it means to study the past. The paper challenges the curriculum in both epistemic and pedagogical terms, before suggesting that a rigorous study of history as a discipline can make a valuable contribution to children's personal and social development.     

Creating contexts for talk: the influence of school-based creative arts projects on children's language

This article draws on data from two recent research studies of children's language and literacy development in the context of their work in school‐based creative arts projects. Using observations of children (ages 3 to 11) and teachers at work, the article examines the ways in which the activities in such projects open up opportunities for children to talk with each other and with adults by generating a ‘workshop’ atmosphere. Children's authentic and wide‐ranging talk in creative arts projects encompasses personal, social, imaginary and real‐world themes which, we argue, is rare in other curriculum contexts. As schools are encouraged to develop ‘creative partnerships’ with artists and arts organisations, the article highlights the role of the teacher in observing and promoting these experiences as occasions for children's language development.     

After the moral panic? Reframing the debate about child safety online

This paper examines the initial ‘moral panic’ surrounding children's access to the Internet at the end of the last century by analysing more than 900 media articles and key government documents from 1997 to 2001. It explores the ambiguous settlements that this produced in adult–child relations and children's access to the Internet. The paper then revisits the policy and media debate a decade later by examining the Byron Review, Digital Britain Report and media coverage of these, in order to explore how these settlements have been negotiated, resisted and transformed over the subsequent period. In so doing, the paper asks whether it is time to reframe the debate about children's occupation of online public space, less in terms of ‘care’ for children's needs that tends to result in exclusionary and surveillance strategies, and more in terms of children's rights and capacities to engage in democratic debates about the nature of an online public space in which they are already participating.     

Models of Language,Models of Childhood in the English National Curriculum

This paper explores the versions of language and of childhood which implicitly underpin the official National Curriculum for English at Key Stages 1 and 2. It considers the politically charged context of debates about ‘grammar’ and ‘standards’ within which a standardised curriculum is imposed, and the assumptions about language, learning and children which are involved in assessing children's talk. Finally, the article draws on an empirical study of the informal talk of six 8‐ and 9‐year‐old children to present some alternative perspectives on children, language and learning.     

‘Baddies’ in the classroom: media education and narrative writing

When teachers allow students to write stories that include elements of popular media, we must ask what to do with these media elements once they have entered the classroom. This article relates findings from a classroom study focusing on children's media‐based story writing. The study looks at children as producers of new media texts and describes their activities as a form of ‘media education’. The data show that through their production of media‐based stories, the children are reflecting on their consumption of media. Furthermore, the children's media‐based stories make explicit some of their implicit knowledge of new media forms. Lastly, the children's stories provide ample opportunities for teachers to engage in important discussions about media within the framework of existing writing programmes.     

Using Simulations to Teach Leadership Roles

This paper investigates the nature of informal learning through a study of children's (age 9-13) use of chatrooms and in a computer games class in an out-of-school-centre. The paper discusses contemporary policy interest in the concept but argues that it loses value for educationalists except as "critical lens" to explore formal learning. Key elements of informal learning are dissected and close analysis of children's talk in informal learning situations is analysed in terms of its pedagogic structure.     

Kids’ Time: childhood,television and the regulation of time

This article is concerned with the relationships between children's understanding of the organisation of television time and their sense of what it means to be a child. It is based on qualitative data gathered in one inner city primary school, as part of a broader research project investigating the changing nature of children's media cultures. The article suggests that the notion of time is a crucial aspect of the ways in which children define their relationship with television. It analyses three related aspects of this phenomenon: firstly, children's perceptions of the institutional definitions embodied in the practice of television scheduling; secondly, their notions of psychological development, based partly on the structure of the schedule and partly on their own ‘reading histories'; and thirdly, the place of their television viewing in the scheduling and organisation of family life.     

Reading: A Pastime of the Past?

It is somewhat of a truism to say that reading is not what it used to be. ‘Texts’for reading now include many other media than simply print on pages and this fact has occasioned some concern among those who fear that reading television or computer-based texts may reduce or impoverish children's overall reading experience. Chris Robertson and her students have been investigating these issues through interviews with children and have found that reading and technology are not actually in conflict but can be mutually supportive. This article suggests that teachers need to think more creatively about how to use alternative texts in developing children's reading.     

ICT and play in preschool: early childhood teachers’ beliefs and confidence

This study investigated early childhood teachers’ beliefs about information and communications technology (ICT) and play in preschool, as well as their confidence in integrating ICT in the classroom. A 28-item questionnaire was compiled and administered to 190 early childhood teachers in Greece. Although ICT play (which can provide learning opportunities) has largely replaced traditional childhood play, in Greece, there is inadequate integration of ICT in early childhood education. In this study, two factors were extracted: ‘playing with ICT as an effective mode of learning and developing children's technological competence’ and ‘ICT use as free play’. The fewer the years of teaching experience and the higher the teachers’ computer self-efficacy, the stronger was the view that ICT play is not just free play. Teachers’ beliefs and confidence affect their classroom practices and, consequently, the children's learning. Viewing ICT as a mode of learning that should be embedded in the curriculum is expected to lead to ICT integration in a teacher's daily practices. The implications for in-service teacher training are therefore discussed.     

Comparing children's and student teachers’ ideas about science concepts

Children and teachers may not think in the same way about particular science concepts. Such parallel lines of thought can compound children's confusion and misunderstanding as they learn science at primary school. The situation could be more acute when student teachers are teaching science, because of their limited experience of considering children's ideas. This paper investigates children's and student teachers’ ideas about certain science concepts: ‘animal’, ‘flower’, ‘living’, ‘force’ and ‘energy’. The ideas and understandings of 96 children and 168 student teachers were explored. Results showed that the student teachers and children had similar ideas about ‘flower’ and ‘animal’, whereas they evidenced very different responses to ‘living’, ‘energy’ and ‘force’. Implications for classroom practice are considered.     

Learning in the outdoor environment: a missed opportunity?

In 2001, the Welsh Assembly Government announced proposals for a Foundation Phase for children aged three to seven years. The Foundation Phase framework promotes a play‐based approach to children's learning in both indoor and outdoor contexts and places children's well‐being and their personal and social development at its core. While the framework is currently being piloted across Wales, full implementation will not take place until 2010; for many schools, then, this is a time of transition. This paper discusses the findings of a research project that aimed to document the current use of the outdoors by a group of early years teachers working in South Wales. Drawing on data from interviews and observations conducted in four schools, it is suggested that the teachers missed many of the opportunities afforded by the outdoor environment to enhance children's learning. The paper considers the reasons why this might be the case and comments on the distinction, apparent in two schools, between what was seen as ‘normal’ and ‘special’ outdoor activity.