Practice In Early Years Settings Research Articles

What is educational technology and how is it being used to support teaching and learning in the early years?

ABSTRACTThere are many digital technologies available to support teaching and learning. Historically the focus has tended to be on computers, but this has extended to include interactive whiteboards and tablets. As well as these technologies, which were originally designed for adults, there are devices specifically designed to support teaching and learning in the early years. These tend to be overlooked in the literature. This project aimed to find out if this reflected practice in early years settings. Participants from 20 early years settings in the North East of England were asked about ‘educational technologies’. This term was deliberately not defined, the aim was to find out what they thought it meant. They were asked about the technology they had, and how it was being used. This provided an opportunity to explore whether their use of technology fit with their beliefs about teaching and learning. Findings suggest that technology is seen as more than computers and that technology is being used to support a broad range of activities in line with practitioners’ pedagogical beliefs.

Young children shaping interprofessional practice in early years settings: Towards a conceptual framework for understanding experiences and participation

Abstract The value of interprofessional service provision for children and families has had widespread support internationally. However, researchers have called for greater focus on service users' experiences to inform future development. Nonetheless, young children's experiences of such practice in early years settings are under researched. Drawing on findings from a study of interprofessional practice from the perspectives of five young children with additional needs, this article suggests a theoretical and methodological conceptual framework as a guide to understanding how children participate in and shape integrated service provision. The stance is framed by social practice theory, whereby our everyday practice draws on, challenges and is constrained by history, context and relationships. Shotter's ( 2008 ) work revealing meaning-making in conversational exchanges and Dreier's conceptualisation of trajectories of participation (2003, 2008) guided the analyses of digital video recordings of children's participation in interprofessional practice in early years settings. Findings showed young children shaping the nature of provision. The theoretical constructs and methods revealed the otherwise hidden dialogic nature of interprofessional practice, highlighting children's influence on elements of fine-grained expert practice. Careful attention to children's perspectives, revealed through analysis of their multimodal voices, contributes to settings' capacity for planning, modifying and evaluating effective integrated working.

Measuring the effectiveness of knowledge creation as a means of facilitating evidence-informed practice in early years settings in one London borough

This paper examines our use of knowledge-creation activity as a way of developing evidence-informed practice among a learning community of 36 early years practitioners in one London borough. It also seeks to illustrate how we approached the idea of measuring evidence use and our engagement with, and adapted use of, two separate measurement scales: the 'ladder of research use' and Hall and Hord's (2015) Levels of Use scale. In doing so we examine the 'trustworthiness' of our approaches to measuring evidence use, which we explored via in-depth semi-structured interviews. Our findings would appear to be encouraging, suggesting that knowledge-creation activity provides an effective way of communicating research and keeping it top of mind; also that our interview data would appear to support the trustworthiness of our measurement scales as a means to ascertain levels of evidence use. At the same time the approach we have developed does have its limitations, namely that it is only really applicable to situations where researchers are working regularly with practitioners on areas of practice development, where the general desire is that these areas should become evidence-informed. However, we suggest that, in school systems such as that in England – where the expectation is that schools or alliances of schools should lead their own professional development activity, often in partnership with universities – it is likely that these instances will soon be increasing in number.

Personal action potency: early years practitioners participating in interprofessional practice in early years settings

This paper reports on case study research in the UK analysing the participation of early years staff in interprofessional practice to provide effective care and education for children, primarily those with special educational needs. Even though case study staff in different ‘outstanding’ settings had equivalent qualifications and similar years of experience, the ease with which they were able to marshal and deliver effective provision for children requiring input from other services varied depending on a complex set of factors. Social Practice Theory (Holland and Lave 2009) and the concepts of personal action potency in trajectories of participation (Dreier 2002, 2008) shed light on how and why this was the case. The findings indicate that structural arrangements, interpersonal relationships, history and contentions influenced the practitioners' participation in interprofessional practice, but were not entirely deterministic. Contributing to theoretical development, the paper argues that the potential for interprofessional practice is a shared rather than individual capacity in settings. There is scope for enhancing this capacity through attention to the features identified in the analysis.

A documentary analysis of the use of leadership and change theory in changing practice in early years settings

Early years professionals wrote about changes in their settings as part of their MA studies, and reflected on the use of theories of leadership in implementing these changes. This article describes a documentary analysis of the scripts produced. Initially basing the study in current knowledge of leadership and change in Early Years settings, the article justifies the use of documentary analysis before describing the process of analysis of the scripts. Findings demonstrate that elements of many theories can be helpful in planning and implementing change in these settings, usefully contributing to the development of a theory of leadership and change for the early years sector. A simple model for further development is presented.

Principles under pressure: student teachers' perspectives on final teaching practice in early childhood classrooms

Global concerns about what constitutes an appropriate curriculum and pedagogy for young children inevitably raises questions for teacher educators and the content of teacher education programmes. These concerns have been particularly visible in England following recent policy initiatives and the resultant ‘academic shovedown’ and ‘high stakes’ performativity culture in schools. Against this background, this article reports on a qualitative study of student teachers' experiences of their final teaching practice, identifying pressure from a range of sources to deliver a more formalised curriculum than they were prepared for in their university-based courses. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner among others, we consider the socio-political and -cultural sources of pressure linked through human agency, and the implications of these for teacher educators. The study argues that student teachers of young children may be faced with cognitive and emotional dissonance between the content of university-based training on the one hand, which promotes a developmentally appropriate, play-based approach in keeping with the Early Years Foundation Stage (the statutory curricular framework in England), and the reality of pedagogical practice in early years settings on the other.

Review

Review

Level 3 Diploma for the Children and Young People's Workforce, Part 2: Professional practice in early years settings

How has the act of reflecting on your own practice been turned into a qualification unit? Mary Evans finds out