Engaging With Young Children’s Voices About Pedagogical Activities: Implications For Inclusive Education.
Author(s):
Patricia Shaw (presenting / submitting)
Conference:
ECER 2016
Network:
Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)
Format:
Paper

Session Information

ERG SES D 05, Children and Education

Paper Session

Time:
2016-08-22
13:30-15:00
Room:
OB-H2.12
Chair:
Petra Grell

Contribution

This paper aims to explore young children’s perceptions of pedagogical activities in early years settings.  The findings are based on an empirical study in two reception classes (aged 4-5 years) in the north east of the UK. The rationale behind the study was that although the ethos of listening to children has been recognised in an international declaration (Article 12 of the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989)), which explicitly calls upon governments to acknowledge and act upon the views expressed by children about issues that have a direct bearing upon their lives, Devine (2003) comments that schools still operate within a predominantly adult-centred framework with little impact on the status of children within the system. Furthermore, Article 12 states that any child who is capable of forming his/her own views should be given the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting him/her and that due diligence will be afforded in accordance with the age and maturity of that child. However, the latter part of this statement may lead to ambiguous interpretation of what constitutes an appropriate age or level of maturity. Far from ensuring that all children are engaged in making decisions about their education, this could lead to children in the early years being marginalised if it is deemed they do not have the capacity to make informed decisions.

An exploration of the definitions of inclusion led to the emergence of the need for teachers to have a pedagogical understanding of effective education for all children that affords equity and participation (Nutbrown, 2012; Rouse, 2007). Pedagogy is often referred to as the practice of teaching but in the early years any adequate conception of educative practice must be wide enough to include the provision of learning environments for play and exploration and also an understanding of the impact the pedagogical activities can have on the children’s sense of inclusion.

 A study conducted by Stephen (2010), elicited the views of children in the early years in relation to their learning opportunities and experiences. However, she implied that there was still more work to be undertaken about how the views of children can impact on the discourse between practitioners and their pedagogy and practice. Therefore, this research sought to elicit the views of children and share their thoughts with practitioners, so that the practitioners could reflect on their pedagogical practice in relation to inclusion. However, this paper will only present the findings of the first two research questions that relate to the children’s views.

 The research questions were:

  1. In what ways do children in the reception class perceive pedagogical activities as promoting inclusion?
  2. In what ways do children in the reception class perceive pedagogical activities as hindering inclusion?

This research project adopted a constructionist and interpretivist approach since its main focus was on the elicitation of the children’s views about their experience of inclusive pedagogical activities. Therefore it was important to define inclusion and pedagogy at the outset. Inclusion was defined as: active involvement (Mittler, 2000); engagement (Laevers, 1994); learning and playing in collaboration with others (Booth and Ainscow, 2004); and recognising diversity (Barton and Slee, 1999). Pedagogy was defined as: the co-construction of learning in a careful juxtaposition of teacher and child-initiated activities (Siraj-Blatchford et al., 2002); working with children as emergent learners (Farquhar, 2003); a democratic approach (Sheridan, 2001); and co-agency, trust, value and respect (Hart et al., 2004). These definitions then informed the analysis of the data.

Method

This research adopted a qualitative methodology since it addresses the need to ‘participate in the mind of another human being’ Lofland and Lofland (1995, p.16). By seeing the world through the children’s eyes, it became possible to demonstrate greater empathy and understanding than would otherwise prove possible (Armstrong, 1992; Burman et al. 2001). Furthermore, to elicit the children’s views it was necessary to adopt a pragmatic and questions-method approach, where the questions come from the children (Punch, 2014). The research was about children, as they were considered active agents in the process, but were not consulted about the design or involved in the data collection and analysis (Mayall, 2001). The children were selected from the reception class in two schools in the north east of the UK: one infant and one primary. 55 children were asked if they wished to partake and the permission of their parents was sought. Attention was paid to the children’s assent or dissent to the research throughout its entirety. The participative tools adopted were semi-structured individual and group interviews and observations. The children were observed over a six week period in each school and observations were recorded using the Laevers’ (1994) Child Involvement Scale (LCIS) that focused on their well-being and involvement. These were subsequently used to analyse the children’s behaviour and how they engaged with different pedagogical activities, alongside the data collected through semi-structured interviews. In the group interviews, photographs of some of the pedagogical activities were used in a diamond ranking activity (Rockett and Percival, 2002) to explore and clarify the children’s own value positions, feelings and thoughts on how they perceived the different pedagogical activities to promote or hinder inclusion. The important aspect of diamond ranking was not the position of the photographs, as there are no correct or incorrect answers, but the process of discussion, reflection, negotiation and accommodation of other children’s perspectives. The individual interviews provided another means by which meaning could be inferred through the use of children’s drawings. By utilising this tool, it became possible to understand children’s perceptions, thoughts and experiences of inclusive pedagogical activities. It also gave the children the opportunity to make sense of the questions they had been asked in the group interviews and enable them to reflect and process the emotions and thoughts that may have arisen. It was also helpful in minimising the power relationship between the researcher and the child.

Expected Outcomes

The analysis of data highlighted a number of ways that the children considered the pedagogical activities to be inclusive: collaboration; children’s individuality and difference; physically active engagement; independent achievement and environmental context. Collaboration received the greatest number of comments from the children and whilst this does not necessarily indicate that it is the most important, it offered a starting point for analysis. During the more detailed data analysis it revealed that there were two subthemes: working/playing with others and learning from others. The first subtheme indicated children’s desires to be working/playing with a friend/another child, and not liking to be on their own. The second subtheme focused on learning from children and learning from a teacher. The second theme indicated that children felt the pedagogical activities were inclusive when they enabled them to pursue areas that were of direct interest to them. They reported being able to discover, build, create things in which they had a curiosity. Themes emerging from the analysis of the data about the children’s perception of pedagogical activities that hinder inclusion were: dislike of the activity; sensorial experiences; feeling alone; unsure of the activity; difficulty of the activity. Dislike of the activity was the theme to which the children ascribed many different reasons. These included: the activity not being fun; because they did not want to do it; they did not like working in the area; that it was boring; and that it took too long. In the theme of feeling alone, some children expressed feeling felt left out or that they had no one with whom to play. They placed importance on their relationship with other children, which led to the development of three subthemes: friends; excluded by specific children; and having no one with whom to play.

References

Barton, L. and Slee, R. (1999) Competition, Selection and Inclusive Education: Setting the Context. Inclusive Education, 3(1), 3-12 (Special Issue). Booth, T. and Ainscow, M. (2004) Index for inclusion: Developing learning, participation and play in early years and child care. Bristol: CSIE Farquhar, S-E. (2003) Quality teaching and early foundations: Best evidence synthesis Wellington: Ministry of Education. Available from http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/7707/bes-quality-teaching-early.pdf [Accessed 26 August 2014] Hart, S., Dixon, A., Drummond, M.J. and McIntyre, D. (2004) Learning without limits. Maidenhead: Open University Press Laevers, F. (1994) (ed.) Well-being and Involvement in Care Settings. Leuven: Research Centre for Experiential Education Mittler, P. (2000) Working Towards Inclusive Education: Social Contexts. London: David Fulton Nutbrown, C. (2012) Foundations for Quality: An Independent Review of Early Education and Childcare Qualifications- Final Report (Nutbrown Review). London: Department for Education Rockett, M. and Percival, S. (2002) Thinking for Learning. Stafford: Network Educational Press Rouse, M. (2007) Enhancing effective inclusive practice: Knowing, doing and believing, Kairaranga. Wellington: New Ministry of Education Sheridan, S. (2001) A comparison of external and self-evaluations of quality in early childhood education. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 9, 131-151 Siraj-Blatchford, I., Sylva, K., Muttock, S., Gilden, R. and Bell, D. (2002) Researching Effective Pedagogy in the Early Years. Nottingham: Department for Education and Skills Stephen, C. (2010) Pedagogy: The silent partner in early years learning. Early Years: An International Journal of Research and Development, 30(1), 15-28 UNCRC (1989) Convention on the Rights of the Child. New York: United Nations

Author Information

Patricia Shaw (presenting / submitting)
University of Hull
Hull

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