From Weeds to Tiny Flowers

In this post Jo Josephidou talks about her latest work with the Froebel Trust which looks at outdoor practices with very young children.

We are all familiar with the ubiquitous message about the importance of children being outdoors and especially opportunities for them to engage with nature. But if you were asked to picture a young child outdoors, what kind of image would you conjure up? A child jumping in puddles, kicking through leaves or balancing on a log? Most probably a child who is older than two. But what about the youngest children – say those aged birth to two – do they not also need similar time and opportunities?

 

Generally we have found that this very youngest age group are excluded from practice, policy and research which focuses on children’s opportunities to engage with the outdoors and nature. We have discussed this issue before on this blog where we reported on outdoor practices with very young children in the early years setting, home and community. Our very latest Froebel funded report, From Weeds to Tiny Flowers, offers some new insights into different cultural and geographical practices.

Using the metaphor of weeds to talk about young children may seem a particularly odd choice. However we have borrowed this term from the work of Jenks (2005) who uses it to illustrate how children can often be perceived as being in the wrong place at the wrong time! This is particularly apt when talking about very young children who are often seen as out of place outdoors because this space is seen as a space for children who can run through puddles or climb on logs, but a place of danger for those who are too young to be active in this way.

We noticed in our review that exclusion was not just limited to very young children but that there were several other factors that interacted with each other which led to even more issues of exclusion on the grounds of class, socio-economic status and culture. Another area of exclusion that we also noticed was that the voices who talked about outdoor practices with very young children came mostly from Europe and North America. We are interested to see how other cultures speak about being outdoors and what we can learn from them in terms of pedagogies for very young children.

In fact this finding has informed the piece of research we are working on presently. We are looking to talk to parents from a range of cultural backgrounds to learn about their experiences with their children outdoors whilst living in an urban setting. We will update you as we progress with our findings.

Do please have a look at our lovely FREE  OpenLearn course which is based on our research up to this point,  focusing on very young children’s opportunities to be outdoors and in nature.

References

Jenks, C. (2005) Childhood. London: Routledge

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Waitangi Day- learning in collaboration with kaiako (educators), tamariki (children) and places in two Early Childhood Education (ECE) centres in New Zealand.

As New Zealand commemorates Waitangi Day, Karen Horsley reflects on learning in collaboration with kaiako (educators), tamariki (children) and places in two Early Childhood Education (ECE) centres in New Zealand.

Waitangi Day is a national day in Aotearoa, New Zealand that commemorates the first signing of its founding document: Te Tiriti o Waitangi, The Treaty of Waitangi, on 6 February 1840 (https://www.waitangi.org.nz/). The historical, political and cultural significance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, The Treaty of Waitangi informs the foundations of Aotearoa, New Zealand’s bicultural and bilingual early childhood curriculum – Te Whāriki.  Te Whāriki honours Māori Indigenous knowledge, ways of being and Te Reo Māori language into culturally responsive provision that values New Zealand’s diverse communities, including from the Pacific Islands.

Here are some of my reflections, that particularly struck me from my visit to two early childhood education (ECE) centres in different parts of Auckland, New Zealand. Both centres were teacher-led. The first centre serves culturally diverse communities that was originally set up to support the city hospital community. The second centre, was founded on the honoring and building of Samoan language and cultural values. The organisation built on the legacy of Samoan mamas (elders) who set up the original playgroups, whilst recognising the rich diversity of New Zealand’s communities. The directors, teachers and practitioners in both settings highly value and embed Te Whāriki early childhood curriculum into culturally responsive practice. Te Whāriki is a living document in the sense that it is interpreted in ways that are meaningful for the particular contexts of ECE centres, their families and communities.

  1. AROHA – ALOFA (love): Relationships are everything

“First of all, it’s not me. It’s an us, it’s a we. It goes back to it takes a village to educate a child”

– Liz, second centre, 2023

This sense of ‘us’ not ‘me’ shone out in the beliefs and practices of all of the teachers I met. I noticed the loving care with which babies and young children were gently carried, held and spoken with as they explored and played, or simply enjoyed a quiet moment together. Sometimes, the most intangible or fleeting of moments, communicated the deeply held feelings and values of Aroha – Alofa that respected children’s rights and ‘mana’: including spiritual power, wellbeing and agency (Rameka et al., 2022). For example, teachers observed so closely to ask how and when babies would like to be held or picked up. They respected babies’ and children’s time and space to fully explore their environment, perhaps in the garden or park as babies crawled and walked barefoot over many textures and surfaces on offer to them (bark, paving, grass). Children and adults enjoyed playful moments and times of helping each other arrive at new theories, puzzling together. The children knew they would be listened to and their voices would be heard and this knowing led to a sense of collective learning, care and collaboration with the world. Pedagogies of Aroha – Alofa (love) and care meant that conditions were created for learning rather than adults feeling the need to ‘teach’. Teachers are confident for children to lead their learning and collective inquiry. Both centres cultivate a culture of true belonging and the courage to be real. Looking after relationships and others is very much at the heart of leadership and practice guided by intergenerational cultural philosophies, values and commitment to nurturing relationships and repairing them if this is necessary. ECE is infused with values such as Aroha – Alofa, service and respect, where teachers and leaders seek relationships of trust, collaboration and collective approaches. Rich Māori and Pacific Indigenous knowledge, spirituality and ways of being here speak to the ‘we’ and ‘us’ of leadership that support others to thrive.

  1. Collective over individual: A culture of children, teachers, families and communities co-learners and researchers together

The Te Whāriki curriculum, research  and practice reflects a blend of contemporary and traditional  Indigenous and non-Indigenous multiple perspectives, framed and centred around Māori philosophy. People doing things together, trusting one another, constructing new knowledge together reflects this. Trust, in one another and the children as leaders of their learning are highly valued in living, learning and researching together.  Teachers in New Zealand ECE are referred to as “kaiako”, which is inclusive of all those who care and educate children in ECE settings (i.e., qualified teachers, educators, parents, elders and communities). It also incorporates the Māori concept of “ako” to acknowledge a reciprocal relationship between teachers and learners and learning from one another. A striking feature of the curriculum and practice was teachers’ very high regard and respect for children as highly competent learners. Children are encouraged to explore first with adults observing as engaged listeners and participants. Kaiako truly followed the children’s lead in their interests to develop theory making and threads of learning together in reciprocal relationships. They held back from talking and offering resources to see where children’s interests took them. Sometimes these led back to journeying and playing with younger siblings in mixed age play, talk, stories, creative media of all kinds and rhymes in community languages. Family and community members are seen and heard in the centres as very much part of everyday living, learning and researching alongside one another. Cultures of inquiry lead to children’s and teachers’ deep reflection on their learning, interests and evolving theory making. Communities are very much part and parcel of everyday life that honours Indigenous Māori and Pacific contemporary and traditional knowledge and practice – past, present and future.

3. Bringing your whole self to your work

 

Bringing your whole to your work, including language, family values, beliefs, knowledge and experiences through many languages, song, stories, metaphors, research and everyday conversations are seen as strengths. There is patience with one another in puzzling out the inevitable challenges of highly complex and nuanced ECE practice. Regular and informal meetings in daily life and inquiry in the centres create contexts for paying close attention to one another and asking difficult questions of practice that embrace uncertainty and vulnerability to move forwards together. There are playful times and (un)comfortable silences for thinking, and depths of patience and awareness for emerging new lively perspectives and possibilities:

E tūtaki ana ngā kapua o te rangi, kei runga te Mangōroa e kōpae pū ana

The clouds in the sky gather, but above them extends the Milky Way.

Bringing your whole self to your work deeply respects and appreciates the interwoven languages, knowledge, culture and stories of everyone. I learnt that Indigenous communities around the world, such as the Māori and Pacific peoples of New Zealand derive insight and wisdom about practice and leadership from their unique Indigenous perspectives and beliefs. In the two centres, Māori or Pacific (Samoan) Indigenous values guide their thinking about leadership practice in [ECE]. Indigenous perspectives focus on collective decision-making, serving the interests of the community, harmonious relationships, ancestral wisdom, and a deep connection to the environment and all living things. In my ECE context, in the UK, appreciating and weaving Indigenous perspectives emphasises collaboration and distributed leadership (in contrast with individual authority and hierarchical structures). This requires strong reciprocal relationships of trust. If we want to invite new possibilities together we have to find ways to embrace equitable participation in culturally responsive practice.

4. Listen and learn first, reciprocity in relationships: What does this mean for our culturally responsive practice?

The significance of reciprocal relationships are everything. Without true respect and endeavour together we cannot create our best work. This means taking time and great care to learn about the context, including histories of people, places and things. Some questions to ponder include: How do I spell and pronounce people’s names, titles and language that are needed (or helpful) in this context? What is significant and why to the people we are working with? How can we work together? What does the history of the people in a place mean for our shared ways of working – are there practices, customs and values I need to particularly pay very close attention to? What are our shared values for culturally responsive practice? Honesty and transparency are essential to our work in new cultural contexts, remembering the fundamental significance of reciprocal, enduring relationships.

As an ‘outsider’ I needed to listen and learn first, to respect the deep history, cultures, communities, languages of the amazing people I met and was welcomed by. I appreciated  the value of reciprocity in relationships –  this meant that I shared and returned the knowledge back to the centres (sharing writing drafts, films, photography and research of mutual interest). Nurturing the relationships I had established  after returning home has been significant to me personally and professionally from a genuine felt connection. I appreciate being able to share my experiences and work in ECE to learn collectively and see new ways of knowing and being together, that I am able to share with our students and communities. Above all, we take our cue from the generous people who welcome us and help us to learn together, recognising and celebrating equity, diversity and inclusion, past, present and future. I am humbled and feel a great sense of gratitude for all of the reciprocal relationships we made. Relationships are everything, they come first.

Reference

Rameka, L., Soutar, B., Clayton, L., & Card, A. (2022). Whakapūmau te mana: Implications for early childhood practice. New Zealand Journal of Teachers’ Work, 19(1), pp.46-61. https://doi.org/10.24135/teacherswork.v19i1.340

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Young children, the outdoors and nature

Do you have a professional or personal interest in learning opportunities for young children? Are you working with children or are you a parent or carer?

Jo Josephidou is part of the team that have created a new free course, ‘Young children, the outdoors and nature’ which looks at the importance of babies and toddlers having opportunities to engage with rich outdoor environments. By completing the activities, you will be introduced to the benefits of outdoor engagement for babies and toddlers as well as a variety of practices and provision which will help you develop your own environments for young children- take a look!

 

Young children, the outdoors and nature – OpenLearn – Open University

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Read all about us!!!!

There has been a lot going on with the Early Childhood team here at the OU, so have a look at our new brochure to find out more- here’s the link: Early_Childhood_Leaflet_FINAL

 

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Welsh Active Early Years

On 22nd March, Early Years Wales held a celebration event to share the work done in the Welsh Active Early Years project. Jane Dorrian undertook the evaluation of the project and in this blog she outlines that work.

The Welsh Active Early Years project was launched in 2020 as a 4-week facilitator led programme which aimed to increase the physical activity levels of young children and their parents/carers in order to develop and embed lifelong physical literacy. Each session was based on a story, with participants receiving a resource pack containing cards outlining the activities and also giving ideas about how to create homemade resources linked to that week’s focus. The evaluation of the project showed that, despite the fact that the COVID 19 pandemic hit just as the project was starting, the work had made a real impact on the children and their families. 71% of the parents who completed the programme recorded an improvement in average well-being scores, this was still apparent 12 months after completing the programme and 75% of the parents who completed the programme had increased physical activity levels.

The COVID 19 lockdowns meant that the delivery of the sessions had to be quickly changed form face to face to online, and whilst there were some initial concerns about the impact the change might have there were some unexpected benefits. Feedback from facilitators showed that ‘surprisingly Zoom worked really well. Parents felt less self-conscious and being in a familiar environment seemed to encourage better communication’ ( Facilitator 5), and ‘some parents commented positively about Zoom as it removed the stress of getting everyone prepared and out to get to a venue in time to attend a session’ (Facilitator 1). Parent responses also showed how the sessions had helped to provide a focus ‘with lockdown and nowhere to go it’s easy to slip into PJ days so it has been great having this to look forward to’ (Participant 17).

As the project team look to develop the legacy of the work one of the key focus areas is to increase the diversity of participants. In the original projects 93% of participants were female and 96% were white and Early Years Wales are working with partner organisations such as Dads Can Cymru and Women Connect First to expand and promote delivery of the programme to under-represented groups. The findings from the evaluation gave some indication that improvements in parent/carer’s well-being and physical activity were greater in areas affected by deprivation, but the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on data collection meant it was not possible to prove a correlation so this is another area for future focus.

The evidence showed that the parents/carers who had been involved in the project wanted to carry on engaging in physical activity sessions with their children after completing the programme. One of the important findings showed that involvement in the project had helped them to become ‘more aware [of] physical activity everyday, not just when we do sports’ (Participant 4), but this also presented a challenge as there is no clear pathway or information point in place at present to help them take the next step. The Welsh Active Early Years project is uniquely placed to act as a ‘Physical Literacy Librarian’, providing information and guidance to participants based on their interests, skills and abilities to enable them to develop lifelong physical literacy. This is due to the project’s pan-Wales remit and its focus on physical literacy rather a specific sport or skill. Hopefully the legacy work emerging from the initial project will help to create this and children and their families will be able to enjoy their lifelong physical literacy journeys.

For more information about the project follow this link: Welsh Active Early Years | Early Years Wales

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How do (or can) Early Childhood Education and Care practitioners promote young children’s health?

This blog is based on the presentation given by Jackie Musgrave at the recent BECERA conference

The BECERA conference on 22nd February was a great opportunity to share the latest instalment of the research that Jane Payler and I started back in 2018.  We were motivated to look at what practitioners do, and can do, to promote children’s health.  Many children experience poor levels of health, especially those who live in poverty, The state of children’s health was of concern before the pandemic, and the restrictions imposed to limit the spread of the virus have made a bad situation worse.

 

Stage 1, the pilot, was conducted in an early childhood pre-school setting with 106 babies and children on roll in an area of high deprivation. The work of Bryk, Gomez and Grunow (2011) on networked improvement communities and of Arbour et al. 2015 on continuous quality improvement guided our thinking and action for a participatory approach to promoting child health.

 

The pilot of the research included the use of an original tool devised by us, Child Health Promotion: A Toolkit for Early Childhood Education and Care Practitioners, we developed a 5 Step Programme as a model to guide practitioners in identifying and implementing a health promotion activity. The findings from the pilot (Musgrave and Payler 2021) helped to refine the Toolkit, which is now available electronically free of charge, and develop an onward agenda to extend the use of the 5 Steps.

 

Phase 2 of the research started in Spring of 2022, with the aim of using the Toolkit and 5 Steps in other settings.  The area of health promotion that was identified by co-researchers as needing attention by the Phase 2 participants was physical development. The need for interventions to support and promote physical development and encourage physical activity reflects reports that many children’s physical development has been affected by greater levels of inactivity during lockdown.

 

The findings foreground the valuable role that ECEC can contribute to promoting health of babies and young children. Health can be improved and promoted through implementation of many of the aims of the Early Years Foundation Stage (2021), such as the requirement to provide healthy eating options and access to outdoor play. Key to successful health promotion work is the need for respectful and positive relationships with parents and carers.

 

And in the post-pandemic recovery, the concerns about the health of babies and children are not going away.  But the message to Government about the importance of high quality ECEC that is provided by practitioners who are rewarded appropriately for their work with young children, and in this case, for their contribution to their health outcomes, remains unheard. This situation must be addressed, our children are precious, and they deserve adult support to promote their health so that they can live the best life that is possible – they deserve no less.

 

If you would like to receive a copy of the Toolkit, please email me jackie.musgrave@open.ac.uk

 

 

References

Bryk, A. S., Gomez, L. M. and Gomez, A. (2010) Getting ideas into action: building networked improvement communities in education. Reorganising Educational Research and Development. Carnegie Perspectives. Stanford: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Department for Education (2021) Statutory framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage: setting the standards for learning, development and care for children from birth to five.

Musgrave. J. and Payler, J. (2021) Proposing a model for promoting Children’s Health in Early Childhood Education and Care Settings. Children and Society – https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/chso.12449

Ofsted (October 2020) COVID-19 series: briefing on early years, October 2020 Evidence from research interviews with 208 registered early years providers and maintained nursery schools between 5 and 16 October. Available from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/943492/COVID-19_series_briefing_on_early_years_November_2020.pdf accessed 9 February 2023

 

Free resources

Supporting Physical Development in Early Childhood – 18 hours course. Developed in partnership with Public Health England and ActiveMatters https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/supporting-physical-development-early-childhood – funded by Health Education England

 

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Layers of exclusion: Developing nature engaging and enhancing pedagogies with infants and toddler

By Dr Joanne Josephidou, Programme Lead, Early Childhood, The Open University

Recently, I had the opportunity to present at the BECERA conference along with my colleague Dr Nicola Kemp from Canterbury Christ Church University.  We talked about some initial findings of a new project we have just started, funded by the Froebel Trust. In our presentation, we began by revisiting the findings of a previous research project which found that babies are particularly excluded from policy/practice/research about outdoor practices in ECEC settings (Kemp and Josephidou, 2021). This exclusion seems to arise from an understanding that the outdoors is a risky place and also  a place to be physically active so that there is ‘a focus on mobile children and an underlying assumption that the outdoors is for older children and that babies will be inside’ (Josephidou and Kemp, 2022). We were interested to explore this idea of exclusion further so carried out a systematic review of the research literature which focuses on children aged birth to two and their experiences with nature and the outdoors. We still wanted to find out practices in settings but also what was happening in the wider community as well.

 

Socio-economic exclusion

An additional layer of exclusion that emerges when we look at babies’ and toddlers’ engagement both within and beyond the setting is that of ‘socio-economic status’. Sometimes this intersected with class and/or ethnicity as another means of exclusion. There are three key ideas emerging here:

  • Buying’ nature: access to nature experiences can depend on the families’ socio-economic status;
  • Living in a healthy environment: families with low socio- economic status are impacted more by air pollution because their homes can often be situated near busy roads or factories;
  • Creeping exclusion’: this is when certain groups can slowly come to dominate and therefore marginalise others in green spaces.

We also found that the outdoors is a key space to pass on cultural practices such as sleeping outdoors or the human relationship with nature. However, within this idea was an additional layer of exclusion which sometimes intersected with socio-economic status, ethnicity and class.

Cultural exclusion

Three key ideas that emerged from this theme of cultural exclusion are:

  • The ‘good parent’: ideas about what a ‘good’ parent is and does varies greatly from culture to culture;
  • Trying to be a ‘good’ parent: there is a lot of pressure on parents to try and meet cultural expectations including in terms of outdoor engagement;
  • The ‘other’ parent: parents can be excluded from outdoor spaces if their parenting is not approved of by others.

We are interested in the role of the ECEC setting in addressing these different layers of exclusion and so our  new project will involve by working with parents and settings to develop an understanding of nature engagement from diverse cultural perspectives. We want to work collaboratively with the families and practitioners at five ECEC settings located in contexts of socio-economic deprivation and cultural diversity to help them ‘naturalise’ their outdoor areas. We hope this will enable us to create a multicultural, inclusive and democratic model of Nature Engaging & Nature Enhancing (NENE) pedagogy for babies and toddlers and answer our research question:

How can English ECEC settings in urban contexts be supported to develop democratic and inclusive NENE pedagogies for babies and toddlers?

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Researching Experiences of Children with a Parent in Prison

Professor Jane Payler writes about her research with an often forgotten group of children in this post, which is though-provoking and powerful.

Imagine yourself in this situation. You are seven-years-old. Police bang noisily on the front door shouting, ’Open up! Police!’ They force the door open. Your mum is crying and your dad shouting, angry and afraid. The police put your dad in handcuffs and take him away. Everyone in the family is now crying, shocked and upset. You will later hear that dad has gone to prison, but you don’t know where that is or when you will see your dad again. You have seen prisons on television programmes. They do not look like nice places. How do you feel? What effect might this have on you?

 

In the UK, it is estimated that 312,000 children and young people each year have a parent in prison. It’s an estimation because no official figures are kept on how many people currently serving a prison sentence have children outside, who these children are or whether they are receiving support. Although new prisoners once in prison may be asked if they have children, not every prisoner wants to give that information and its accuracy isn’t checked. Not all the reasons for this are known, but often family relationships are complicated, and prisoners may be afraid that their children will be taken into care. When a parent is sent to prison, there are no structures in place nationally in the UK to immediately offer support or advice to the family and children left behind at home. Yet we know that those families suffer stigma, financial difficulties, housing problems, anxiety and mental health issues, to name but a few. And as a mother with a partner in prison told us,

A child’s way of looking at things is different to an adult. We can process things differently because we understand it.… it’s almost like you know when you lose a friend or you lose a mum or something like that, it’s almost like another loss, like a death, because they’ve gone.

 

Dr Victoria Cooper, Dr Stephanie Bennett and I are researching the needs and experiences of children and young people with a parent in prison. We are evaluating a new service in Worcestershire, Families First, established by the charity YSS  and funded by Worcestershire County Council, to provide support to such families. Part of our remit is to highlight the extent of need for such services nationally. Our research is a mixed methods study incorporating: an online survey; interviews with stakeholders (police, housing, schools, early help practitioners, other organisations dealing with similar issues) and practitioners; Freedom of Information requests; and in-depth interviews/activities with families. We aim to foreground the voices of those children and young people most affected by such experiences. Participating children are aged between seven and fifteen years, although families in the case studies with which Families First work include children as young as two years.

 

The children and young people in our research have left a mark on us for their stoicism and wisdom in the face of great difficulties as they try to make sense of and cope with what life has dealt them. As one twelve-year-old whose father was in prison reflected about parents committing crimes,

What were they thinking?… when they did it? Sometimes I don’t think they think about what they’re doing, but other times I think they just don’t care’…. ‘Dad wanted to impress his friends, but his friends are stupid. They’re all, like, a bit daft. I don’t know why he does it.

 

We are now approaching the later stages of analysis and writing up of the two-year study and expect to report in the New Year. We have so far shared our research at conferences in Worcester, at the Open University and in Florida. You can also read more about these Forgotten Families here. Look out for our forthcoming report and our seminar on 1st Feb 2023 at the Children’s Research Centre.

 

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Sometimes being an academic is quite a good job

In this post Jonathan Rix reflects upon his recent visit to the University of Debrecen to present on a project exploring the development of an early years, rights respecting pedagogy with OU colleagues Eleonora Teszenyi and Natalie Canning and John Parry.

You may not share this feeling, but it always amazes me when colleagues show an interest in my research. It is even more amazing when they ask me to share it with an international audience. You can imagine the state of my amazement then when Eleonora Teszenyi and Natalie Canning invited myself and John Parry to go and present at a conference they were organising in Debrecen, Hungary. The conference was focussing upon their fantastic project exploring the development of an early years, rights respecting pedagogy with Hungarian practitioners. During this project the University of Debrecen with whom Eleonora and Natalie had been collaborating had shown an interest in In-the-Picture, an observational method which John and I have been working with for over a decade. As a result the Dean of the Faculty of Education for Children and Special Educational Needs, expressed an in interest in meeting with us, and so we were invited to join the Conference as keynote speakers.

 

What an inspiring few days it was. It began with visits to a kindergarten and a nursery. As ever, exploring practice in another country reveals so much about your own presumptions and priorities as well as those of the place you are visiting. It was fascinating, for example, to see how immaculate the spaces were. I have never been to such neat and tidy, spotlessly clean early years settings. It was also fascinating to explore with the academics, centre managers and practitioners the issue of outdoor activity. We were told by some that there was lots of outdoor play, by others that there was very little and by others that it depended on the weather and time of year. It was evident though that the children are not trusted outside the walls of the building in the way I have experienced in Scandinavian countries, perhaps even a little less than in the UK.

 

We were then fortunate enough to spend an hour talking to the University academics about In-the-Picture and then to hear about their own research interests. This enabled us to have a fascinating discussion about the nature of academic careers, the experiences of the local Roma community, the nature of young people’s experiences in football academies, and whether we need to reconceptualise the nature of play. This last point seemed to revolve around a need for practitioners to accept that the established theoretical models of play miss the point and a child at play is only understandable to the child itself within that moment. I say ‘seemed’ because as is so often the case when visiting another country, we were reliant upon the skills and generosity of a volunteer translator. Ours was a gem.

 

The conference was the next day. At its core were practitioners. Each was introduced by an academic from the core research team and then went on to unpack one of the central themes from the rights respecting pedagogy model. People talked about children’s autonomy and self-expression; the importance of the social, emotional and material environment and of people who matter to the children. They then talked about their experiences of meeting the basic needs of life along with adult dominance in most contexts, finishing with a discussion of the play of freedom. This was entirely suited to what followed; a puppet show re-presenting the findings from the research. This show had been created by Vojtina Puppet Theatre. The theatre, which was also the venue for the conference had been established in 1975 and become Debrecen’s official puppet theatre in 1993. The show which this incredibly skilled company put on drew directly upon the data from the research in ways that were uplifting, provocative and highly entertaining. The full show should be ready in a years time, but John and I both felt certain that it will not only brilliantly represent the work of the researchers but also engage a great many children, families and practitioners over the coming years. It was and is a splendid, innovative and creative approach to the sharing of findings.

 

So then it came to John and me. We did our best. Our translator was there once more, so maybe we were improved in translation? After the puppet show and all those practitioners, two old bearded blokes must have felt like a bit of a come down. BUT the audience joined in with our activities. They did not leave. They seemed to enjoy themselves. Perhaps more reassuringly, the Dean subsequently raised the possibility of working with us on developing In-the-Picture in a Hungarian context.

 

What an honour and privilege it had been.

There is more information about the project available here: “It’s so good just to be”: Understanding Children’s Rights Through Pedagogic Practice in Hungary | Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (open.ac.uk)

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Kindness- and why it matters.

In this article Marina Postlethwaite Bowler ECYS staff tutor and AL explores kindness and its importance.

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.” Henry James.

Sometimes the worst day can be totally changed by a stranger’s smile. The “small, tiny moments” really matter the most. We should all try a little harder to live each day, remembering to spread a little kindness around to others, family, friends, or total strangers.

Unfortunately, this works both ways. It’s never a nice feeling if someone is rude or mean, however much we try to distance ourselves from such things, they always impact our day. When we feel open and spacious it’s easier to be kind to others, but when unsure, tired, frustrated we tend to move away from social contact and connection. So, how about spreading kindness through your day? Treating others as you yourself would like to be treated. If more people tried to live this way, the world would just be that little bit better.

“How do we change the world? One random act of kindness at a time” Morgan Freeman.

So how can we be kinder to ourselves and others?

  • It starts with us! –most of us would like to think we are kind to others, but can we be kind to another if we are not able to be kind to ourselves?
  • How often do we treat ourselves differently from how we would a friend/loved one?
  • Show compassion to yourself and others-research has shown a decrease in bullying, increased feelings of well-being and a rise in the practice of compassionate behaviour to all living beings.
  • Say kind things to yourself and others- You might think being kind is soft, it’s maybe even weak, but being kind doesn’t have to be soft, it can be fierce too.
  • Small acts of kindness can really affect not only our own mood, but other people’s mood as well- They don’t have to be massive things, maybe you share your snack with someone, help someone to lift something heavy or buy someone a coffee let a mum and her hungry impatient children skip to the front of the queue. The person receiving the kindness feels good, and you feel good too when that person thanks you or smiles back. You have a moment of connection,
  • We can show kindness in different ways Loving-kindness meditation (sometimes called “metta” meditation) is a great way to cultivate our propensity for kindness. It involves mentally sending goodwill, kindness, and warmth towards others by silently repeating kind words and thoughts in our mind.
  • Be there to listen to others when they need you to.
  • Read and research “kindness” For example “The Happy Newspaper” celebrates all that is good in the world: https://thehappynewspaper.com/?v=79cba1185463
  • Practise gratitude-people who practise gratitude and notice the things they are thankful for are happier and have a greater sense of wellbeing. Try and think of a few things in the morning or before you got to bed. You could tell someone in your household or write them down. Actively focus on the positives of your day.
  • Self-care-keeping healthy routines and rituals are an important way to look after yourself.
  • Practise mindfulness- a way of thinking – focusing on the here and now. You can mindfully do almost anything – eat a meal, brush your teeth, or choosing to go for a walk mindfully.
  • Taking a breath and distracting yourself-can give you a short break from negative thoughts and a chance to reduce anxiety.
  • Become your own coach or cheerleader will help you quiet your inner critic, try to have compassion for yourself like you would for anybody you care about.
  • Create community- build a social circle with people who have positive energy. Spending time with positive people encourages you to focus on the good as well.
  • Finding your passion-consider giving yourself time to do things that bring YOU joy.

 

The more we practice kindness and compassion, the easier and more natural it becomes, until that energy expands like the tide rising- it’s like a good habit. We feel willing to open the gift of kindness to other people, animals, plants, and our planet.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”. Maya Angelou”

 

References

https://www.mediarunsearch.co.uk/10-things-we-learned-from-the-worlds-largest-study-on-kindness/

https://unsplash.com/photos/Fnv_6O4stLg

https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-printer-paper-with-be-kind-text-on-plants-3972441/

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