Early Childhood Blog

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

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

 

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

The BECERA conference on 22^nd 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

 

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?

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.

 

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)

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/

It’s World Space Week- and did you know that NASA have said that the first people who will set foot on Mars are already alive, which means they are the children we are working with right now (NASA’s Next Giant Leap | NASA ) We know that our youngest children are creative, curious and ready to be inspired and Space Week gives us an opportunity to focus on providing the STEM activities that will inspire them to reach for the stars. In 2018 the European Journal of STEM Education published a special issue dedicated to STEM in early childhood education and the editorial highlighted the issue that often practitioners are wary of venturing into the field of STEM because ‘explorations quickly become messy and unpredictable, and children can ask questions that are difficult to answer’ (van Keulen, 2018, p. 2).  For some people not knowing the ‘right’ answer cuts across well-established ideas of what being an educator is,  but in early childhood education and care settings child-led learning approaches underpin all elements of best practice so we should embrace the opportunity to get all the children we work with seeing themselves as scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians.

If you are looking for ideas about how to develop more STEM activities in your work there are plenty of free resources available. Dr Joanna Barstow, Lecturer in Astronomy in the School of Physics Sciences at the Open University wrote and illustrated a story about an alien looking for the perfect planet which is available to watch here Alien story – YouTube and the free OU course ‘Living on the Moon’ has lots of experiments and activities to help children find out what they need to know in order to be that first Martian (OLCreate: PUB_3578_1.0 S.T.A.R.S Project Teacher CPD : Living on the Moon (open.edu) ). English LE Landing page | Early years STEM (stemintheearlyyears.com)  has a wide range of free resources that outline activities and show how they relate to different aspects of STEM and identifies children’s books that can help develop learning.

This Space Week why not take a moment to think about what STEM learning you are doing- talking about the weather, using building blocks, videoing activities, looking at autumn leaves and see how you could build on that to get your children closer to getting on that rocket. Let us know your ideas and share your tips and resources in the comments below.

References

Van Keulen, H. (2018) STEM in Early Childhood Education European Journal of STEM Education (PDF) STEM in Early Childhood Education (researchgate.net)