Early Learning and School Readiness: Research Evidence
Derren Hayes
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
These academic studies have been summarised by Dr Jane Murray and Dr Rory McDowall Clark on behalf of TACTYC - The Association for Professional Development in the Early Years
STUDY 1
Early Childhood Research Review 2003-2017
British Educational Research Association Early Childhood Special Interest Group and TACTYC: Association for Professional Development in the Early Years (2017)
Led by Jane Payler and Elizabeth Wood, this wide-ranging review of existing research on early childhood education and care was a collaboration by more than 50 academics, covering UK research since 2003 and encompasses children aged from birth to seven, their families, communities and practitioners. It emphasises integrated education and care for young children and is structured according to five themes, each authored by a different team.
Professionalism (by Jane Payler and Geraldine Davis)
Qualifications among the largely female young early education workforce have risen in recent years, yet policy requirements, status, pay, career pathways and conditions of service have not risen commensurately. The sector struggles to recruit enough qualified staff, although attrition has reduced. Settings employing well-qualified staff tend to achieve higher Ofsted judgments but graduates' influence in settings is variable because inconsistent policy and leadership have limited the emergence of professionalism in the sector. Research indicates that early education practice requires highly skilled workers with strong competences, but policymakers have little regard for them. However, professional development among workers has been shaped by process-oriented communities accommodating and addressing the increasing complexities workers experience.
Parenting and the Family (by Pam Jarvis and Jan Georgeson)
Neoliberal government policy requires parents on low incomes to work long hours for poor wages yet also requires them to be skilled parents. Women are affected particularly adversely by these expectations. Few policies have improved conditions for parenting, and parent-practitioner partnerships are often unequal, with practitioners sometimes stigmatising working parents. Universal parenting programmes tend to be driven by middle-class values and are poorly attended.
Conversely, targeted parenting interventions addressing children's behavioural development have enjoyed some success. Targeted programmes addressing social inequalities seem particularly effectual, and programmes targeting early risk in child development seem most effective. Although small-scale interventions may lead to positive outcomes locally, large-scale programmes with clear aims are more likely to result in measurable impact.
Play and Pedagogy (by Elizabeth Wood and Liz Chesworth)
Established links between play, learning and development rarely emerge fully in curricula because in practice, formal teaching and adult-led activity prevail, aligning with early education policies that interpret play as adults teaching through play. Children's agency in play affords them opportunities to communicate complex cognitive processes and relationships in different ways and their content knowledge is often evident in such play. However, practitioners do not always recognise these factors or their value for learning and teaching and policymakers do not understand progression in play, particularly for children older than five years.
Learning, Development and Curriculum (by Janet Rose and Louise Gilbert)
Rose and Gilbert highlight gaps in research and practice concerning learning, development and curriculum. They reiterate a confused landscape concerning adults' roles in young children's learning and development. They note the emergence of important messages for young children's learning from neuroscientific research concerning executive function, self-regulation and metacognition. They suggest that more research is required to understand the effects of social and emotional development on academic learning and the ways physical development and neuro-developmental factors might affect all learning domains.
Assessment and School Readiness (by Philip Hood and Helena Mitchell)
Although school readiness is often aligned with notions of quality in early child education and care, neither is well defined: the Scottish Executive acknowledges "school readiness" as highly contested. Research indicates that interactive pedagogic strategies that support children's self-regulation and agency afford children developing confidence and competence, but in England the government frames school readiness as young children's readiness to conform to formal academic expectations.
Diagnostic formative assessment, tailored to individual children's situated learning and agency tends to be the best predictor of later attainment, but such models are not always favoured by government.
Narrowly defined assessments of school readiness may particularly disadvantage or marginalise certain groups, including children with disabilities, children who are young in the school year, boys and bilingual children.
Implications for practice
- Policymakers should recognise the value of early education workers' qualifications in terms of status, pay, career pathways and conditions of service.
- Targeted parenting programmes should focus on social inequalities and early risk in child development.
- Policymakers should reduce demands of performativity in childcare provision and should focus policy on pedagogical principles based on research evidence.
- Executive function, self-regulation and metacognition should be the focus for the curriculum, mediated by play that is authentically child-led.
- Assessment should be diagnostic and formative, tailored to individual children and able to accommodate their situated learning and agency.
- More research is required to provide evidence concerning the nature of early education quality in respect of lifetime outcomes.