The Impact Of The National Curriculum On The Teaching Of Five Year Olds

Originally published in 1994. One of the most neglected areas of research and thus writing is the world of the infant school child. Those who know it best are teachers who tend not to write. Those who write most are academics and even they venture rarely into this area. This book is based on research funded by the University of Wales. A number of teachers in a Welsh LEA were interviewed over time as the National Curriculum was being introduced up to Key Stage 1. The structured interviews covered a wide range of topics related to the anticipated and actual efforts of the National Curriculum at this key stage including curriculum planning, assessment, teaching methods, and organization. Teachers' attitudes to the curriculum were explored through a short attitude test. The resulting data provides in depth the first such examination and is a resource not only in itself but for all those researchers on change agents and restructuring.

The child-centred principles of early years education - which emphasize play and holistic learning - are being challenged by the implementation of a subject-based National Curriculum. The contributors to this book explore this challenge and offer some ways of meeting it practically and productively. Issues covered include: pedagogical issues, such as the cross-curricular, topic-based teaching; teacher's attitudes to subject knowledge; assessment issues, including baseline assessment at the age of five; and parental attitudes to the National Curriculum and its content at Key Stage 1.

The child-centred principles of early years education - which emphasize play and holistic learning - are being challenged by the implementation of a subject-based National Curriculum. The contributors to this book explore this challenge and offer some ways of meeting it practically and productively. Issues covered include: pedagogical issues, such as the cross-curricular, topic-based teaching; teacher's attitudes to subject knowledge; assessment issues, including baseline assessment at the age of five; and parental attitudes to the National Curriculum and its content at Key Stage 1.

What does the National Curriculum mean to pupils and teachers at Key Stage One? How have teachers and children coped with the ongoing changes? How has subject teaching altered in infant classrooms? In A National Curriculum for the Early Years, Angela Anning and her team of contributors set out to examine these issues. Infant teachers and their pupils were the guinea pigs for the introduction of the National Curriculum over a five year period. Despite many reservations about a subject-based curriculum for young children, teachers struggled to interpret the National Curriculum Orders into a workable, if not manageable, curriculum in their classrooms. The contributors to this book, each experts in a subject discipline, have kept in close touch with practising and intending infant teachers as the National Curriculum was operationalized in primary schools. They have used their teacher networks, as well as research evidence, to tap into the strategies used by infant teachers to cope with the planning, delivery and assessment of the National Curriculum subjects and the effects of government policy changes on young children's learning. Together the contributors provide a timely analysis of subject discipline based education for young children and look ahead to the prospects for those subjects at Key Stage One in the second half of the 1990s. This book will be essential reading for anyone involved in the education of young children.

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2008. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book will help you to prepare for and make the most of your teaching practice in a variety of early childhood settings which cater for children from birth to eight years. The book offers practical guidelines and suggestions.

Each chapter of this book is devoted to a separate concept, which is analysed in terms of its major features. Follow-up questions at the end of each chapter are designed to challenge the reader to reflect on the specific issues raised. Vol I is largely introductory dealing with students' and teachers' perspectives of curriculum.