Understanding How Young Children Learn

Ostroff highlights processes that propel learning (including play and collaboration), distilling the research into the most important ideas teachers need to design pedagogy and curriculum.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

This timely and accessible text introduces, theorises and practically applies two important concepts which now underpin early years practice: those of ‘playful learning' and 'playful pedagogies'. Pat Broadhead and Andy Burt draw upon filmed material, conversations with children, reflection, observation, and parental and staff interviews, in their longitudinal study of outdoor and indoor play environments in an early years unit. This research-based text offers extensive insights into related theories, as well drawing on the authors’ skills and knowledge as researcher and as class teacher in order to provide opportunities for personal reflection and possibilities for practical application in early years classes and settings. Discussing both indoor and outdoor environments, the text explores ideas surrounding ‘open-ended play’, and ‘the whatever you want it to be place’. It illustrates how the themes of children’s play reflect their interests, experiences, knowledge gained at home and in school, and their cultural heritages. By showing how children become familiar and skilful within open-ended play environments, the authors illustrate how the children’s co-operative skills develop over time as they become connected in communities of learners. Alongside the examples of children’s playful learning, the book also considers the implications for resourcing and organising playful settings through playful pedagogies that connect with the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum (DfES 2007) and with the Tickell Review, ongoing as the book went to press. Understanding Young Children's Learning through Play uses children’s perspectives on their play to illustrate how rich their personal understandings are. It also includes parental reflections on what may initially appear a risky and unusual outdoor environment, and it draws attention to the importance of conflict resolution in play in order to extend children’s resilience and assertiveness. This insightful text will be of interest to students of early years education, early years practitioners, academics and researchers.

First released in the Spring of 1999, How People Learn has been expanded to show how the theories and insights from the original book can translate into actions and practice, now making a real connection between classroom activities and learning behavior. This edition includes far-reaching suggestions for research that could increase the impact that classroom teaching has on actual learning. Like the original edition, this book offers exciting new research about the mind and the brain that provides answers to a number of compelling questions. When do infants begin to learn? How do experts learn and how is this different from non-experts? What can teachers and schools do-with curricula, classroom settings, and teaching methods--to help children learn most effectively? New evidence from many branches of science has significantly added to our understanding of what it means to know, from the neural processes that occur during learning to the influence of culture on what people see and absorb. How People Learn examines these findings and their implications for what we teach, how we teach it, and how we assess what our children learn. The book uses exemplary teaching to illustrate how approaches based on what we now know result in in-depth learning. This new knowledge calls into question concepts and practices firmly entrenched in our current education system. Topics include: How learning actually changes the physical structure of the brain. How existing knowledge affects what people notice and how they learn. What the thought processes of experts tell us about how to teach. The amazing learning potential of infants. The relationship of classroom learning and everyday settings of community and workplace. Learning needs and opportunities for teachers. A realistic look at the role of technology in education.

Looking at and listening to picture and story books is a ubiquitous activity, frequently enjoyed by many young children and their parents. Well before children can read for themselves they are able to learn from books. Looking at and listening to books increases children’s general knowledge, understanding about the world and promotes language acquisition. This collection of papers demonstrates the breadth of information pre-reading children learn from books and increases our understanding of the social and cognitive mechanisms that support this learning. Our hope is that this Research Topic/eBook will be useful for researchers as well as educational practitioners and parents who are interested in optimizing children’s learning.

Human beings are born to learn. During the last few decades, developmental science has exploded with discoveries of how, specifically, learning happens. This provides us with an unprecedented window into children's minds: how and when they begin to think, perceive, understand, and apply knowledge. Wendy Ostroff builds on this research and shows you how to harness the power of the brain, the most powerful learning machine in the universe. She highlights the processes that inspire or propel learning--play, confidence, self-regulation, movement, mnemonic strategies, metacognition, articulation, and collaboration--and distills the research into a synthesis of the most important takeaway ideas that teachers will need as they design their curriculum and pedagogy. Each chapter has suggested activities for exactly how teachers can put theory into practice in the classroom. When you understand how your students learn, you will know how to teach them in ways that harness the brain's natural learning systems. Dr. Wendy L. Ostroff is Associate Professor in the Program for the Advancement of Learning at Curry College.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

Children learn to talk through interaction including involvement in many thousands of conversations with adults and other children. These conversations provide the framework for exploring relationships, understanding the world, and learning – in its widest sense. This book explores how children learn to communicate using language, how they use language to learn and the role of adults in the process. It examines how adults can support children to learn by involving them in positive interactions, meaningful conversation and by helping them play, explore and talk with each other. The book includes: examples of children and adults talking and learning together case studies of successful approaches that support language and learning in early years settings points for reflection and practical tasks Informed by the author’s own experience working with young children, families and practitioners, and from his involvement in the England-wide Every Child a Talker (ECaT) project, it links key research findings with successful practice to inspire practitioners to develop skills when talking with children, influence how adults plan for talk in settings and gain insight into how language develops in the home.