Beliefs and Values Inform pedagogies: Sure Start

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Beliefs and Values Inform pedagogies Sure Start

• Pam Nason

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Sure Start

• Connected and joined-up services one stop
  shopping for high quality integrated care and
  education.
• Single site or cluster offering coordinated
• Child care
• Family Services and Parent Education
• Range of Early Education Programs (birth 4)
• Health Services

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Curriculum

• Linkedness/connectedness
• Oneself
• Others
• The material world
• Society
• The entire ecosystem
• Flemish model. Starting Strong

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A renewed belief in the quality of life in the
here and now

• Conviviality, pleasure, creative activities, fun
  and exercise, painting, puppetry, dance and drama
  , singing and music, cooking and eating, digging
  and building, in short, what Robert Owen called
  merriment
• Moss and Penn, 1996. Quoted in People Under 3

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Caring close relationships

• An ethic of care for the young
• The foundation upon which development is built
  secure emotional attachments, exploratory
  behavior, language development, social confidence
  and competence

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Close Caring Relationships Pedagogies

• Key worker to establish stable, predictable
  relationship with both children and parents
• Deep respect for range of home cultures/
  pedagogies, and attempt to provide for
  home/school continuities
• Close collaboration between staff from various
  services to facilitate broad continuum of
  referral and care
• Deconstruction of hierarchical relations caring
  relations replace authoritarian relations

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Childrens rights

• European Union, Nordic influence
• Right to be respected as individuals, listened
  to, taken seriously, play, leisure, access to
  artistic cultural heritage (UN Charter)

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Childrens rights pedagogies

• Cooperation and negotiation replaces
  authoritarian, dictatorial approaches
• Childrens choices maximized, opinions solicited,
  decisions respected
• Participation in decision making as soon as they
  are competent to do so
• (Goldscmeid and Jackson, 2004, People Under
  Three).
• Touch screen computers for babies nap times

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The importance of play

• Strong research evidence for play as an effective
  route to learning
• Different types of play produce different sorts
  of learning
• Exploratory Play
• Heuristic Play with objects
• Outdoor play in natural environments
• Relationship play

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The importance of play Pedagogies

• Teacher as environmental engineer -
  micro-environments each carefully
  designed/evaluated to promote specific types of
  play

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Exploratory and heuristic play

• Treasure baskets for babies uninterrupted
  discovery, concentration and decision making
• Heuristic play range of materials with which
  children can find out for themselves
  relationships and functions, create and solve
  problems
• Specific times for supportive but
  non-interventionist role for teachers

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Play with/in the natural environment

• Strong European move to environmental awareness
  and preservation
• Starts in Early Childhood
• Learned by living with/in the natural world
  guided by adults who respect the interdependence
  in nature

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Play with/in the natural environment pedagogies

• Teachers promote environmental awareness and
  cultivate love of nature
• Develop and supervise play within naturalistic
  environments, sensory-gardens
• Teacher as gardener - childrens gardens - food
  production and lavender bags

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Relationship play

• The human need for close positive physical
  contact
• Foundation for language development and social
  responsibility

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Relationship play pedagogies

• The need for close physical contact
• Hugging, holding and games involving human
  contact
• Parental support and coaching to help focus
  physical energy positively (their children and
  theirs especially for fathers/bonding)
• The golden rules (for positive social conduct)
  publicly posted, public rewards

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Key learning skills

• Foundation stage (3 up) is about developing key
  learning skills such as listening, speaking,
  concentration and persistence and learning to
  work together and cooperate with other children.
  It is also about developing early communication,
  literacy and numeracy skills that will prepare
  young children for Key Stage 1of the National
  Curriculum (DfEs, 2000)

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Targeted learning skills pedagogies

• Identification of skills and knowledge using
  variety of assessment tools, systematic
  assessment feeds into all planning
• Targeted teaching in small groups for short
  periods of time pull out model for small groups
  - table toys and games, teacher directed
  activities