Few of us completely follow any one of our glorious early childhood theorists. Each one of us (I suspect) pick a little of this colour (idea) and a little of that and over time we fit them together into something beautiful to us, that makes us feel safe, valued, competent and fulfilled, Early Childhood Consultant Joy Lubawy writes.
We also have selected ideas (and patterns) to suit the environment in which we are working. We are each our own theorist, learning (I hope) from the children we encounter. If we really want to know children and how they grow, learn and develop, then we need to watch and listen to them. They are the ones with the real instruction manual, and every theorist we have ever read about has begun with their own study of children.
I am going to select a few on my own favourites that have sustained, enlightened, challenged and informed my practice and advocacy from 1974 (when I first began studies) until today. It is not possible to discover and discuss every single important early childhood philosopher and theorist there has ever been.
Jerome Bruner, wasn’t a favourite of mine for a long time, perhaps I didn’t really understand him, but today his ideas sit well with what I now know. He has devoted his life (and is now 100 years old) to trying to discover how children learn, and here are a couple of his ideas:
The absolute beginning of learning is a series of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ decisions, seeing how something is alike or different, working through patterns and concepts to find a match/non-match.
• Yes, that is a human face, no its’ not.
• Yes that is Mum, no, that person is not.
• All men are Dad, well no only this one is Dad, and
• I hate avocado, I love avocado.
This makes me reflect that richness in an early childhood environment is essential. Children require many different materials, equipment and experiences made available for them to make choices from. Far too often we have seen environments which are too stark, too controlled by adults who are making all the choices, and too limiting.
To learn, we must select and transform information, experiences and perceptions so they make sense to us, and so we can form theories and make decisions.
There is a man in the moon, I can see his face.
• No, I saw a film and astronauts walked on the Moon; it’s a giant rock in space.
• Oh, now I am wondering where it came from and what makes it shine.
• Look at that, it keeps changing how it looks. Why is that?
I am thinking about all those wonderful false theories we have created in our lifetime and how, gradually with experience and time we have changed our ideas, and keep changing them. Let’s not always supply the answer, but instead encourage the wondering. We are active in the learning process – it’s not something done to or for us.
For me, the ideas of Loris Malaguzzi and Howard Gardner sit well with Jerome Bruner. Malaguzzi tells us that the child is a theorist, wondering, observing, experimenting, exploring and proposing ideas in an environment which encourages and allows them to express their ideas in many different ways with art materials, with language, drama, music, in building or what they do with some sand or water for instance.
Gardner builds on these ideas in his Theory of Multiple Intelligence, encouraging us to see that each child has individual gifts and challenges, in many different combinations. Gardner challenges us to think in eight different ways about the environments, experiences and materials we present. He asks us if we are engaging children in learning.