Understanding Children and Childhood : A New Zealand Perspective [5 ed.] 9781927277133, 9781927131763

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Understanding Children and Childhood

A very readable and clearly written text with many scenarios and examples to explain concepts and theories. The evidence-based nature of discussions is a strength, including both current and seminal, national and international research. Margaret Brennan, School of Education Studies, Open Polytechnic This new edition explores the concept of children as citizens, recommending teachers and researchers view children as social actors rather than passive objects. I value this approach because it makes sense for me as a researcher working with children and wanting to listen to their ‘voice’. Esther Fitzpatrick, Faculty of Education, University of Auckland

Understanding Children and Childhood A New Zealand Perspective 5th Edition

Anne B. Smith

BRIDGET WILLIAMS BOOKS

This edition published in 2013 by Bridget Williams Books Ltd, PO Box 12474, Wellington 6144, New Zealand. www.bwb.co.nz First published in 1982 by George Allen & Unwin Australia Pty Ltd, and reprinted in 1984, 1985, 1986. Second edition published in 1988 by Allen & Unwin New Zealand Ltd, and reprinted in 1991 by Bridget Williams Books Ltd. Third edition published in 1992 by Bridget Williams Books Ltd, and reprinted in 1994, 1996, 1997. Fourth edition published in 1998 by Bridget Williams Books Ltd, and reprinted in 1999, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2009 and 2012. This book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without the prior permission of the copyright holders and the publisher. Inquiries should be made to Bridget Williams Books. © Anne B. Smith 2013 ISBN 9781927131763 ISTC A022013000006129 Acknowledgements The publisher acknowledges the ongoing support provided by the Bridget Williams Books Publishing Trust, with the G & N Trust. We also acknowledge the permission of Sense Publishers and John Wiley and Sons to include material in this book. With warm thanks to the students and families of Island Bay School: Laquan Afamiliona, Kahukura Dickason, Vita Goodwin, Kester Law, Alex Mitikulena, Celine Palopalo, Francesca Savage. Our thanks also to principal Perry Rush and to Amy Austin for coordinating the photoshoots. Thanks also to Billie and Sam Pardington and their family. National Library of New Zealand Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Smith, Anne B. Understanding children’s development Understanding children and childhood : a New Zealand perspective / Anne B. Smith. 5th edition. Revision of: Understanding children’s development. 1998. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Child development. 2. Child development—New Zealand. 3. Cognition in children. 4. Cognition in children—New Zealand. 5. Social skills in children. 6. Social skills in children —New Zealand. I. Title. 155.41—dc 23 Cover images: Students of Island Bay School, photographs by Neil Pardington Edited by Caroline Budge Cover and internal text design: Neil Pardington at Base Two Typeset by Tina Delceg Printed by Printlink, Wellington

Contents

Preface Acknowledgements

7 11

Part I Theorising Childhood 1 Theoretical Frameworks for Childhood 2 The Principles of Learning 3 Children as Citizens

14 39 64

Part II The Crucial Beginnings 4 Infancy 5 Early Childhood Education

86 110

Part III Domains of Learning 6 Being and Becoming Sociable 7 Language and Culture 8 Thinking in Context 9 Assessment for Learning

132 164 204 241

Part IV Diverse Childhoods 10 Making Sense of Gender 11 Inclusion of Children with Disabilities

278 310

Part V Sustaining and Nurturing Human Capacity 12 Families and Whānau

340

References Index

374 412

To my grandchildren, Jessica, Thomas, Harrison, Clare and Sylvia

Preface

When I wrote the fourth edition of this book 15 years ago, I was convinced that it would be the last edition, but recently I changed my mind. People were still reading the book and I wanted to update it to make it more relevant in today’s world. More importantly, however, there had been radical changes in my own life since I wrote the last edition. At that time I was immersed in the demanding task of being Director of the Children’s Issues Centre at the University of Otago; now as a semi-retired academic I have more time to write without interruption. But the biggest change is that I am now grandmother of five grandchildren. As I write, the oldest Jessica is eleven, Thomas is nine, Harrison is six, and Clare and Sylvia are five. So I have had the privilege of sharing five childhood journeys, and becoming reacquainted with the reality of children’s lives. Their lives are very different from those of their mothers growing up in Dunedin. All of the grandchildren are very familiar with laptops, iPhones and iPads, for example. Yet at the same time their families have had similar struggles to our own with bringing up children – how to soothe crying babies and get enough sleep, smooth the paths of friendship formation, and settle children into early childhood centres and schools. Engaging with grandchildren has helped to motivate me to write another version of the book, and for this reason I have dedicated the book to these five children. This fifth edition of Understanding Children’s Development has been renamed Understanding Children and Childhood and continues the theoretical journey of my thinking, which began with the first edition in 1982. While this edition still has a sociocultural focus, it now accommodates a paradigm shift in thinking about childhood that took place in the 1980s and 1990s. This movement is known as childhood studies,1 and the theory emerging from this new interdisciplinary field and children’s rights informs this edition. I have also drawn on a wide array of 1

Childhood studies was originally known as the ‘sociology of childhood’ and is also referred to as the ‘social studies of childhood’ (Qvortrup, Corsaro, & Honig, 2009).

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recent qualitative research that helps make the link between theory and practice. When I wrote the last edition, there was very little material about children’s perspectives on their everyday lives, but there is now a much wider range of published research to draw on. The new title reflects a shift in focus away from developmental psychology towards a more multidisciplinary childhood studies approach. Childhood studies questions some of the assumptions about children’s ‘normal’ development, and emphasises that ideas of childhood and children are socially constructed and dependent on culture, geography and history. It also draws attention to an aspect of childhood that had previously been invisible and unreported: children’s agency and capacity for participation and contribution to their own development. The concept of children as social actors, and the inclusion of their perceptions about their own lives and experiences are essential components in arriving at an understanding of childhood and creating better conditions for it. I continue to draw, however, on theoretical frameworks that informed earlier editions, particularly sociocultural theories, as these are compatible with and add value to a childhood studies approach. Like childhood studies researcher, Martin Woodhead (2009), I do not reject child development theory or research, and believe that it is unwise to throw out the baby with the bath water! This book draws on child development concepts throughout, but it emphasises the diversity of children’s experiences, the embeddedness of children’s learning and development in different contexts, and the inclusion of children’s own perspectives on their lives. Childhood studies is wide enough to encompass child development research, which itself is constantly evolving to fit with new ideas. Creating a theoretical framework for thinking about childhood is a work in progress, which is continually reiterated, and this book reflects my latest iteration. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989) is a document that has greatly influenced my thinking, and that of many other researchers cited in this book. The convention provides a moral imperative that research and policy should connect to, and make a difference in, children’s lives to enhance their rights. Psychologist Gary Melton (2005) has argued that the UNCRC is useful not only to help decide what should be studied, but also how research with children should be carried out, and how data should be analysed and reported. There is a strong link between children’s rights and childhood studies thinking, because both present a critique of the way that children’s lives are regulated and how childhood is undervalued today (Alanen, 2011). My aim is to present theory and research findings that are relevant to a diverse range of people who work with, or care about, ensuring that children have healthy, productive and happy lives. While I hope that teachers and students from early

Preface | 9

childhood to secondary education will continue to be a major part of the audience for the book, I also want it to be relevant to professionals working with children in the fields of social work, law, family support, recreation and health, and of course, parents. Many professionals want to be good advocates for children’s rights and wellbeing, but adults do not always know what is in children’s ‘best interests’. Even when ‘experts’ want to advocate for children, they have been guilty of excluding children from helping set the agenda of advocacy (Melton, 1987). When children themselves participate in decisions about their lives, there is less danger of their exploitation for political purposes, or neglect of their central concerns. Studying children from the perspective of parents or teachers, or through standardised research instruments provides only parts of the picture. A missing part of the puzzle has been understanding childhood from the point of view of the child. To understand children and childhood, it is necessary to draw on theories, so Part I of the book introduces the strands of theory that underlie topics addressed later. The first chapter brings together three key strands of theory: children’s rights, childhood studies and sociocultural theory. The second chapter discusses theories of learning, including those that have been historically important like behavioural and modelling theory, but also motivation, which links learning with sociocultural perspectives such as situated learning theory. The third chapter elaborates on one important tenet of childhood studies – children’s agency – and explains why viewing children as citizens helps us understand and support them more effectively. Part II of the book focuses on the first five years of life, with chapter 4 on infancy and chapter 5 on early childhood education. I have dealt in detail with these early years because infants and young children are exceptionally able to benefit from rich environments, while being particularly vulnerable to impoverished environments. What happens in those years has profound long-term implications for people’s lives, so we all need to be very knowledgeable about the delicate relationship between infants and their immediate caring contexts as well as the wider social, historical and political contexts of their early childhood. Part III looks at three domains of learning – sociability (chapter 6), language (chapter 7) and thinking (chapter 8). The ninth chapter, on assessment, shows that the measurement of these domains of learning has a major impact on children’s future orientation to learning. Although children’s learning and development is often divided into the broad domains of physical, cognitive, emotional and social development (Berk, 2006), these domains are not really separate, as I argue in chapter 1. Part IV foregrounds the importance of diversity in childhood studies, and its recognition that within the space of childhood there are many different childhoods

10 | Understanding Children and Childhood

and lived experiences. Chapter 10 shows how gender is woven into the discourses and experiences of childhood in often invisible ways, while chapter 11 shows how disabled children are influenced by how society interprets their impairment, and how they have been marginalised by exclusion and isolation. Finally, Part V consists of a chapter on families and whānau, the most stable, enduring and powerful aspect of the lives of children and young people, but one which is constantly evolving to include more diverse family forms and structures. The chapter discusses children’s experiences within their families/whānau, and shows how family resilience or vulnerability is strongly influenced by the economic and political effects of government policy. One of the most powerful motivations for writing a new edition of the book has been meeting people (often early childhood or primary teachers) who have read previous editions during the course of their training. Many of them have told me that the book helped them to understand the theory behind what they do, which is tremendously rewarding to hear. I can only hope this edition works in the same way for future generations of people working with and trying to understand children. Anne B. Smith November 2013

Acknowledgements

I was privileged, when working at the Children’s Issues Centre in Dunedin, to have been able to invite some of the world’s leading authorities on childhood issues to participate in conferences and seminars. These people have been influential researchers and passionate advocates for children, and meeting them and hearing about their work first hand has been tremendously important in widening and enriching my knowledge. I would like to mention just a few of the overseas visitors who came to the centre’s events who had a major impact: Priscilla Alderson, Judy Cashmore, John Davis, Joan Durrant, Dale Farran, Michael Freeman, James Garbarino, Anne Graham, Robbie Gilligan, Berry Mayall, Gary Melton, Per Egil Mjvaatn, Peter Moss, Bren Neale, Doug Powell, Martin Richards, Miriam Rosenthal, Irene Rizzini and Margy Whalley. There are, of course, far too many New Zealand colleagues to mention individually. Many have helped me find relevant sources of material, build a holistic vision of childhood in New Zealand and advocate for a better life for children here. Their research contributed to this book, and such colleagues include those who worked with me closely at the Children’s Issues Centre: Nicola Atwool, Judith Duncan, Michael Gaffney, Megan Gollop, Julie Lawrence, Kate Marshall, Karen Nairn, Mary Ann Powell and Nicola Taylor. Other colleagues whose input has been invaluable include Keith Ballard, Lisette Burrows, Terry Crooks, Warwick Elley, Claire Freeman, Mark Henaghan, Robert Ludbrook, Jude MacArthur, Bruce McMillan, Pauline Tapp and Beth Wood. I’d also like to thank all my early childhood colleagues, especially Nancy Bell, Margaret Carr, Carmen Dalli, Lyn Foote, Alex Gunn, Maggie Haggerty, Judy Layland, Wendy Lee, Anne Meade, Helen May, Stuart McNaughton, Christine Rietveld, Jean Rockel, Mere Skerrett, Aroaro Tamati and Sarah Te One. Former Commissioners for Children and judges who have contributed to children’s rights and my thinking are the late Laurie O’Reilly, Ian Hassall, Roger McClay, Cindy Kiro, John Angus, Peter Boshier and Bruce Robertson. I would also like to thank the many students and former

12 | Understanding Children and Childhood

students who have told me that they have read the book and found it helpful. Their feedback has been an important reason for writing another edition. I have greatly enjoyed working with Tom Rennie from Bridget Williams Books in the preparation of this edition. He has been supportive and encouraging, and has also provided valuable input about improving the book. Julie Stigter has worked meticulously on checking the manuscript for appropriate APA referencing, and Caroline Budge, my editor, has offered very helpful feedback on the detail and shape of the book. My husband John has given constant support and practical help, reading and correcting drafts, correcting references, and tolerating the demands that the book has made on my time and attention.

Part I

Theorising Childhood

1

Theoretical Frameworks for Childhood

If we are to understand children and childhood, we need theories to help us make sense of our observations of and interactions with children, and to help make the world a better place for them. Theories alone will not improve life for children, but they profoundly affect the attitudes and values on which our actions promoting or limiting their well-being are based. Whether or not we are aware of the theories that underlie our actions, they are present. This chapter introduces three strands of theory – children’s rights, childhood studies and sociocultural theory – to provide a conceptual framework for understanding children and childhood. Together these theories suggest that children are entitled to social justice, that ideas and expectations of children and childhood differ, and that shared social experiences interacting with sensitive and responsive social partners help children to become social actors and contributors to society. Before we explore them, however, it is necessary to answer the question of what is meant by the terms ‘child’ and ‘children’. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) gives a simple answer, defining a child as any person from the age of zero to 18 years. I adopt that definition for this book, and avoid using the phrase ‘children and young people’, since young people are included in the definition of children. Children all over the world go through similar changes according to age, such as physical changes like sitting up, crawling and walking. Being a child, however, is a different experience depending significantly on social, historical and political contexts. Different societies provide different expectations and roles for children – for example, at what age they should go to and leave school, vote, consent to surgery, become criminally responsible, have consensual sex, drink alcohol and participate in work (James & James, 2012). The term ‘childhood’ refers to the early immature stage of life characterised by maturation and change. ‘Childhood studies’, though, recognises that:

Part I | Theorising Childhood | 15

... childhood largely consists of a conferred status; many attributes are imposed or ascribed to children, such as ignorance, dependence and volatile emotion, when they are not necessarily integral to childhood and when many children and young people demonstrate their knowledge, generous interdependence and reliable wisdom. (Alderson, 2013, p. 4)

In the past in Western society we have commonly regarded children as the passive recipients of adults’ teaching, protection and care, as objects to be shaped and socialised, as the properties of their families, and as incomplete beings who are not yet humans. Ideas of what is ‘normal’ for particular age levels have shaped our assumptions about what children can and cannot do, and often these assumptions have greatly underestimated children’s competence. Children have been the invisible and mute objects of concern, vulnerable, in need of protection and lacking in control over events in their life. This book challenges some of these assumptions and suggests that children are persons who, while flourishing in the context of loving and supportive environments, are active participants in their social worlds and have a unique part to play in their own development.

Children’s rights Rights are claims that are justifiable on legal or moral grounds to have or obtain something, or to act in a certain way. (James & James, 2008, p. 109)

With the adoption of the UNCRC in 1989, the dominant image of childhood was challenged, and a new culture of children’s rights and interests created. The UNCRC provides an internationally accepted standard of basic human rights for children. It is a document of reconciliation, which treats parents and children with respect, and recommends a partnership between parents, children and the institutions of the state. In New Zealand we ratified this international treaty in 1993, confirming our belief that young people are citizens and that they have entitlements that encompass moral, political and social agendas. The 54 Articles in the convention are divided into three main types which apply to all children wherever they live. They are: ƀLJ *,.##*.#)(LJ ,#!".-ŻLJ 1"#"LJ --,.LJ .".LJ "#&,(LJ -")/&LJ LJ 0#1LJ (LJ treated as citizens who are an important part of society ƀLJ *,)..#)(LJ ,#!".-ŻLJ 1"#"LJ --,.LJ .".LJ "#&,(LJ -")/&LJ ().LJ LJ -/$.LJ .)LJ discrimination, humiliation, or ill-treatment ƀLJ *,)0#-#)(-LJ,#!".-ŻLJ1"#"LJ,LJ)(,(LJ1#."LJ"#&,(Ɖ-LJ--LJ.)LJ-,0#-LJ and resources, such as parental care, education, health and a reasonable standard of living.

16 | Understanding Children and Childhood

The most innovative and controversial aspect of the convention relates to its message that children should have agency and voice, and that they have a right to participate – to receive and give information, and to take part in decisions in matters that affect them.1 Protection and provision rights are commonly given more prominence than participation rights, suggesting that it is more acceptable to construct children as vulnerable and in need, as opposed to resourceful and agentic (Woodhead, 2005). Nevertheless it is not necessary to see participation rights in opposition to protection and provision rights. Ideally there should be a balance of attention to these three types of rights. UNCRC relies on moral pressure, dialogue and cooperation rather than strong enforcement mechanisms. It helps make children visible, challenges governments and others to question their assumptions, and values children as people in their own rights today rather than what they will become in the future. The United Nation’s involvement in monitoring the implementation of UNCRC keeps state agencies on their toes, and helps child advocates to press their case. It also provides useful independent feedback to countries on their policies and practice for children. UNCRC reinforces the theoretical reframing of childhood discussed in this chapter, and promotes the visibility of childhood in law and society. Being thoroughly familiar with and able to utilise UNCRC is essential for child advocates in order to influence law and policy-makers at both national and local level. In order to effectively implement the UNCRC, however, it is necessary for governments ‘to progressively bring their laws, policies and practices into line with the Convention’ (Ludbrook, 2000, p. 111). The New Zealand government’s assumption that it was in full conformity with the principles of the convention when it ratified in the early 1990s, and ‘the myth of full compliance’ have led, according to lawyer Robert Ludbrook (2000, p. 213), to feelings of self-satisfaction and lack of government initiatives towards full compliance. Sadly there has only been halting progress towards compliance since Ludbrook’s criticism. This book adheres to the UNCRC vision of respecting children as competent citizens who are the holders of human rights. This vision promotes ‘a psychological mindedness that is attuned to the everyday experiences of children themselves and the adults who care for them’ (Melton, 2008, p. 916) and is oriented towards empowerment and social justice for children (Alanen, 2011).

1

State Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child, (#1, Article 12, United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child).

Part I | Theorising Childhood | 17

Childhood studies

Martin Woodhead defines the field of childhood studies as follows: Childhood Studies is about a more integrated approach to research and teaching about children’s lives and well-being, a more ‘joined-up’ view of ‘the child in context’, which has become a priority for policy and for professional training ... . Childhood Studies ... [looks at] the multiple ways childhood is socially constructed in relation to time and place, age, gender, ethnicity etc. (Woodhead, 2004a, p. x)

Childhood studies theory argues that children have a unique perspective or point of view, which in the past has often been ignored. This marginalisation of children comes about because they are considered to lack competence, rationality, independence and experience, and their viewpoints on the world are thought to be merely a reflection of what their parents or teachers think (Oakley, 1994; James, 2007). Developmental psychology and its representation of ‘the universal child’ being shaped on an inexorable pathway towards rational maturity has been critiqued by childhood studies’ theorists (James & Prout, 1997; Mayall, 2002; Qvortrup, Corsaro, & Honig, 2009). Childhood studies instead positions children as participating subjects, knowers and social actors, rather than the objects of socialisation. Viewing children as agents means that they are seen as people who can make a difference through their actions ‘to a relationship, a decision, to the workings of a set of social assumptions or constraints’ (Mayall, 2002, p. 21). Even babies and toddlers, who may not be able to express a point of view in words, have a perspective. Listening to children does not imply taking all children’s utterances at face value, or giving their views more weight than those of adults, but it means adults attempting to put themselves in the position of the child through, for example, careful ‘listening’ and observation of the nuances of how children are curious, fearful, happy, anxious or withdrawn, what they enjoy, what they can manage alone, what they find hard to do and where they need help. When children become independent communicators and there is a listening audience, they are usually articulate, capable of expressing their own opinions, able to make choices and decisions, and to participate in all sorts of activities. Chapter 3 gives many examples of children’s agency, capacity to take responsibility and unique points of view. Treating children as having agency ‘strikes at the heart of conventional authority relationships between children and the adults who regulate their lives’ (Woodhead, 2005, p. 92). Yet adults play an important role as experienced members of society in providing guidance, support and teaching, as well as structures and spaces for children’s participation (Alderson, 2001; Smith, 2002; Woodhead, 2009). In the practical implementation of participatory principles, it is important

18 | Understanding Children and Childhood

therefore to maintain a balance, by recognising children’s vulnerability, ‘evolving capacity’, and their need for guidance and direction at times (Woodhead, 2005). The key contribution of childhood studies has been to recognise that children are not just empty vessels whose development is determined by biological and psychological processes (James & James, 2008), and that childhood is not a natural or universal feature of human societies, but a social construction (James & Prout, 1997). Our constructions of childhood are shaped by discourses. A discourse is defined as ‘a whole set of interconnected ideas that work together in a selfcontained way, ideas that are held together by a particular ideology or view of the world’ (Stainton Rogers, 2009, p. 143). These persistent ideas about childhood that seem to be self-evident truths shape the way that we treat children within families, schools and society. Different beliefs about children, what is in their best interests, how they should behave and what should be expected of them, have a powerful effect on their value and position in society, and influence social policies, parenting styles, professional practices and institutional arrangements for children’s education, care and welfare. The most significant features in children’s lives are the people with whom they develop close relationships, and these people are in turn ‘a product of cultural history and circumstance’ (Woodhead, 2005, p. 90). For example, educational settings such as early childhood centres are culturally constructed and mediated by complex belief systems about the ‘right’ way for children to develop and be cared for (Woodhead, 2005). In Aotearoa New Zealand these cultural constructions are influenced by the bicultural vision of childhood within Te Whāriki and Learning Stories,2 in which respect for children and children’s rights are embedded, and children are valued as active learners who choose, plan, act and challenge. The aspirations of this vision for children are to frame childhood and children as competent and agentic, so that they ‘grow up as competent and confident learners and communicators, healthy in mind, body, and spirit, secure in their sense of belonging and in the knowledge that they make a valued contribution to society’ (Te Whāriki, 1996, p. 9). Children’s lives are largely determined by adult plans, working arrangements, interests and goals, and they are also often the object of adult work, such as teaching or caregiving (Mayall, 1994). Their opportunities for expressing their ideas and for taking responsibility outside the home, school or community have diminished in the Western minority world. In contrast, in the majority world 2

Te Whāriki is the New Zealand early childhood curriculum guidelines (Ministry of Education, 1996) and Learning Stories is a narrative approach to assessing children’s learning based on Te Whāriki (Carr, 2001).

Part I | Theorising Childhood | 19

children continue to have major responsibilities for paid work, childcare and other family responsibilities. Anthropologist Rachel Burr (2004) tells the stories of children who live on the streets in Hanoi, making a living by selling postcards or cleaning shoes. Fourteen-year-old Hiep was often subjected to arbitrary arrest because the police wanted to contain children and force them off the streets. Had he been forced to return to the countryside he would have added to his family’s financial burdens and they would not have been able to afford to send him to school. Working on the streets maximised his opportunities from his perspective. But even in the minority world many children have major responsibilities outside school, and these are unseen and unheard by most adults. Psychologist Wendy Stainton Rogers (2009) talks about a 14-year-old girl, Zadie, who found school boring and was treated as stupid by her teachers, but at home she looked after her wheelchair-bound mother, gave breakfast to her little sister, got her ready for school, and did the shopping, cooking, washing and ironing. Both of these stories suggest that the adults involved did not necessarily understand the conditions of children’s lives, and consequently did not contribute to their well-being.

Diverse childhoods

Childhood studies challenges the idea that there is a universal and homogeneous childhood, and emphasises that many diverse childhoods exist in different cultures at different points in history (James & James, 2012). A variety of meanings and understandings of what it is to be a child are embedded in different discourses and experiences. It is therefore problematic to make generalisations about children’s experiences without looking at the complexity of their lives within specific local cultural contexts. Within a New Zealand context, an indigenous Māori perspective permeates visions of childhood. Māori kaumātua Mason Durie (2001) has articulated three goals for Māori advancement: 1. to live as Māori 2. to actively participate as citizens of the world 3. to enjoy good health and a high standard of living. Durie’s vision for enabling Māori cultural and individual identity is based on Māori reality, within which a fundamental aspect of being a Māori child in Aotearoa is Māori self-definition and identity (Jenny Ritchie, 2007). One aspect of this perspective is tino rangatiratanga: ... an ability to control the way the world enters into our minds, bodies and daily lives – that is, to make sense and meaning of the world at the individual

20 | Understanding Children and Childhood

level and at the cultural level, and mediated from a given position that is Māori. It is self-identification at the personal level and self-determination culturally. (Skerrett, 2007, p. 6)

There are similarities between tino rangatiratanga and the agency that is so emphasised by childhood studies, ‘a right to journey in all the different directions one may choose’, according to Mere Skerrett (p. 8). There is, however, a collective aspect to tino rangatiratanga, reaffirming cultural identity and connections to whakapapa (genealogy). Māori children’s identity is linked to their past family and tribal history, and the values and aspirations embedded in it. Skerrett explains how a secure Māori identity is linked to place (mountains, land, rivers, marae), and to te reo (the language), which is fundamentally important because language contains cultural meanings. This Māori youth’s words illustrate the connection to specific places in Māori culture, ‘Oh, this place is paradise, you’ve got rivers on both sides and bush and the sea and you’ve got the Maoritanga (Maori culture) too that’s the real big things around here, those are the things’ (Smith, Smith, Boler, Kempton, Ormond, Chueh, & Waetford, 2002, p. 176).

Criticism of childhood studies

Childhood studies, like children’s rights, is concerned with how children are treated in societies and ‘represent[s] a critique of the ways children’s lives are organised and regulated, and childhood undervalued in modern societies’ (Alanen, 2011, p. 147). This inherent concern for social justice motivates researchers in the field of childhood studies to explore issues that make a difference to children’s lives, to include children’s voices and recognise their capability of contributing to society as active citizens, and to use scholarship to promote positive change in the world (Alanen, 2011; Percy-Smith & Thomas, 2010). Recently, childhood studies researcher Priscilla Alderson has drawn on critical realism to criticise childhood studies for its failure to make a distinction between being (ontology) and knowing (epistemology). This is known as the epistemic fallacy, and means that while thinking about childhood in certain ways does influence what children experience, it is not the same as what they experience. According to Alderson, ‘childhood studies have tended to ignore bodies and human nature in order to emphasise children’s social and cultural lives’ (2013, p. 46). She believes that realities are lost when researchers overemphasise conceptualisations of reality and signifiers of reality (words or written marks). It is important, according to Alderson, to also access children’s ‘embodied needs and self-expression’. Newborn babies until around 1990 were not given pain relief because it was assumed that they could not feel pain, and that it would suppress heart and lung function. This was an example of ignoring the real bodies of these

Part I | Theorising Childhood | 21

infants. It was only after it was discovered that babies given analgesia suffered less shock and adverse effects from surgery that policies were changed. Another childhood studies scholar, Jens Qvortrup (2008), has criticised the micro-orientation of childhood studies, and argues that in order to study the effect of structural conditions on children’s lives it is necessary to have a more macro-orientation and to use large samples and controlled conditions in research. Structural conditions that affect children include economic policies (affecting family income and support), transport and communications systems, markets, housing policies, rural or urban living conditions, and the organisation of early childhood centres and schools. Alderson (2013) also believes that structure should not be overlooked in childhood studies research. She cautions, however, that inattention to individual children’s experiences means that important information is ignored. ‘The power and meaning of parameters around childhood similarly inhere not only in external structures, but also in how they impinge on children, and are variously experienced and sustained, resisted or reconstructed by children’ (p. 105).

Sociocultural theory

A sociocultural approach argues that children gradually come to know and understand the world through their own activities in communication with others, and that a continual process of learning generates development. The greater the richness of the activities and interactions in which children participate, the greater their understanding and knowledge will be. This is not just a one-way process from adult to child, but a reciprocal partnership where adult and child jointly construct understanding and knowledge. As psychologist Lois Holzman explains: Children – indeed people of all ages – learn developmentally by doing what they don’t know how to do. Thus, in schools, we must relate to children as readers, writers, physicists, geographers, historians, mathematicians, etc, encouraging them to perform these activities whether or not they ‘know how’... . The new theory of learning I am suggesting requires the continuous creation of developmental situations where, following Vygotsky, the learning-leadingdevelopment process can happen. It requires jointly creating an experience of making meaning together. (Holzman, 1995, p. 204)

Holzman argues that if adults related to infants and toddlers at their own level they would not speak to them. Instead, most adults relate to babbling babies as if they can speak and understand, and as if they are more competent than they really are. Adults and children make meaning together and adults therefore support the growth of children’s language.

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Comparing Piaget and Vygotsky

Until the 1970s the predominant child development theory was that of Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget. Children’s ability to learn was thought to be dependent on their stage of cognitive development and their thinking progressing inexorably in stages towards an end point of logical rationality. Although Piaget thought that individuals developed in interaction with the environment, he accepted the primacy of individual over social processes. From a Piagetian perspective, children were viewed as lone scientists exploring the world, at a level of complexity depending on their current stage of cognitive development. The contrast between Piaget’s view of development and a sociocultural perspective is that while the former views learning as subordinate to individual development, the latter views individual learning development as emerging from the culture in the context of social interactions with other people. Sociocultural thinking about development started many years ago with the work of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Although Vygotsky died in 1934 at the age of 38, his ideas were not discovered in the West until the 1960s and 1970s. Vygotsky’s views about development provide a dynamic socially, historically and culturally grounded view of human development and a theoretical framework which has particular relevance to education. Because Vygotsky died so young he had the opportunity only to sketch out many of his ideas, but they have served as an amazingly powerful stimulus for other people. A new group of theories emerged in the 1980s and 1990s which have been called ‘neo-Vygotskian’, though I refer to them as sociocultural. These theories have resulted in a widespread questioning of former views of child development which emphasised the primacy of individual processes, towards much more emphasis on the importance of social processes (Bruner & Haste, 1987; Holzman, 1995; Rogoff, 1990; Rogoff, 1995; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988; Wertsch, del Rio, & Alvarez, 1995; Wertsch & Penuel, 1996). Vygotsky (1978) viewed as quite mistaken the traditional idea that a child’s mind contains all its future developments in a complete form awaiting the proper moment to emerge. He believed that instead of matching teaching to existing development, teaching had to proceed ahead of development in order to awaken and rouse to life those functions in the process of maturing. He believed that children grow into the intellectual life of those around them. Learning cannot be separated from development and ‘good learning’ is in advance of development. Children advance to higher stages of development by being stimulated and guided at the outside limits of their skill by others. Child development is the result of children’s competence being challenged and extended with help. The help is gradually withdrawn and children become able to perform more and more on their own. One of Vygotsky’s most important contributions is the idea of the

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internalisation of interpersonal processes. He said ‘Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological), and then inside the child (intrapsychological)’ (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 57). Language is central to children’s development. Language first occurs externally between people and is then converted into internal processes that can be used to solve problems independently. Children first use language to communicate with other people, but then their language is converted into internal speech or thought which is used for self-regulation. Speech is an essential tool to allow children to plan and carry out actions, deal with things and control their own behaviour. It is the basis of the development of consciousness (Vygotsky, 1978): Language appears to be like Mercury, the messenger who carries content from the interpsychological plane to the intrapsychological plane, a messenger with unique gifts for translation from one plane to the other. What is spoken to the child is later said by the child to the self, and later is abbreviated and transformed into the silent speech of the child’s thought. (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988, p. 44)

Cognitive development and the ZPD

Vygotsky showed that children could perform much more skilfully together with others than they could alone. He claimed that until children have acquired competence in developing skills, they require help and supervision, and his concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is key to understanding his theory: We propose that an essential feature of learning is that it creates the zone of proximal development; that is, learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that are able to operate only when a child is interacting with people in his environment and in cooperation with his peers. Once these processes are internalized, they become part of the child’s independent developmental achievement. (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 90)

Vygotsky made a distinction between the actual developmental level of the child and the ZPD, the latter being, ‘the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem-solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers’ (1978, p. 86). This key theory of ZPD is mentioned throughout the book because of its importance for sociocultural theory. Although Vygotsky wrote a lot about intellectual development, he believed that it was impossible to separate affect (emotions) and intellect. He criticised

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traditional psychology for segregating thinking from ‘the dynamic system of meaning in which the affective and the intellectual unite’ (Vygotsky, 1962, p. 8). Therefore domains of development, especially cognitive and affective domains, cannot be studied separately because they are intricately linked. Later in chapter 4 I talk in more depth about ‘joint attention episodes’ as a context for learning during infancy. Before an adult can share meanings and understand a child’s perspective, there has to be a warm reciprocal relationship between adult and child to support learning in the ZPD. This is an example of how emotional connection facilitates cognitive learning. Neo-Vygotskian theorists place considerable emphasis on the link between emotions and learning from the environment. A Russian early childhood programme (the Golden Key Schools) is based on Vygotsky’s ideas, and takes as a guiding theme that the educational and mental development of children is closely linked with their development in the emotional sphere (Kravtsov & Kravtsova, 2009, cited by Fleer, 2010, p. 110). Like our New Zealand early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki, the Russian programme makes the emotional well-being and comfort of the child central, and the unity of affect and cognition is built in to the teaching programmes. Psychologist Lydia Bozhovich (2009, p. 69) cites Vygotsky’s 1926 explanation that there are ‘critical and catastrophic moments of behaviour’, when the equilibrium between the emotions and the environment break down. Vygotsky viewed the emotions as stimulating activity and regulating a child’s relationship with the environment. To understand how children’s thinking changes, according to Bozhovich, it is essential to understand how the environment satisfies their intentions, impulses and desires. The formation of a child’s personality is determined by the relationship between the place they occupy within the system of human relationships available to them (and consequently to the corresponding demands placed on them) and the psychological features that have formed in them in their previous experiences (Bozhovich, 2009, p. 82). Hence, the affective nature of children’s experiences is central to intellectual development (see chapter 4), and has a powerful effect on children’s motivation to learn. Children’s imagination, intentions, life-plans and determination should therefore be taken into account when trying to understand why children do or do not learn (Hakkarainen & Bredikite, 2009). As a personal example, one of my grandchildren at the age of six had a profound interest in BMX bikes. His interest probably arose out of his early happy joint engagement with his father, biking in the context of a close relationship. But the repercussions of the interest were great. It meant that he (with his dad) created a BMX track with jumps around his house, did at least a dozen circuits during a day, watched YouTube videos of BMX biking, searched the morning news-

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paper for stories about BMX racing, chose books about biking when he went to the library, and wrote stories illustrated with photographs about himself biking. He even interpreted the hills in the place where he lives as being a great feature because they provide good practice for BMX biking! Such passions that emerge from sociocultural settings and shared affect have a profound impact on what we pay attention to and engage with, and how we are positioned for future learning.

Scaffolding

Scaffolding is a metaphor for another concept that emerges out of Vygotsky’s theory, though he never used the term himself. It refers to the guidance and interactional support given by a tutor in the ZPD. Psychologist Jerome Bruner and his colleagues (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976) were the first to use the term. Bruner (1985) explains scaffolding as permitting the child to do as much as he can by himself, while what he cannot do is filled in by the mother’s (or other tutor’s) activities. There are differences in the quantity and quality of scaffolding support given to the child (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). The quantity issue refers to how high the scaffold is, what level it is at, and how long it is kept in place. The quality issue is concerned with the different ways in which help is offered, such as through directing attention, modelling, asking questions or giving encouragement. Ideally the child, initially a spectator, becomes a participant and, with the support of the adult, learns the rules, grasps the meanings, and becomes able to provide assistance to himself and control his own behaviour. In the process of learning, the tutor provides ‘a vicarious form of consciousness’ (Bruner, 1985, p. 24) which the child takes over for himself after the task has been mastered. The child does not passively absorb the strategies of the adult. He takes an active inventive role and reconstructs the task through his own understanding. This process has been called ‘guided reinvention’ by Roland Tharp and Ronald Gallimore (1988). Vygotsky (1978) believed that the opportunity to engage in imaginary situations is very valuable because for the first time the child’s thinking can be liberated from situational constraints and the child thus be given the basis for the development of higher abstract thought. The child becomes able to act independently of his perceptions in play situations. Actions are subordinate to meanings, rather than the reverse. Play is important in the development of consciousness since it enables a child to develop rules based on ideas and meanings and not on objects themselves. The child is able to detach meanings from the real concrete situations in which they are usually embedded. Vygotsky thought that play created a zone of proximal development for the child so that in play he always acted beyond his average age ‘as if he were a head taller than himself’ (p. 102).

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Learning as a social process

Educator Barbara Rogoff suggests that it is important to focus on several related components of sociocultural activity – individual development, social interaction and the cultural activity in which social interactions take place (Rogoff, 1995). Each one requires the involvement of the others. She uses the metaphor of apprenticeship to describe how active individuals practise and advance their skills with others who are more experienced, in a community oriented to the accomplishment of particular goals. The nature of the activity, its practices and institutions (economic, political and spiritual) are important components of an apprenticeship. Secondly, she uses the term ‘guided participation’ to refer to the systems and processes between people as they communicate and coordinate their efforts. Guidance involves the direction offered by cultural and social values as well as by particular people, and participation means that there is a necessity for active hands-on involvement. A third concept she uses, participatory appropriation, explains how people change through their participation in activities with other people; their understanding becomes transformed, and they become better prepared to engage in related activities. The people participating make ongoing contributions to an activity through concrete actions or stretching the actions and ideas of others. ‘A person who participates in events changes in ways that make a difference in subsequent events’ (Rogoff, 1995, p. 156). Etienne Wenger is an educational theorist whose work also emphasises that learning is a social rather than an individual process, and that it takes place ‘in the context of our lived experience of participation in the world’ (1998, p. 3). Belonging to a ‘community of practice’ inducts us into shared meanings, values and practices and shapes what we do, who we are and how we interpret what we do. Through their engagement in a variety of communities of practice (at home, school and in the neighbourhood), children acquire learning identities or construct who they are, through negotiation of meaning as a result of their belonging to this community of practice. Children learn ways to engage with other people, and develop expectations about ways they and other people should work together and treat each other in their communities of practice. We experience and manifest ourselves by what we recognise and what we don’t, what we grasp immediately and what we can’t interpret, what we can appropriate and what alienates us, what we can press into service and what we can’t use, what we can negotiate and what remains out of reach. In practice, we know who we are by what is familiar, understandable, usable, negotiable; we know who we are not by what is foreign, opaque, unwieldy, unproductive. (Wenger, 1998, p. 153)

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Families are also communities of practice. The family of my daughter, her partner and her two preschool children, joined from time to time by their grandparents, participate in a community of practice around engaging with outdoor life. Their preferred recreational activities encompass boating, fishing, swimming, surfing, tramping, skiing and climbing. On a recent autumn weekend the family participated in floundering on Oreti Beach in Southland. This involved mum and dad clad in wetsuits, wading into the surf and dragging a large long net through the water. I was intrigued to see how familiar this activity was to the children, how they knew the artefacts involved (the wetsuits, the net, the plastic containers for the fish) and their participation in moving the containers, helping remove the flounder from the net, and freeing the crabs caught in the net and returning them to the sea. Although they were peripheral participants, they were learning about the activities, expectations and roles of the different participants in this outdoor activity. Sociocultural theory is compatible with childhood studies, since it suggests that children construct their own understanding in partnership with, and with guidance from, others (both adults and other children) (Smith, 2002). The greater the richness of the activities and communications that children participate in, the greater their competence will be. While we tend to think about young children involved in social interaction and activity with adults, they also spend a great deal of their time with other children. Sociocultural theory appears in almost every chapter in this book, and concepts like the zone of proximal development, scaffolding and joint attention are explained in more detail in chapter 8. Within Māori sociocultural contexts, a key dimension of social interaction is the reciprocal relationships and responsibilities that operate between older and younger siblings – tuākana (older siblings) and teina (younger siblings or cousins). In one study many Māori participants recalled having responsibilities as tuakana to look after younger siblings and take responsibility for household chores to support the whānau (Edwards, McCreanor, & Moewaka Barnes, 2007). Responsive relationships and interactions between children and other people are a key component in enhancing children’s agency and capacity to express their feelings and articulate their experiences. ‘The spark of agency is simply the perception that the environment is responsive to our actions’ (Johnston, 2004, p. 29). Children come to be able to formulate and express their views in the context of appropriate support. Their social contexts or communities of practice have to be capable of communicating information effectively to them, receptive to hearing their voices and supportive of their efforts to formulate their views. Hence the relationships which children have with others, their interactions and activities within the settings of their everyday lives, are the key to development and learning.

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Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory

Another contribution to understanding children’s development comes from American psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner who, like Vygotsky, was born in Russia. He moved to the United States when he was six years old. One of his earliest books Two Worlds of Childhood compared childhoods in the United States and the Soviet Union, where the collective was emphasised in the Soviet Union but the individual family in the United States (Bronfenbrenner & Condry, 1970). His sociocultural and ecological perspective on development arose out of his awareness of the way broader cultural and social settings shape children’s development. He also suggested, however, that the most fundamental setting for learning was during infancy when mother and child engaged with each other in a complex pattern of interaction. The following famous quotation explains how reciprocal and responsive interactions are the crucible of learning: Learning and development are facilitated by the participation of the developing person in progressively more complex patterns of reciprocal activity with someone with whom that person has developed a strong and enduring emotional attachment and when the balance of power gradually shifts in favor of the developing person. (Bronfenbrenner, 1979a, p. 60)

Bronfenbrenner urged that instead of focusing all of our attention on the child, we should also look at wider aspects of the environments or settings in which the child develops. He criticised research in child development as flawed because children were studied briefly in strange situations and with strange people, and this criticism is still valid today for a great deal of research in developmental psychology. Bronfenbrenner encouraged researchers to study children in more natural contexts, such as home, classroom or playground, with attention to the perceived meaning of the contexts to the people participating in them. (Childhood studies theory would suggest that we should pay particular attention to children’s perceptions of their experiences.) Bronfenbrenner conceptualised the environment at several levels, the first level being the immediate setting, or microsystem. Within the microsystem the child participates in activities, is involved in relationships with others and is expected to fulfil particular roles. Bronfenbrenner argued that interpersonal relationships which encourage development are those where there is a balance of power, where one partner in the interaction does not dominate the relationship, in which the child is given more and more opportunity to control the situation, where there is a warmth of feeling and reciprocity, and where the partners in the interaction (e.g. mother and child) coordinate their activities with each other, such as in a game of ping pong. The shift in balance of power towards the child

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is comparable to the shift from external scaffolding to internal self-regulation in Vygotsky’s theory. Bronfenbrenner stressed that levels of the environment which do not actually contain the child, influence development. The second level – the exosystem – refers to settings which indirectly affect the child, such as his father’s or mother’s job, or support networks of family and friends. For example, jobs which allow people to have personal responsibility and to take initiative, as opposed to jobs where the worker has to do routine tasks under close supervision, will have an effect on the workers’ parenting approach. The next level, the macrosystem, refers to the overriding consistencies in beliefs, values and accepted practices within a culture or subculture, and how it can determine such things as beliefs about what are appropriate activities for boys and girls, or what children ought to be doing at different ages. On an Israeli kibbutz, for example, young children are expected to become independent at an earlier age than they are in New Zealand because of a philosophy that everyone in the community must contribute to its functioning. Bronfenbrenner also emphasised that one setting where the child spends time (e.g. home) has links with other settings (e.g. school), and the nature of these links (the mesosystem) has a major influence on the child’s development. The transitions that children make between settings have a major impact on the course of their development, according to Bronfenbrenner. For example, when a child moves from preschool to school, if there are warm, reciprocal and balanced relationships between preschool and school teachers the transition will be supportive of development. Bronfenbrenner (cited by Benn & Garbarino, 1992) added another system, called the chronosystem, to describe environmental influences on individual or family development over time. Chronosystem effects can be events that are associated with individual life transitions such as going to school for the first time, or the effects of cumulative sequences of developmental transitions over the life course within the particular historical time in which we are embedded. For example, it has been shown (Elder, Modell, & Parke, 1993b) that the Great Depression of the 1930s had a lasting effect on children’s lives through changing family functioning and roles. The Second World War also had major effects on families all over the world. In my own life it meant that my father was absent for about the first five years of my life. A more recent version of Bronfenbrenner’s theory is his bioecological model (Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994), which was a reaction against an overemphasis on context without consideration of the biological makeup of the individual. The bioecological perspective suggests that the genetic makeup of individuals is important, and that there is an interaction between genes and environmental interactions (known as proximal processes) to influence psychological functioning.

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From early in development, according to Bronfenbrenner and Ceci, individuals begin to change their environments. According to this model, proximal processes act on the genotype of individuals to actualise genetic potentials. In positive environments, proximal processes are optimal and produce more positive developmental outcomes. In impoverished environments individuals are more likely to have unrealised capacities. Social policies and programmes (such as early intervention), however, can enhance exposure to proximal processes. From a social policy perspective of wanting to improve the well-being of children, therefore, bioecological theory remains very relevant.

Overall description of development

Although I have been critical of a strictly stage-based approach to understanding children’s development, it is helpful to have a general overview of the average course of development before looking in more depth at different aspects and processes within development and learning. The ages given are only approximations since there are many individual differences among children, and cultural expectations and contexts support the development of different characteristics and competencies.

Infancy (zero to two years)

The changes that take place from birth to two are more rapid, complex and critical than at any other period of development. During the first two years infants experience the world through their senses and motor activities, yet they acquire some of the understandings that form the foundation for the development of language and thought. Babies come biologically equipped to interact with others because they are sensitive and responsive to their environment – they can hear voices, see faces, smell their mothers’ milk, and be soothed by rocking or touching. It is through infants’ interactions with caregivers that they gradually acquire the meanings and frames of reference of the culture around them. Infants come to understand and organise the world through their actions, before they can understand and organise it through their thoughts. Infants tend to see the world from their own perspective and have difficulty in seeing the perspectives of others. But by the end of a year infants are capable of some remarkable accomplishments. They can recall objects and people (and know that they exist independently) when they are no longer present; they can engage in intentional, goal-directed behaviour; and they have acquired a considerable amount of language. Newborn infants appear to be helpless and incompetent creatures, yet they have many important capabilities at birth. Dozens of reflexes exist which enable them to respond automatically to certain specific stimuli. Reflexes are a source of

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survival, and, in some cases (such as grasping or stepping), the foundations of much more complex learning. Crying is the first form of communication between infants and their caregivers. Infants have considerable sensory capability from birth and spend about 10 per cent of their waking time visually scanning the environment, although vision is weak and uncoordinated. Infants respond to a wide range of sounds but especially to low frequency sounds such as the human voice. The human voice often has a soothing effect on infants but other sounds can alert, soothe or startle them. Sensorimotor behaviour is largely of a reflex nature and is very poorly coordinated, but infants can, for example, turn their heads, kick and move their arms in an uncontrolled manner. There is little evidence of stable learning through operant or classical conditioning in newborns. Individual differences at birth among infants have some implications for later differences. For example, infants differ in how much they cry, how vigorously they respond to stimuli, whether they like to be cuddled, how active they are and how easily soothed they are. Fretful, active and placid babies clearly provide contrasting experiences for parents and may elicit rather different types of treatment from them. Babbling begins at around three months and it appears to give considerable pleasure to infants as they experiment with sound production and try out their vocal apparatus. By the age of six months some dramatic developments have occurred, partly due to rapid neurological development and partly due to experience. By three months classical and operant conditioning are demonstrable, so infants clearly become learners quite early. Six-month-olds show evidence of being able to remember events. They prefer to attend to stimuli that are a bit different (discrepant) from those that are familiar to them. For example, a baby might prefer to watch the shadows of light and dark in the leaves of a tree over her pram than the mobile that has been over her cot since she first came home from the hospital. Six-month-olds can also discriminate familiar from unfamiliar faces and voices. This new understanding gives rise to the distress that many infants show when their mother leaves or when a stranger appears (stranger anxiety usually appears from seven to eight months). The infant’s visual system is much improved in acuity, accommodation and the ability to discriminate colours and brightness. Different behaviours become coordinated: prehension or visually guided reaching, for example, integrates looking and grasping. By six months successful reaching occurs even for objects slightly out of range. Once successful reaching has occurred, manipulation of the object usually follows, such as shaking, banging and pushing, and it is common for infants to explore objects with their mouths by sucking. Infants begin to develop a concept of object permanence. If an object is partially hidden by covering it with a cloth, for example, infants will remove the

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cloth and grasp the object. If the object is completely hidden, though, they act as if it no longer exists. At six months also, infants are surprised when an image of their mother’s face disappears suddenly, suggesting that they think she still exists. Between six months and two years these early developments are refined and infants’ repertoires of responses are broadened. There is still an overwhelmingly action-oriented approach to the world through sensorimotor activity. Complex manipulations of objects, such as putting pegs in peg boards, or opening and closing boxes, occurs at about a year, and by two years children can hold a crayon, build a tower with blocks, put pieces into a form board, feed themselves with a spoon and carry out many other complex activities. By the age of one, children have advanced considerably in their object concept and will search for hidden objects in the place where they saw them disappear. By two, children can follow several displacements of objects and search successfully for them. Marked new opportunities for learning come with the onset of mobility as infants learn to crawl (at about nine months) and then walk (at about 14 months). Children are much less dependent on adults for stimulation and are able to explore further afield in their environments. Between six months and two years infants are still strongly attached to their primary caregivers, usually their mothers or fathers, but other attachments become important and children begin to have a stronger concept of themselves, which can be seen by the fact that they know their own name. Language makes considerable advances in the second year, with the first words appearing at around one, and two-word utterances at around two. Comprehension of language is advanced over expression; in other words children may understand what people say but not be able to say much. From about a year infants can respond to simple commands and point to pictures of an object when it is named. The most salient aspect of toddlers’ behaviour is their almost frantic enjoyment of exploration, mastering skills and achieving competence. Learning seems to be self-motivating as children acquire pleasure from the stimulation that their actions bring them. At the same time toddlerhood is the beginning of socialisation as children acquire socially acceptable behaviours, such as feeding themselves.

The preschool and early school years (two to seven years)

Physical growth during the preschool years slows down after the rapid pace of infancy. Gradually there is a reduction in body fat and an increase in muscle and bone tissue. Changes in posture and proportion, greatly improved coordination and the development of hand preference (by around four years) have an influence on motor skills. There is a proliferation in skills which preschoolers become

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capable of, for example, dressing and undressing, holding a pencil and copying designs, drawing, doing puzzles, threading beads, building towers of blocks, jumping, running, throwing and catching a ball. Although preschoolers, at around two to three years, are still attached to their parents, they become increasingly independent in various ways as they become capable of doing more things for themselves. American psychologist Erik Erikson (cited in Elkind, 1977) has characterised two to three years as a time of increasing autonomy as children develop new control over emerging motor and mental abilities. He also described four-to five-year-olds as showing initiative as they experience and try out new activities. Children shift to an interest in peers and they consequently have to learn socially acceptable ways of dealing with conflict and rivalry. In the sphere of intellectual development, these years are transitional ones. The child moves from a concrete, physical mastery of the environment towards understanding the world in conceptual terms. The Piagetian view that preschool and early school age children are very deficient in thinking skills is now very much criticised (Butterworth, 1987; Donaldson, 1978; Light, 1986, 1987; Morss, 1996). The old view was that children at this age can only classify and internalise their world incompletely and haphazardly, can only reason in a limited way, and do not know that an action or thought can be nullified by its opposite (i.e. lacked reversibility). (For example, if three blocks are added to five blocks there are eight blocks, but if three blocks are taken away again five are left. Completing this task successfully involves reversibility of thinking which was not supposed to be possible until at least seven years of age.) Another characteristic of preschoolers’ thinking was thought to be non-conservation. Conservation of volume tasks, for instance, involve water being poured from a fat jar into a long skinny jar and asking if there is still the same amount of water. (If the task is presented in this way, most preschoolers say there is more water in the skinny jar so they are said to be non-conservers.) There is a whole set of similar notions involving quantity, mass and volume, which Piaget labels ‘conservation’ when the child understands that they are invariant. These tasks were not expected to be achieved until after seven years of age. It is now believed, however, that preschool children are considerably more competent than had previously been supposed, especially if tasks are presented in a context that is humanly intelligible to them. Many studies demonstrate the capabilities of under-seven-year-olds. Helene Borke (1983), for example, showed that three-to four-year-old children were not nearly as egocentric as Piaget had supposed and could predict accurately how a puppet would perceive an array of objects. Children could be successful in such perspective-taking tasks if there were enough cues to help them to differentiate between objects and when

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they communicated their answer to the question in a simpler way. Preschool children understand the perspective of others, an important skill for empathetic understanding. Five-year-olds and even younger children have been shown to be capable of inference (Donaldson, 1987), reasoning (Donaldson, 1983), understanding the feelings of others (Dunn, 1987), enacting social rules (Haste, 1987), conservation (Light, 1986), and complex number skills such as addition and subtraction (Hughes, 1983; Young-Loveridge, 1989). Almost all areas where young children used to be considered deficient in intellectual skills have been questioned. It is true, however, that children of this age are almost always more proficient in thinking when the concepts are embedded in situations that are relevant and familiar to them. Young children are also highly sensitive to nuances of the context of communication, especially familiarity and relationship to the questioner. Rapid developments in language take place after two. The child at two has a limited vocabulary (perhaps 250 words), and speech tends to consist of telegraphic two-word utterances which can best be understood by parents who are likely to share meanings with children through their joint involvement in activities. By the age of six children’s vocabulary has increased to between 8,000 and 14,000 words (though meanings are more restricted than in older children), and they develop a complex syntax which is not far away from what they will need for the rest of their lives. The consequences of these developments in language are wide. For example, language helps children to control their attention, to solve problems, to organise the world through concepts (even though imperfect ones), to communicate with an increasingly wide group of adults and peers, and to express their wishes and feelings and understand those of the people around them. Especially if they have the chance to discuss their experiences with others, children can talk about past events in an increasingly complex way, and events imbued with personal meaning are likely to be remembered. Play generally changes its nature during the preschool years. The solitary independent play characteristic of toddlers gradually becomes more social. Between two and three, more time is spent in parallel play, where the child plays alongside another child but not with him. At around three and thereafter there is an increase in associative play, where other children are involved together in activities. Organised supplementary play, where role-playing with goals or themes occurs in a group, is also an increasingly common form of play after the age of three. The growth of imaginative play in this age group is very evident. Vygotsky saw the development of symbolic play as the beginning of removing the constraints of reality from behaviour and the representation of experience. Children distinguish between the here and now and the world of make-believe. They develop more

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and more complex rules and roles for themselves in dramatic play. Imaginative play helps children to practise adult roles and social relationships, to share each other’s experiences and to integrate various aspects of their own experiences, to inhibit conflict and to develop cooperation, to enhance verbal communication and to express emotions. Children’s imaginative play in these years illustrates clearly how children reflect and adapt the behaviours and values of the culture in which they are reared.

Middle childhood (7 to 12 years)

During middle childhood physical growth proceeds at a steady pace until the spurt at the end of the stage (see next section). There is a small spurt in height and weight around the age of nine. Changes in bodily proportion result from further decreases in fat and increases in muscle and bone tissue. Girls are slightly taller and heavier than boys from about eight years onwards. Increases in strength, control of large and small muscles, coordination, flexibility and agility allow the development of many new motor skills. Middle childhood is a good time for the acquisition of complex skills such as bicycle riding, playing the piano and performing gymnastics. Boys are slightly superior in strength and physical skill for the first time in middle childhood, a factor which is probably influenced by socialisation as well as by biological differences. Erikson (cited in Elkind, 1977) has described middle childhood as characterised by a sense of industry, where the child directs his abundant energy to mastering a variety of new tasks. Children become concerned with how things are made and how they work. The shift away from relying on parents towards peer relationships continues. Children usually establish a more equal type of relationship with their parents as they develop more of a concept of themselves and their own ideas and opinions. Their self-concept is influenced by the acceptance and support of their parents, by their peers’ perceptions of them, and also by their successes and failures at school. It is more common for children to associate with same-sex peers during middle childhood, and the peer group is an increasingly powerful source of models and social reinforcers for behaviour. Children’s language, dress, values and interests are susceptible to the influence of the peer group. Play changes its nature during middle childhood. Dramatic play becomes highly complex and structured, and themes from outside immediate experience (such as books, TV or film fantasy) become more common. Daydreaming is a form of mental play that increases in middle childhood. Children become more capable of participating in structured games with rules, such as team games or board games. Solitary pursuits such as collecting or reading enrich the child’s recreational time. A whole new world of imagination, representation and communication becomes available as children become literate when there is education available to them.

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Language increases in complexity, length of utterance and flexibility during middle childhood. It also becomes more abstract and independent of the context or situation in which it arises. Children use language more to talk about things that are not readily perceivable or imaginable (Bloom, 1975). Language changes its role in relation to thinking and problem-solving, and between the ages of five and seven there is a transition to the use of verbal mediation in problem-solving. (Verbal mediation is talking to oneself when faced with a problem.) Younger children characteristically respond to the immediate stimulus, while children from seven onwards usually use language as a means of classification, representation and planning (Vygotsky, 1962). Internalised speech helps children respond to problems in terms of concepts and relations rather than direct physical factors. Children at seven come to be able to inhibit their more immediate (associative) responses in favour of higher cognitive responses. The stage of middle childhood is one of remarkable intellectual achievements. Children are much less constrained by the subtleties of context, although participating in concrete activities helps them solve problems. They can increasingly talk about things which are further off in space and time from their own current activities, although they still tend to be embedded in their personal life (Donaldson, 1978). Children are capable of mental operations; that is, thinking is reversible and actions can be represented mentally. Children acquire considerable skill in understanding time, space, number and logic. They are still limited in their manipulation of concepts, classes and relations to the here-and-now rather than the abstract. Understanding verbal problems, hypothetical situations and general laws can still be difficult for the 7- to 11-year-old child, depending on the level of support provided.

Adolescence (12 years onwards)

Adolescence is almost as dramatic a period of change as infancy. It is a period of rapid physical growth and change, caused by an increase in the output of hormones. Starting in girls at an average age of 11, and in boys at an average age of 13, there is a growth spurt. During the peak velocity of growth, occurring in boys between 12-and-a-half and 15-and-a-half, and in girls two years earlier, there is an average of 10 centimetres of height increase for boys and slightly less for girls (Tanner, 1981). There are large individual differences in the age at which children experience the growth spurt. Since head, feet and hands reach their adult size first, and since there is also a tendency to plumpness, the growth spurt is often accompanied by awkwardness and self-consciousness. These traits are also influenced by the onset of sexual maturity or puberty shortly after the growth spurt. Puberty occurs at an average age of 12 for girls and 14 for boys. The first signs of puberty are the growth of pubic hair, and breast development in girls,

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and the enlargement of testes in boys. Girls menstruate after the growth spurt has started to slow down. Similarly, boys experience an increase in facial and body hair and a drop in voice late in puberty. Coming to terms with bodily changes is one of the challenges to the developing self-concept of the adolescent. Erikson (cited in Elkind, 1970) emphasises adolescence as a crucial stage in the development of an individual’s identity. Young people must become individuals in their own right, independent of their families and aware of their own role in society. Role confusion can occur if young people do not know where they belong, what is expected of them or how to integrate their various roles. Depending on cultural contexts, adolescence can be a time of shifting allegiance from the family to peer groups, and peers have an important influence on young people’s self-concept. The phenomenon of social networking through digital technologies means that many young people today are in almost continual communication with their peers, and their well-being is strongly influenced by how positive or negative this communication is. Although peer allegiances can be a source of conflict with families, they are not necessarily so, and in situations of positive parenting families continue to have an important ongoing influence. Despite the greater attachment to peers during adolescence, ties with the family are not necessarily weaker and adolescent values and beliefs tend to be highly similar to those of parents. Young people’s conformity to peers is greatest in highly visible areas such as dress or other matters of taste. Friendships are clearly an important feature of adolescence, as they provide models and reinforcers, contribute to self-concept and identity, and allow considerable emotional satisfaction from developing interpersonal relationships. Adolescence sees the onset of the ability to deal with the world in terms of the possible rather than the actual. Adolescents are able to escape from reliance on concrete actions and understand the world through mental transformations. Adolescents can test out various propositions systematically (a proposition is a hypothesis or statement which can be shown to be right or wrong). Thinking is also described as combinatorial, because it considers as many combinations as are possible. Verbal understanding and creativity become much more sophisticated during adolescence. For example, young people can quickly solve such logical questions as, ‘If Ellen is fairer than Susan but darker than Jane, who is the fairest?’ They can also interpret or even create subtle verbal meanings, for instance, through metaphor, or through artistic expression. They can select and combine from the wide array of meanings available those that are appropriate to a new context; they can move away from their most immediate associations as their meanings become more complex and differentiated. For example, young people readily understood Dylan Thomas’s metaphor of ‘the bandaged town’ (Smith, 1976). The capacity of

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adolescents to deal with abstractions means they are much more able to deal with the world through symbols, and can develop their own belief systems, question traditional beliefs, and think about and plan for the future.

Summary

This chapter has introduced three strands of theory as a framework for understanding children and childhood – children’s rights, childhood studies and sociocultural theory. Children’s rights instruments provide a social justice framework for viewing children’s entitlements, and ensuring that children’s well-being and participation in society throughout the world are enhanced. Both children’s rights and childhood studies frameworks stress that children are agentic social actors, holding unique perspectives that have in the past been ignored, and that understanding and acting on their perspectives is central to respecting their rights. Childhood studies also emphasises the socially constructed nature of children and childhood, and how our conceptualisations and discourses of childhood (such as the ‘right’ way for children to behave or for parents to treat their children) are powerful forces that shape children’s lives. The third strand, sociocultural theory, reminds us that children’s learning and development are formed through social situations, and that shared experiences with social partners enable children to jointly develop understandings and be inducted into their cultures. If children are to acquire agency, it is important that their social partners are sensitive and responsive to their existing knowledge and support them only where there are gaps. Children are likely to develop agency if their everyday contexts provide a supportive framework, and a space for the expression of their voice. An overview of the sequence of development was presented, showing children moving from learning about the world through their senses and motor activities, towards becoming self-motivated learners who coordinate perceptual and motor skills and communicate. Complex skills and burgeoning language appear during middle childhood, and children’s social worlds widen to include peers. During adolescence, expanding social worlds, and radical changes in physical and cognitive development, converge in the emergence of identity.

2

The Principles of Learning

This chapter examines how a child’s learning during childhood is influenced by their experiences and how they are active agents in interpreting their learning experiences. A variety of learning theories including operant and classical conditioning and social-cognitive theories are covered in the following sections. Positive disciplinary principles and concerns about the harmfulness of physical punishment arise from these theories. Social-cognitive theory explains that learning involves cognitive information-processing, and that children learn not only through their direct experiences but through observing others. Motivation theories help us understand why children engage with learning activities, and the importance of their sociocultural settings including their relationships with others and the attitudes, dispositions and interest they bring to learning. Behavioural theories have been challenged by cognitive and sociocultural perspectives, because of their focus on observable behaviour and reinforcement contingencies. Behavioural theory is, however, useful for understanding some of the informal ways that children learn from everyday consequences. A sociocultural perspective on learning argues that learning drives development. Learning and development, from a sociocultural perspective, involve a transformation in the nature of participation in cultural activities (Rogoff, 2003). Cognitive theories give more emphasis to how people learn knowledge, rules and attitudes, and how these influence behaviour in the long term. Because learning is particularly rapid and complex during the early years of life, these early years have a critical influence on the kind of people we become. An understanding of the basic principles of learning and of some key concepts is a necessary starting place for the discussion of early childhood development and learning. Learning is a relatively permanent change in what a person does or is capable of doing which results from the person’s experience. Changes due to learning are generally separated from changes due to growth or maturation and temporary

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changes due to fatigue, illness or drugs. Although we can only know that learning has occurred by looking at what a person does or how he behaves after being exposed to experiences, it is important to remember that learning influences ideas, attitudes and values as well as skills and activities. Learning refers not only to intellectual learning, but to the whole range of human activity, including both appropriate and inappropriate emotions, social skills, motor activity, language and creative activities. It is sometimes difficult to know whether a child’s newly acquired capability is the result of learning or maturation. Maturation can be defined as growth tendencies influenced by gene predispositions and not by experience. Changes in height and weight are examples of maturation. In most cases, both learning and maturation are involved in development. For example, when a two-year-old first uses the potty successfully this will be partly due to her increased ability to control her muscles and to understand and respond to adult language, skills that are clearly connected to biological and age-related processes. At the same time, there is no doubt that without certain key experiences, such as being provided with appropriate cues (seeing other children using the potty) or favourable consequences (an adult praising the successful use of the potty), the child would not be able to acquire this new capability. Hence learning and maturation are very hard to separate in most children’s behaviour. There are three main elements in the process of learning (Gagné, 1970): ƀLJ ."LJ &,(,LJ ",-& ŻLJ 1#."LJ -(--ŻLJ (.,&LJ (,0)/-LJ -3-.'LJ (LJ '/-&-LJ capable of all sorts of behaviour ƀLJ ."LJ0(.LJ.".LJ-.-LJ)ŤLJ(LJ.#)(LJƘ."LJ-.#'/&/-ƙźLJ (LJ."LJ-LJ) LJ*)..3LJ.,#(#(!ŻLJ a stimulus could be the feeling of fullness in the bladder or bowel ƀLJ ."LJ.#)(LJ.".LJ,-/&.-LJ ,)'LJ."LJ&,(,LJ#(!LJ2*)-LJ.)LJ."LJ-.#'/&/-LJƘ."LJ response). In our example, successfully urinating in the potty is the response. Learning occurs when the learner changes her response to stimuli. Adults often assume that a child’s new accomplishment, such as first steps, is largely due to growth or maturation rather than learning. The assumption seems to be based on the fact that the adults set up no particular experiences to encourage the behaviour. Although many new skills are influenced by both maturation and learning, it is important to realise that children are often self-directed learners. One does not have to deliberately arrange experiences for children to learn. They learn incidentally because of the very nature of the things that are happening to them and the things that they do. For instance, as children become more mobile during infancy they are quite capable of stimulating their own learning since they are constantly exploring and being exposed to new stimuli. It is virtually impossible to prevent young children from learning!

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The idea that learning is a cumulative process heightens awareness of the interdependence of the learning and development process. New learning builds on old learning. This is one reason why the experiences of the first few years of life are so critical for development. As individuals develop, previous learnings are the foundation for future learnings. There are two classes of conditions that influence learning: the internal and external. The external conditions of learning are factors outside the learner that influence whether or not learning will occur. Practice and feedback are two such types. In the toilet-training example, the presence of the potty, having the opportunity to practise using the potty, seeing other children use the potty, and the adult’s praise and approval are all examples of external conditions of learning. In order for a particular set of external conditions to bring about learning, there must be appropriate internal conditions of learning. The internal conditions of learning refer to the present capabilities of the learner. Some of these present capabilities are influenced by maturation, such as the muscular control required before toilet training can be successful. Other internal conditions are previously learned capabilities. For example, in potty training the child needs to be socially responsive to adults and to be able to understand the language related to the use of the potty – capabilities which will depend very largely on previous experience. Another example of cumulative learning comes from children’s concept formation. Suppose a three-year-old sees an orange tabby cat and a brown dachshund he or she has never seen before. She points to the dachshund and says ‘dog’, and to the tabby cat and says ‘cat’. The child has demonstrated a complex ability to discriminate between two classes of stimuli that is based on considerable cumulative learning. First the child has to recognise and label an individual cat through experience (perhaps with the family cat). Initially the child will probably learn the name of the individual cat and come to be able to produce the appropriate label when the cat appears. Then the child learns that there is a general class of animals called cats and that they can be many different sizes, colours, shapes and temperaments, but that they always have certain defining characteristics such as having fur, saying ‘miaow’ and having whiskers. The concept of cats becomes a kind of summary of the child’s experiences with these particular animals. In a similar fashion the child builds up a concept of dogs and as she does so, the child moves from a crude, undifferentiated, idiosyncratic view to a more organised, complex, differentiated and relatively abstract concept. In the early stages of concept learning the child may have considerable difficulty in deciding how to classify a new animal, say a particularly small and fluffy dog, but as the distinctive features of the concept become clear there is little difficulty in making the discrimination. Cumulative learning in concept formation helps the child to build up a more complex understanding of the world.

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From their earliest days, infants summarise their past in order to make sense of the present and predict the future. Without such a theory they would be constantly bewildered and frequently surprised. And neither bewilderment nor surprise are conditions that anyone will tolerate for long. (Smith, 1978, p. 64)

Learning by association

Classical conditioning, or learning by association, is based on the work of a Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov, in the early twentieth century (Schunk, 2004). It focuses on learning that builds on inborn unlearned responses called unconditioned reflexes. Some examples of these unlearned responses are a baby sucking in response to something being put in its mouth, or a three-year-old withdrawing a hand and crying when he puts his hand directly onto the element of an electric heater. In classical conditioning, responses such as crying and sucking become attached to other stimuli through a process of association. The new stimulus comes to be associated with the response by presenting it at the same time (or slightly before) the stimulus that originally produced the response. This type of conditioning is more important in everyday life than might be expected, especially in relation to emotional learning. A famous example of a child being classically conditioned is the case of Albert and the white rat. Albert was an eight-month-old infant who was used by psychologist John Watson to demonstrate how children can learn fears (Watson & Rayner, 1920). By striking a steel bar behind Albert’s head just after a white rat had been presented to him, Watson was able to teach the child to respond to the rat with violent crying. Before the conditioning process Albert had responded to the rat with curiosity and interest. The unlearned response or unconditioned reflex was Albert’s emotional reaction (violent crying), which occurred in response to the loud noise, the unconditioned stimulus. The white rat was associated with the unconditioned stimulus and became a conditioned stimulus for an emotional reaction, the conditioned reflex. Presenting the white rat without the noise evoked in Albert loud crying and attempts to escape from the presence of the rat. Albert also showed fear of stimuli that were similar in some way to the rat such as a rabbit, a dog, a fur coat, cotton wool, a Santa Claus mask and the experimenter’s hair. This process, by which a response occurs in the presence of stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus, is called generalisation. Both positive and negative behaviours can be learned through classical conditioning. For example, if an eight-year-old child cannot bear to look at the dental nurse even when the nurse is walking across the playground, it is likely that the feeling of pain originally evoked by having a tooth filled has come to be associated with the stimulus of the nurse’s face. In contrast, the pleasurable feelings associated with sucking a bottle can be evoked by the appearance of

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the bottle. Many mothers have noticed how their infant stops crying when the bottle appears. A procedure called counter-conditioning has been used to eliminate children’s fears. This is done by putting together stimuli that arouse fear and anxiety with stimuli that arouse more pleasurable reactions. In one case (Jones, 1924) a boy who was terrified of furry animals was counter-conditioned by feeding him in the presence of a rabbit. Initially the caged rabbit was placed some distance away from the child while he was being fed. Gradually the animal was brought closer until eventually the child was able to tolerate the uncaged rabbit on the table where he ate, and on his lap. Classical conditioning can usually be distinguished from other kinds of learning. First, classical conditioning involves responses over which we have no voluntary control. We cannot, through our will, control fear of a hypodermic needle or a feeling of pleasure at the smell of the dinner cooking. Second, in classical conditioning the stimuli that come to control the response occur before the response. This prior occurrence of the controlling stimuli helps to distinguish classical conditioning from the next kind of learning to be discussed.

Learning through consequences

Learning through the consequences of behaviour is called operant conditioning, and it arose out of the work of an influential American psychologist, Frederic Skinner, during the 1930s to the 1990s. For operant conditioning to occur the individual first has to make a response and then experience a consequence for her behaviour. ‘Operant’ suggests a person operates on the environment by producing some stimulating event or stopping it (depending on whether it is pleasant or aversive). Some examples of operant behaviours are turning on the television set, putting on slippers, going to sit at the table when dinner is ready, stopping at a traffic light or going to a lecture. Operantly conditioned behaviour is under voluntary control and the learned response is under the control of stimuli that occur after the response (in contrast to classically conditioned behaviour).

Increasing the strength of behaviour

A positive reinforcer is a stimulus occurring after a response which increases the chance that the response will be repeated. For example, when a baby babbles and an adult leans over, smiles, touches or talks to the child, the baby is likely to increase his babbling. In this case the reinforcer is the positive attention from an adult and the operantly conditioned response is the babbling. Whether something is a reinforcer can be determined only by its effect on behaviour. Sometimes the expectation that a selected reward will encourage a child to act in a desired way is not fulfilled. This means that the selected reward is not a reinforcer. All sorts

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of different things can be reinforcers, from praise, attention, money, food, good grades, getting the right answer, to flashing green lights, smoking and the sound of pop music. Different things can be reinforcing for different people because they have had different experiences. The same event may have distinctly different effects on different children in different situations. For example, a pat on the back may encourage one child to continue an activity but cause another to stop what she is doing. Only by observing the relationship between a behaviour and its consequences can one determine whether a consequence is a reinforcer. Suppose a parent decides to encourage a child to do the dishes by letting the child stay up half-an-hour later to watch TV. If the consequence of extra TV watching does not result in more dishwashing then it is not a reinforcer. If a kindergarten teacher decides to pay attention only when Joanna, a rather isolated child, is interacting with other children and Joanna’s interactions with other children increase, the teacher’s attention is a reinforcer for Joanna. A hierarchy of reinforcement suggests that it is best to start at the top with the use of ‘natural’ reinforcers to encourage appropriate behaviour at school and home (Forness, 1973). Examples include the pleasure in mastering an activity at an appropriate level of challenge and interest for children, or using contingent teacher or parent praise for good behaviour. According to Steven Forness, the hierarchy of reinforcement has at the top a sense of mastery or competence in solving a problem or completing a task, followed by being correct, social approval, contingent activity, tokens, tangibles and edibles. Only where there are real problems should teachers or parents resort to the use of tokens, stickers or other such artificial reinforcers and they should be used only in very special circumstances and associated with other social reinforcers. A negative reinforcer is a stimulus which, when removed following a response, increases the strength of the response. Negatively reinforced behaviour has been called escape or avoidance behaviour. When a pedestrian waits at the side of a road in busy traffic she is showing avoidance behaviour. The operantly conditioned response is waiting at the side of the road which allows the individual to avoid the aversive stimulus of being run over. The negative reinforcement consists of the removal or avoidance of the unpleasant stimulus. Escape behaviour occurs when the individual actually experiences the unpleasant stimulus and makes a response that removes the stimulus. For example, if a toddler is whining and crying, a parent picks her up and the crying and whining ceases. The parent’s behaviour – picking up the infant – has been negatively reinforced, because the consequence was that the crying and whining stopped. (Incidentally, at the same time the child’s response of crying and whining has been positively reinforced.) In using the principles of operant conditioning to bring about particular learning in children, it should be remembered that immediate reinforcement

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is more effective than delayed reinforcement. The longer the gap between the behaviour being strengthened and the consequence, the less likely it is that the strengthening of the behaviour will be effective. Immediacy of reinforcement is particularly important for young children because they are less able than adults and older children to store up the knowledge that the behaviour will have good or bad consequences in the future. Hence, if one wants to encourage a four-year-old to clean her teeth, it is not likely to be effective merely to tell her about the good effect that regular teeth-cleaning will have on her appearance when she grows up, or of the pain and suffering she will avoid. Immediate reinforcement, such as recognising the child’s actions by praise and approval, will be more likely to encourage teeth-cleaning. Although adults are better able to perform behaviour when the consequences are distant, immediate consequences are still powerful for them. Adults can be seen studying for an exam or working for their living when the payoff is a long way ahead; it is still true, however, that behaviour such as smoking or overeating is hard to eliminate since the immediate reinforcement is stronger than the delayed one. Although the stimuli that follow responses are important in operant conditioning, the stimuli preceding responses are also important, since they signal that reinforcement will follow. In the example of a mother smiling and talking to the baby when the baby babbles, the stimulus that sets off the babbling could be the mother’s face. A stimulus associated with reinforcement, such as the mother’s face in this example, is called a discriminative stimulus. A stimulus that does not lead to the response and to the reinforcement is called an ‘S delta’, for example, a stranger’s face. The process of discrimination is vitally important in children’s learning. They must learn that particular stimulus situations will lead to reinforcement while others will not. Many children, for example, learn quickly that the moment when dad is frowning or angry is not the moment to ask for their pocket money. The toddler learns that ‘daddy’ is a word you use in the presence of only one particular person, not all men. Generalisation, mentioned in relation to classical conditioning, is the failure to discriminate. When a toddler calls a strange man ‘daddy’ she has generalised her experiences with a particular stimulus, her own father, to a similar stimulus, the strange man. One of the difficulties with operant conditioning theory is to explain how children learn new behaviours. Reinforcement and punishment act on existing behaviours to strengthen or weaken them. How can the development of a totally new behaviour be explained, and how were the existing behaviours learned? Part of the answer to these questions lies in the biological make-up of the individual which allows new responses to emerge without learning. But new behaviours can be learned through shaping. (An even more effective way is through modelling

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as explained in the next section.) Shaping is a process by which reinforcement is provided for a behaviour that is closer and closer to a desired behaviour. When the individual has been reinforced for an approximation to the desired behaviour, further reinforcement depends on the behaviour being even closer to the desired behaviour. Shaping is a process that parents often use to help their children learn. Consider an infant learning to feed herself with a spoon. Her parents may initially provide her with a spoon and a dish of food. If she dips her spoon into the food and brings it somewhere near her mouth, her parents will probably give her some positive attention. Once she has actually put her spoon into her mouth she will again be reinforced (by the parents’ attention and by successfully getting the food into her mouth). Gradually she acquires responses that are closer to the desired behaviour of successful, non-messy spoon feeding. When the parents first attended to her dipping her spoon into the food and bringing it near her mouth, they were making it more likely that other responses even closer to the desired behaviour would occur. The parents realise that it is unrealistic to expect her to acquire this complex manipulative skill in a short time, and they understand that along the learning path there will be a great deal of food on the kitchen floor, but they provide the encouragement and attention for behaviour that gets closer and closer to the goal. Whether or not reinforcement occurs after every instance of a behaviour, the scheduling of reinforcement influences the speed with which a behaviour is learned and how quickly the behaviour disappears when a reinforcement is stopped. Continuous reinforcement is when behaviour is reinforced every time it occurs. Behaviour is initially learned more quickly and efficiently when it is continuously reinforced. If reinforcement is then withdrawn, however, the behaviour can disappear rather quickly. Once the behaviour has been increased to the desired level through continuous reinforcement it can be better maintained by using intermittent reinforcement. This occurs when not every instance of a behaviour is reinforced. There are many complex schedules of intermittent reinforcement that depend on a fixed or variable number of responses or amount of time between responses; these need not be of concern here. It is important to know, though, that intermittent reinforcement leads to behaviour which is more stable and less readily lost when reinforcement is withdrawn. A good example of how behaviour can be maintained through intermittent reinforcement is gambling, when reinforcement is relatively infrequent. It is unnecessary for parents or teachers to reinforce every instance of a behaviour once it occurs reliably. For example, if a child has learned to dress himself in the morning, parents do not need to praise him every time he does so. One trap for parents or teachers is that they sometimes inadvertently maintain a behaviour through intermittent reinforcement, thereby making it much harder to get rid of. If a child constantly

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wants his mother to buy him something when they go shopping together and the mother gives in every now and then, the child’s asking behaviour is likely to be much more persistent and hard to stop. Antecedent control of behaviour occurs when settings or contexts, such as the nature of equipment or space in a childcare centre or the presence of an adult during play, have the effect of encouraging certain kinds of behaviour to occur. Ted Glynn (1982) has argued that antecedent control of behaviour is often easier to modify than changing reinforcement contingencies, and has certain advantages such as looser control over learning, so that generalisation and maintenance of the behaviour are encouraged under different conditions. One study (Baker, Foley, Glynn, & McNaughton, 1983) illustrates well how antecedent events can control behaviour in a childcare centre. The study looked at the effect of different adult behaviours and serving arrangements on two measures of child behaviour at lunchtime – food eaten and child-initiated language. There were much lower levels of child language when the adult stood apart compared with when the adult sat at the table with a group of children. Lower levels of language were also associated with receiving a plate of pre-served food compared with self-serving of food at each table in a family-type arrangement. Although the effects on food eaten were not as strong as on language, less food was eaten when it was preserved and the adult stood apart.

Decreasing the strength of behaviour

The process of weakening a response by not following it with reinforcement is called extinction. Knowing about extinction is sometimes useful in eliminating undesirable behaviours in children. Carl Williams (1959) reports the case of a 21-month-old infant with tyrant-like tantrum behaviour. The child had been seriously ill for the first 18 months of life but his health was now normal. He demanded considerable attention from his parents at bedtime, when he would have a wild tantrum if his parents or an aunt who lived with the family left the room before he was asleep. He demanded total attention from them for the oneand-a-half to two-and-a-half-hour period before he went to sleep. It was decided to extinguish the behaviour by ignoring the tantrums. After the child had been bathed and put to bed the door was closed. On the first night he screamed for 45 minutes but the parents did not re-enter the bedroom. On the second night there was no crying and on the third night the child cried for about ten minutes. Within a week the tantrum behaviour had completely disappeared. The case has an interesting sequel that illustrates the power of intermittent reinforcement. A week later the aunt put the child to bed but when she closed the door the child started to scream and cry. She went in and attended to him. This time it took nine days for the crying and screaming at bedtime to be eliminated.

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Another procedure to weaken behaviour is punishment, which is the presentation of an aversive stimulus, or the removal of a reinforcing stimulus following a behaviour. Punishment is probably the most widely used form of behaviour control in the family and school, although it has the most problems. Punishers (like reinforcers) can be defined only in terms of their effect on behaviour. Smacking, for example, can be defined as a punisher only if it has the effect of diminishing the behaviour it follows. Similarly, if a child is not allowed to watch TV because she argued with her parents, it is a punisher only if it reduces her arguing behaviour. Another example of punishment is of a toddler pulling the cat’s tail. If the cat scratches the child and her tail-pulling behaviour is decreased she has been punished. One form of punishment called time-out consists of removing a child from a reinforcing situation following a behaviour. Brief but immediate isolation following a behaviour has been shown to be quite effective. Since punishment is such a widespread procedure, it is important to understand some of the problems with it and some of the ways in which it can be most effective. The first problem with punishment is that it is not likely to suppress the behaviour permanently and its effects can be unpredictable. Unless the punishment is severe, in which case there are ethical and health problems with its use, the undesired behaviour is likely to reappear. Second, punishment can become associated with other stimuli present at the same time (by a process of classical conditioning) so that the other stimuli come to evoke fear and hostility. If school or a particular teacher is consistently associated with punishment then they can become conditioned stimuli for fear or hostility, emotional states that do not enhance learning. A third problem, with physical punishment in particular, is that the punisher can act as a model (see next section) for the child, who may then perform similar aggressive acts on peers or siblings. Another issue with behavioural concepts such as punishment is that they focus on the immediate rather than the long-term and cumulative effects on learning. One reason that parents use physical punishment is that they want children to immediately comply. They also believe that physical punishment will work by reducing undesirable behaviour. Research, however, suggests that physical punishment is only effective when it is immediate, severe and consistent. Although this might induce compliance, it risks conditioned negative emotional responses as well as injury to the child. Box 2.1 (p. 52) tells the story of how New Zealand law changed in 2007 to make it illegal to use physical punishment to correct a child, reflecting the research findings of negative effects, as well as children’s rights to preservation of their physical integrity. Learning theory including classical and operant conditioning, and social learning theory, predicts that physical punishment will be harmful to children’s

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development in a number of ways. But attachment, sociocultural and ecological theories also suggest that physical punishment is an ineffective and harmful means of influencing children’s development and learning (see Smith, 2011b, chapter 3). There is now an increasing body of empirical evidence showing the harmful effects of physical punishment on children’s development long term (Durrant, 2011; Durrant & Ensom, 2012; Smith, Gollop, Taylor, & Marshall, 2005). ... physical punishment predicts negative developmental outcomes with remarkable consistency. Across culture, samples, measures and outcomes, the literature supports the theoretical propositions ... that physical punishment can interfere with attachment, moral internalization, mental health, and cognitive development; that it promotes aggression and risks escalation; and that children generally experience it as a negative force in their lives. (Durrant, 2011, p. 43)

Effective discipline

Since there is clear evidence that physical punishment and indeed any harsh, coercive or humiliating punishment, is not an effective way to teach children how to behave, it is important to outline some of the principles of effective discipline that can support alternative approaches to parenting. Discipline is the guidance of children’s learning, enabling them to regulate their own behaviour as they acquire more skills and understanding. It involves making children aware of how to behave appropriately and to relate to the world around them. What is deemed to be appropriate behaviour, however, is a value issue that differs according to culture, class, geography and history. I do not believe that there is any universal recipe for parents to bring up their children, since different cultures, families and societies use different approaches, and different children evoke different interactions from their parents. I have argued that, ‘Discipline is part of the holistic learning context of children and is integrally related to the totality of relationships, interactions and experiences within the family, and to the wider ecological contexts of families’ (Smith, 2005, p. 131). Nevertheless there are a number of principles that underlie effective discipline. I have drawn five such principles from the literature on child development, and these are summarised below. This section is included because so many of the readers of this book will be parents, or people working with parents or in a position to influence parents. Parents who resort to negative methods of discipline often say that they do not have alternative strategies, so the principles outlined below should suggest some useful and effective strategies to them. The principles are covered in more depth in a published literature review on the discipline and guidance of children (Smith et al., 2005b).

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Ċő ,(.&ő1,'."ő(ő#(0)&0'(.Ć It is well established that a close, trusting and responsive relationship (attachment) between children and their caregivers is one of the key ingredients of effective discipline. Conversely rejection is an ingredient of ineffective and harmful discipline, and a ‘universal toxin’ in all cultures (Garbarino, 2000, p. 59). Where there is warmth, shared feelings and a trusting relationship between children and their parents, children are likely to want to learn what the adults want to teach them. When caregivers are tuned in to children’s distress or pleasure, and are willing to engage with them collaboratively in their play and learning, children are more likely to internalise the moral messages that parents want to convey (Laible & Thompson, 2000). If there is a warm relationship between parents and children, mild non-physical punishment such as saying ‘no’ can be effective. What is important is that the predominant type of interaction between parent and child is positive. A ratio of around six to eight positive comments to one negative comment allows the parent–child relationship to remain intact and conveys information about inappropriate behaviour (Cavell, 2001). A nagging, scolding approach to discipline, on the other hand, is likely to be very counterproductive. Ċő &,ő)''/(#.#)(ő(ő2*&(.#)(ĆőSince discipline is a form of teaching, it is crucial that children understand the messages they receive from caregivers during disciplinary encounters. Children co-construct meaning with their parents through the normal discourses of family life. When children engage with the perspectives of their parents, their understanding grows, helping them to internalise parental messages and regulate their own behaviour. It is hard, however, for children to internalise parental messages if the messages are vague, confusing or contradictory. When parents and children have conversations over disciplinary issues, this teaches children why their behaviour is acceptable or unacceptable (Grusec & Goodnow, 1994). Goals and expectations about children’s behaviour, as well as how these are communicated, should be age appropriate. Unrealistic parental expectations for what children are able to learn can result in frustration for both parents and children. For example, expecting two-year-olds not to have toilet accidents, or to eat without making a mess, is unreasonable. Immediate compliance for toddlers after one disciplinary encounter is also unlikely (Kalb & Loeber, 2003), since it often takes time for small children to learn what is expected. It is useful to capture children’s attention and direct it to the topic under question (such as washing hands after going to the toilet), with an explanation of what is expected and why. Helping children to be sensitive to the perspectives of others and to understand the

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reasons for doing things, as opposed to commanding without explanation, is much more likely to be effective. Ċő /&-ąő)/(,#-ő(ő'(-ĆőOne feature of effective parenting that has been emphasised by many researchers (Baumrind, 1991; McCabe, Clark, & Barnett, 1999) is that there should be fair and predictable rules and structures to guide children’s behaviour. Setting clear limits and making consistent demands for high standards of behaviour is part of this. Demands should not be coercive, but warm and positive. Predictable routines and expectations within family life make life much less fragmented, confused and difficult for both parents and children. For example, rituals around bedtime, involving a sequence of having a bath, brushing teeth and being read a bedtime story, help settle children and strengthen attachment and security. Preparing for school in the morning can be a stressful time, but if children are given a consistent structure and routine around getting up, getting dressed, eating breakfast and finding school things, this smoothes the path to harmonious family life (and getting to school on time!). Ċő )(-#-.(3ő (ő )(-+/(-Ćő From my previous discussion of operant conditioning and the importance of reinforcement, it is clear that the consequences of behaviour can be effective in changing behaviour. A combination of consistent positive consequences like praise and extra treats for appropriate behaviour, combined with sparing but consistent mild punishment (like time-out or loss of privileges) for inappropriate behaviour, is characteristic of effective discipline (Stoolmiller, Patterson, & Snyder, 1997). Intermittent reinforcement, where consequences only follow behaviour sometimes, is the most usual scenario within families. This can be helpful or unhelpful depending on whether you want to stop or strengthen a behaviour. Praise or other rewards do not necessarily have to follow every instance of a child carrying out a household chore, if the behaviour is well established. But parents often inadvertently strengthen an undesirable behaviour (like whining) by paying attention to it some of the time. This makes it harder to stop the whining as it has been intermittently reinforced. Time-out can be a useful and effective mild punishment procedure, which should be combined with positive consequences for good behaviour. It involves brief isolation following an inappropriate behaviour, and removes children from situations and people that may have triggered the inappropriate behaviour. Its effectiveness is enhanced within the context of ongoing positive relationships between parents and children, when children are warned, when parents keep calm and neutral, when children understand the reason for the time-out and when it is not overused (Cavell, 2001; Delaney, 1999).

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Box 2.1 A policy story: the abolition of physical punishment in Aotearoa A momentous change in social policy took place in Aotearoa in 2007, when we joined 29 other countries in prohibiting all physical punishment of children, and became the first English-speaking country in the world to do so. Since 2007 another five countries have abolished physical punishment, affirming that there is a global momentum to the recognition that physical punishment is an assault on the dignity of children and a denial of their rights, and that it has long-term negative consequences for children’s learning and well-being (Durrant & Smith, 2011). The introduction in New Zealand of the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act 2007, which took effect on 21 June in that year, means that parents who are prosecuted for assaulting a child can no longer use the law as a defence for hurting children, or argue that the force used was reasonable and for the purposes of correction. The new law states unequivocally that nothing ‘justifies the use of force for the purposes of correction’ (Section 5, Crimes Amendment Act, 2007). The story of how this change in policy came about has been told (see Taylor, Wood, & Smith, 2011; Wood, Hassall, Hook, & Ludbrook, 2008). It was an important event that will have a lasting effect on the conditions of childhood in New Zealand. Regardless of whether or not the law change actually reduces the amount of violence that children are subjected to, it symbolises that violence against children is unacceptable, in the same way that violence against women, animals, servants and employees has become unacceptable throughout our history. The effectiveness and influence of the law change will depend on other policy changes such as the degree of support for parenting in New Zealand, and government and non-government efforts to explain to the public why physical punishment is harmful and ineffective and what the alternatives are. Professionals who work with children and families in various capacities can also make an important contribution to attitude change among the public, especially when they have regular contact with parents (for example, early childhood teachers and Plunket nurses). My colleagues and I (Taylor, Smith, & Wood, 2011) have argued that research provided a critical evidence-base for the process of reform, and helped to inform the policy-makers of the long-term harmful consequences of physical punishment. The research review work carried out by the Children’s Issues Centre at the University of Otago, in collaboration with the Office of the Commissioner for Children, not only helped to convince

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Box 2.1 continued the policy-makers, but provided a framework for parent education initiatives to help parents looking for alternative approaches to discipline, such as the SKIP1 programme (Smith, Gollop, Taylor & Marshall, 2004, 2005). The invisibility of children’s perspectives on this debate was remedied by the research of Terry Dobbs in the mid-2000s, when she discussed physical punishment with groups of children throughout New Zealand. The findings of her work reminded people that children were not just passive objects to be shaped and moulded, but persons able to interpret and voice how it was to be physically punished and their consequent sadness, anger, shame, hostility and fear (Dobbs, Smith, & Taylor, 2006; Dobbs, 2005; 2007). The abolition of physical punishment throughout the world has integrated and drawn on several streams of thinking, including children’s rights, research on the negative learning outcomes of physical punishment, and consciousness of children’s agency and voice. 1 Strategies with Kids, Information for Parents.

Ċő )(.2.ő ěő -.,/./,#(!ő ."ő -#./.#)(Ćő Behaviour is influenced not only by its consequences, but by the context or (in behavioural language) the stimulus situation. Certain types of contexts, such as taking children to the supermarket, may encourage certain types of behaviour, such as ‘Can I have ... ?’; or having interesting and novel objects, such as vases or ornaments, on low shelves may invite young children to grab and explore. Sometimes the best way to structure a stimulus situation is to make sure that the context does not invite actions that are not desirable, such as putting attractive but damageable objects out of sight. Children have to learn though to discriminate between contexts where behaviour is appropriate or not. My grand-daughter when aged 16 months, particularly liked throwing stones into the lake during her summer holiday, and enjoyed the sight and sound when the stone hit the water. Unfortunately she generalised this behaviour to throwing other small objects around the house that hurt people or damaged objects. A combination of saying ‘no’ and redirecting her attention to other engaging activities was effective in stopping this behaviour. The presence and action of models is a very salient part of the context for children. Seeing other people do or say things provides a very effective teaching situation for children to perform the same behaviour. Sometimes children learn behaviour from parental or peer models, such as physical or verbal violence,

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that are undesirable, and this can happen inadvertently. If certain contexts can trigger undesirable behaviour, it makes sense to child-proof play space by removing breakable or unsafe objects, providing plenty of toys to avoid conflict, using calming routines (like stories or songs), and refocusing children on safe and acceptable activities (Honig & Wittmer, 1991).

Social cognitive theory

A great deal of learning occurs without direct reinforcement or punishment, and the work of Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura on social cognitive theory has helped to explain how people learn indirectly by watching the actions of others and the consequences to others of their actions (Bandura, 1997, 2001; Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1961). Children learn complex patterns of new behaviour or modify existing ones through observation of the actions of models. They do not have to actually perform the actions to have learned. According to Bandura’s social cognitive approach, people’s learning is not driven just by inner or external forces, but is explained better by a triadic model, where the person, context and behaviour interact and influence each other in a reciprocal manner (Bandura, 1986, cited by Schunk, 2004). If a child is learning a new task, such as writing her name, her success will be determined by the task (its components and the skills it demands), the person (the child’s confidence and skills), and the environment (the nature of the modelling, instruction, and the praise and recognition for performing the task). Each component is reciprocally related to the other. This approach contrasts with operant conditioning theory that gives less attention to cognition, and more attention to the contingencies of reinforcement and the resulting behaviour. Learning, in social cognitive theory, is considered to be an informationprocessing activity. Children learn through the consequences of their actions because consequences are sources of information and motivation (Schunk, 2004). ‘People strive to learn behaviors they value and believe will have desirable consequences, whereas they avoid learning behaviors that are punished or otherwise not satisfying. People’s cognitions, rather than consequences, affect learning’ (Schunk, 2004, p. 86).

Modelling

Modelling is a powerful process through which families and societies maintain patterns of behaviour. Children learn very readily to do as they see others around them do. All kinds of behaviour is learned through modelling, from emotional responses (such as being frightened of dogs), motor skills (doing a forward roll, driving a car), social behaviour (greeting people, using table manners), intellectual skills (arguing a point or writing a laboratory report), attitudes

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(feelings about people who are different from ourselves), or beliefs (support for a particular political party). Modelling is an effective learning process that transmits behavioural patterns quickly and efficiently. A model can be defined as any behaviour, real or symbolic, that serves as a stimulus for an observer to behave or respond in a similar way. Examples of models are the prime minister, a teacher, a character in a book, samples of printing or writing hung around the room, the heroine in a television drama, the leader of a gang, brothers and sisters, parents and friends. The learner observes the model and then performs the behaviour (which may be new to the learner or something the learner has previously done). The learner does not necessarily perform the behaviour immediately after observing the model, but may delay days, weeks or even months before performing it, in the absence of the model. Modelled behaviour is affected by reinforcement, either to the observer or the model. To imitate successfully, the learner must first attend to the relevant features of the model, remember or code what has been seen, and then translate the memorised behaviour into action. Verbal skills help children to organise and code what they see, so infants without language have more difficulty with imitation, though even very young children imitate. Whether an observed behaviour is modelled depends on such factors as the characteristics of the model (nurturant and powerful models are more likely to be imitated), the consequences the model experienced (punished behaviour is less likely to be modelled than rewarded behaviour), and the skills of the learner (it is impossible to imitate behaviours that are too difficult). Modelling is an effective way of influencing children’s learning at home, as shown by a study involving a gifted nine-year-old boy’s reading (Pluck, Ghafari, Glynn, & McNaughton, 1984). During a first phase, new books on topics that interested the child were introduced into the home, while the second phase involved the child’s mother, father and grandmother modelling silent reading. A final phase combined the new books and the modelling conditions. The modelling variable had the greatest effect on increasing the boy’s reading, but the combination of the new books (when chosen by the child) and modelling was a highly effective treatment. Another study shows that teachers can have a powerful effect on children’s reading behaviour through modelling (Widdowson, Dixon, & Moore, 1996). A group of high-, average- and low-achieving readers aged seven and eight were exposed to a model of their teacher doing silent reading in the classroom for 15 minutes a day. The teacher told the children that she wanted them to read a book silently and that she also was reading a book which she was enjoying. The study shows that this modelling worked particularly well for average readers (who made the greatest gains in on-task behaviour), had an effect on poorer readers,

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but had little consistent effect on good readers who already showed a very high level of on-task behaviour. The study shows that through modelling enjoyment and engagement in reading, teachers can also influence children’s participation in reading. Modelling is a highly effective, simple and undemanding procedure through which teachers and parents can influence children’s behaviour.

Motivation

Children’s goals for learning and tendency to engage in learning are influenced by a number of internal and external factors. Behavioural theories emphasise external factors, such as rewards and punishment, but social cognitive theories emphasise internal cognitive factors. Self-efficacy is a concept arising from social cognitive theory that is particularly relevant to childhood learning and motivation. Self-efficacy refers to beliefs about one’s ability to achieve a task, which influences how hard people try to succeed at a task, how long they persist with it and whether they can achieve the desired learning outcome. Self-efficacy is a subjective perception of what a person thinks they can do in a specific domain, though it is not the same as knowing what to do (ability) (Schunk, 2004). For example, a child may have high self-efficacy in relation to reading, but low self-efficacy in relation to mathematics. Self-efficacy influences children’s expectations of success, their inclination to engage, and the amount of effort they are likely to invest in an activity. A study on adolescents’ mathematics achievement showed that self-efficacy influenced mathematics achievement over and above the effect of prior achievement (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2007). Self-efficacy is heavily influenced by past experience, such as teacher expectations and judgement, feedback and models. Being able to observe coping models (either adults or peers) successfully carry out a task has been shown to improve self-efficacy. Peer models were effective models in a study of primary school children learning subtraction (Schunk, 1985, cited by Schunk, 2004). The most effective model for children was a ‘peer-coping’ model (compared to a teacher model or no model) who initially made mistakes and verbalised negative achievement beliefs, but gradually performed better and talked about coping strategies like ‘I need to pay attention to what I’m doing’ (Schunk, 2004, p. 115). When teachers choose a student to perform a task (like doing a mathematics problem), this provides a useful teaching opportunity to provide coping peer models, especially when other students in the class see themselves as similar to the model. Choosing a very competent student is not necessarily the best strategy, as self-efficacy is more likely to be enhanced by seeing another overcome initial struggles. There are many other ways that teachers can improve children’s selfefficacy, for example through drawing attention to and encouraging actions or thoughts associated with self-efficacy.

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If children are talked to in ways that highlight their competence, they internalise that feedback. My colleagues and I (Carr, Smith, Duncan, Jones, Lee, & Marshall, 2010) carried out a longitudinal observational and interview study of four- and five-year-olds in their New Zealand early childhood centres and schools, and this study outlines many episodes of children’s learning. (I draw on data from that study throughout this book to illustrate aspects of children’s learning.) How teacher feedback is internalised by children is illustrated by five-year-old David’s participation in story-writing at school (Carr et al., 2010, p. 94). When David showed his ‘story’ to the teacher she wrote on it, ‘You are a very clever writer.’ David showed the story to the researcher and to the school caretaker. The teacher thought that something had clicked for David that day during writing, even though he hadn’t exactly followed her instruction. Subsequently David became an active and eager participant in writing activities. How children explain their successes and failures has important consequences for the way they approach future learning tasks, and these attributions generalise widely from one task to another (Schunk, 2004). Attribution theories of achievement are concerned with the explanations that people have for their successes or failures. For example, if a child gets a good mark on a reading comprehension test, she could believe that she did so because she was good at reading or because she studied hard for the test – these are called internal attributions. An external attribution would explain the success as due to external factors such as the difficulty of the test or luck. Adaptive patterns of motivation involve persistence in the face of obstacles, while maladaptive patterns involve low persistence and avoidance of difficulty (Dweck, 1986). Psychologist Carol Dweck found that children’s achievements were characterised by two different kinds of goals – either performance or learning goals. Performance goals are concerned with achieving approval and avoiding disapproval, while learning goals are focused on achieving competence. Emphasising performance goals works against the pursuit of challenge because it discourages students from engaging with difficult tasks (unless they think that they have high ability). If children believe their ability is low they are likely to choose either very easy or very difficult tasks. Children with learning goals, regardless of whether they think their ability is high or low, are more likely to choose challenging tasks that foster learning. Children’s attributions for failure can be changed by teaching them to attribute their failures to controllable factors, such as effort or lack of strategy. Providing effort attributional feedback to students for their successes promotes achievement expectancies and behaviors, but the feedback must be perceived as credible. When a student is having trouble mastering difficult multiplication problems, the teacher can use past student successes and attributional feedback to build confidence in learning. (Schunk, 2004, p. 358)

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Learning dispositions

Learning dispositions are another important motivational concept that helps us to understand children’s long-term orientations towards learning. Learning dispositions have been defined as being ‘ready, willing and able to participate’ and as ‘participation repertoires from which a learner recognises, selects, edits, responds to, resists, searches for and construct learning opportunities’ (Carr, 2001, p. 21). Dispositions are related to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus: ‘embodied history, internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history ... the active presence of the whole past of which it is the product’ (Bourdieu, 1992, p. 56, cited by Thomas, 2007). Dispositions emerge from children’s participation in activities and relationships with people, places and things. There are three elements to dispositions – inclination, sensitivity and ability (Perkins, Jay, & Tishman, 1993). Another way of describing these elements is that they involve knowing why (inclination), knowing when and where (sensitivity to occasion), and knowing how (ability) (Carr et al., 2010). A child may have a tendency or inclination towards doing something (such as pretending to be a monster), be sensitive to occasions when this behaviour is appropriate (not during mat time or news time in school), and know how to go about it (can represent some characteristics of monsters). Learning dispositions depend on children’s capability of doing something (or their perception of that capability), whether they are motivated to do something, and their sensitivity to the right time and place to do something. The New Zealand early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki, explicitly incorporates the concept of dispositions: ‘Dispositions to learn develop when children are immersed in an environment that is characterised by well-being and trust, belonging and purposeful activities, contributing and collaborating, communicating and representing, and exploring and guided participation’ (Ministry of Education, 1996b, p. 45). In chapter 8 I will return to key learning dispositions, especially three that are particularly important in the early years – reciprocity, resilience and imagination. The equivalent of learning dispositions that are incorporated into the New Zealand school curriculum are known as ‘key competencies’. They are: ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ

."#(%#(! /-#(!LJ&(!/!ŻLJ-3')&-ŻLJ(LJ.2.'(!#(!LJ-& ,&.#(!LJ.)LJ).",*,.##*.#(!LJ(LJ)(.,#/.#(!źLJ

People use these competencies to live, learn, work and contribute as active members of their communities. More complex than skills, the competencies

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draw also on knowledge, attitudes and values in ways that lead to action. They are not separate or stand-alone. They are the key to learning in every learning area. (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 12)

Learning dispositions and key competencies are not fixed internal entities, but are shaped over time by participation in a variety of contexts. (I explore dispositional learning further in chapter 8).

Contexts for learning

Constructivism is a term referring to the way that people (including children) actively construct knowledge for themselves through the discourses and interactions of their everyday lives. Discourses are established meanings for concepts, ideas and beliefs that are embedded in our ways of thinking, talking and understanding them. Sociocultural perspectives on learning emphasise the influence of social context on human learning, and that learning is not as an individual endeavour, but a collaborative process. The previous discussion of learning by consequences and learning by association may have given the false impression that learners passively absorb the learning experiences to which they are exposed. Most teachers and parents are well aware that all learners are different and make a unique contribution to their own learning and development. Indeed, most teachers do not want their students to respond automatically to teacher directions like small robots. Dependent learners, who always require adult direction and are unable to show any autonomy, can become a tiresome burden, and may be unlikely to learn well in new and more challenging situations outside the home or classroom. Children’s long-term capacity to be independent learners who can control their own learning is greatly influenced by the type of early experiences they have. Children’s agency is supported when their learning contexts are responsive to their existing interests and knowledge, and opportunities are provided to extend their existing skills and their ongoing dispositions to learn (Carr et al., 2010; Wheldall & Glynn, 1989). Responsive learning contexts help to move children towards becoming independent learners (Glynn, 1985). When children receive responsive feedback they are enabled to take control, initiate and acquire agency. Independent learners are active and alert rather than waiting passively for things to happen to them. They initiate interactions with people and explore their own environments. They make mistakes but learn from them about improving their own learning. Responsive learning contexts encourage children to produce a variety of types of behaviour in many different situations. A responsive learning context provides learners with the chance to do things without being too strictly controlled, in an environment where other people

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respond to what they do, and challenge them to extend their learning. When children experience reciprocal social interactions, and there is a balance of power and warm relationship between participants, these conditions are favourable to learning, according to Bronfenbrenner (1979a). This reciprocal process of shared experience starts very early. Even very young babies enjoy social interactions with their caregivers, but towards the end of children’s first year, there is a revolution in how they come to understand their social worlds (Bruner, 1995; Tomasello, 1999). This has been described as a ‘meeting of minds’, which involves children gradually coming to understand that other people have a point of view different from their own and are intentional agents, and that signs such as words (as well as facial expressions and gestures) ‘stand for’ aspects of the world of experience (people, things or actions) (Bruner, 1995; Smith, 1999). This is the beginning of a lifelong journey of engaging in cultural learning and internalising the perspectives of other people (Tomasello, 1999). Vygotsky believed that children were capable of more advanced and complex behaviour when they were guided by skilled learners. He saw learners as able to perform, with help from others, skills that they could later (as a consequence of the help) carry out independently (Vygotsky, 1978). Children learn to communicate and think, at first with the help of social interaction with adults or peers, and then alone as they internalise the processes. A six-year-old child who has lost a toy asks her father for help. He asks her a series of questions, such as when she last saw the toy, whether she had it in her room or outside or in the car. She then remembers that she left it in the car and goes to retrieve it. The child initiates the interactions and, through reciprocal social interaction with an adult, is able to solve the problem. She knows the relevant information but her father helps her to seek and retrieve it – self-questioning skills which will later become internalised and automatic so that she will be able to solve such problems on her own (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). Assistance provided by a teacher is gradually replaced by assistance provided by the self as internalisation occurs. Vygotsky believed that most higher mental functioning originated through such collaborative learning contexts in ordinary domestic situations. Another example of a responsive learning context comes from my study of joint attention between two-year-olds and their teachers (Smith, 1999). &3#(!ő'-ő1#."ő-%.: P squats down beside the toy basket. She tips it up, lifts the basket and puts it on her head. Carer says, ‘Oh hats for P and W’. P says, ‘Hat, hat’ and laughs. Carers says, ‘Where’s P? Oh there she is, where’s P? There she is’. P pulls the hat off and pokes a finger through the basket. She throws the basket down. (Age of child, 16 months, Smith, 1999, p. 94)

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The teacher supported the child’s growing language and physical competencies in the context of a close relationship based on her intimate knowledge of her existing understandings and competencies. Situated learning theory also views thinking and learning as inseparably embedded in the world of action rather than solely in the mind. Situated learning is located in social contexts, made up of actors, actions and situations (Pitri, 2004). The social context consists of affordances and constraints that either support children’s learning or limit it. One of the great puzzles of learning theory is how learning in one situation transfers to new or changed situations. Designing learning contexts to encourage the transfer of learning to new situations is important, since this has implications for ongoing learning, and making learning useful beyond the initial situation where it took place. Transfer has been likened to cooking without a recipe book, something which experienced chefs are able to do, since they can perform a range of techniques, and are familiar with the ingredients, enabling them to apply these to the creation of new dishes (Schoenfeld, 1998, cited by Greeno, 2006). It is an incorrect assumption that if learners have the right kind of knowledge and know that it is applicable in another context, that they will use it (Engle, 2006). Learners have to choose to apply what they have already learned to new situations, but aspects of the original conditions of learning influence whether transfer occurs. One aspect of learning contexts that affords transfer of learning to new situations, from a situated perspective, is ‘authoritative and accountable positioning’ (Greeno, 2006). If individuals are credited with authorship and put into positions where they can author their own learning, they are more likely to engage with challenging learning tasks and persist. In our ethnographic study of four- and five-year-olds learning at preschool and school, there were many examples of authoritative and accountable positioning. When children were deemed to be authoring ... they were: initiating; enjoying; taking on identities as ‘grown-ups’, expert readers, writers, soccer players, drivers and artists; deeply engaged in activities and often with a high level of affect (excitement, emotion); inclined to communicate their opinions; focused and persevering, ‘locking on’ to learning; interested and enthusiastic; balancing desires and goals; taking on responsibility and taking on the desires of a teacher. (Carr et al., 2010, p. 202)

Our study showed that listening to children’s voices, crediting them with expertise, including them as active participants in meaningful learning, and putting them in positions of responsibility, are powerful techniques to facilitate the transfer of authoritative and accountable positioning to new settings and new tasks.

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Another aspect of learning contexts that facilitates transfer is ‘intertextuality’ or building connections between contexts (Engle, 2006). When there are links between different contexts and these links are made obvious, then there is more likelihood that transfer of learning will take place between these two contexts. It is particularly valuable to make connections between two key learning contexts for children – school and home – to encourage transfer. When early childhood centres and schools recognise and use the ‘funds of knowledge’ that come from home, new opportunities for learning and transfer are opened up (Carr et al., 2010; González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005). In our study we found that children brought knowledge from home to their preschool and school experiences. ‘Children entered school with views about justice, confidence in standing in front of a group at Sunday School, experiences of kindness with a grandparent, sibling relationships as a model of reciprocity, attitudes towards diversity, and much more’ (Carr et al., 2010, p. 218). Children from a range of cultural backgrounds are particularly likely to flourish when they are in early childhood environments where their cultural backgrounds are recognised, understood and welcomed. The presence of familiar people from their cultural group and the use and recognition of their home languages, are examples of how early childhood centres can help children to transfer their previous learning to this new setting. If cultural backgrounds are not recognised, understood and welcomed, however, children are readily alienated from early childhood centres and schools. Russell Bishop and his colleagues (Bishop, Berryman, Cavanagh, & Teddy, 2009) found that monocultural and racist discourses pervaded secondary school contexts for Māori children in New Zealand, and that teachers blamed children’s family backgrounds for their lack of progress, rather than making their teaching practice more welcoming to Māori children. How Bishop’s Te Kotahitanga project changed teacher practice towards a whanaungatanga2 approach, focusing on caring and dialogical relationships with young people, shared responsibility and collaboration, to more effectively engage and motivate young Māori learners, is described in more detail in chapter 7 (Bishop, Berryman, Wearmouth, Peter, & Clapham, 2012).

Summary

This chapter has outlined some of the ways children learn. Classical conditioning occurs when a response originally elicited by a particular stimulus comes to be elicited by a different stimulus through association of the two stimuli. Learning by 2

Whanaungatanga describes a sense of relationship, kinship and family connection involving shared experiences and working together, which provides people with a sense of belonging. It extends not only to kin but to others with whom one develops a close familial, friendship or reciprocal relationship (Māori Dictionary, 2003—2013).

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association is not controllable by the will and is important in emotional learning. In operant conditioning, behaviour is controlled by stimuli that follow the behaviour, either reinforcement or punishment. Behaviour can be strengthened by the presentation of a positive stimulus following a response, or the removal of an aversive stimulus. Using punishment to control behaviour has particular problems, especially physical punishment, since it can result in conditioned emotional responses (such as fear and hostility) and provides children with aggressive models. Research consistently shows the use of punishment has many long-term negative effects on future outcomes for children, such as diminished parental relationships and increased aggression. The five common principles of effective discipline are: ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ

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Social cognitive theory shows how children learn complex new behaviours through a combination of task, person and environmental characteristics. Learning involves information-processing, for example, through modelling. Modelling involves the observation of a model’s behaviour and the later reproduction of this behaviour by the observer. The characteristics of the model and the consequences to the model (and the observer) influence learning. Self-efficacy is the belief that people have the ability to achieve a task, which influences effort and achievement. When individuals attribute their successes to effort and ability, they tend to persist with tasks and engage with difficult tasks. Another important motivational concept is that of learning dispositions – being ready, willing and able to engage with learning. These participation repertoires arise from children’s involvement with people, places and things, and are embedded in the early childhood and school curricula in New Zealand. Sociocultural theories emphasise that children’s learning is influenced by aspects of their social contexts. Children are likely to become independent learners if they have opportunities to take initiative and to participate in shared activities that involve reciprocity and warm relationships. Transfer of learning to new situations is encouraged when children are positioned as authoritative learners, and when there are close links between their learning contexts.

3

Children as Citizens

This chapter focuses on an important part of childhood studies theory: that children are competent and responsible agents who contribute to their own learning and development, and that constructions of children have a significant effect on their lives. Using examples of children’s perceptions of their experiences, this chapter suggests that their views can make a significant contribution to improving the conditions of childhood. Allowing children to tell their own stories is respectful of their citizenship, and provides adults with valuable information to make them more effective supporters and advocates for children. Children’s citizenship is a theme that permeates the whole book, yet is not recognised in so many other books about children. Past approaches to understanding childhood have relied on viewing children from the outside rather than attempting to understand their perspective on the world. Moreover, the discourse and interpretation of childhood has considered it as a biological fact and an inevitable sequence of ages and stages, instead of a social construction (Woodhead, 2009). Since the last edition of this book, there has been much more focus on treating children as actors and meaning-makers, and recognition of childhood as worthy of study in its own right, rather than just as part of a journey to adulthood (James, 2009). This approach helps us to understand how children experience the world and is reflected in a different approach to research and advocacy. Respecting children’s citizenship emerges out of children’s rights and childhood studies theory. Sociocultural theory helps us understand the social interactions, relationships and cultural contexts that influence adults’ views of children, children’s perspectives and whether children can articulate their perspectives. This rationale for treating children as citizens and finding out about their perspectives is supported in this chapter with suggestions on how to achieve these outcomes.

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Changing constructions of childhood

In the last 15 years I have taught a range of professionals who often shared dominant constructions of childhood in their work with children and young people. Childhood was often seen as a time of vulnerability, need for protection and socialisation by adult demands: Particular disciplines, professions, agencies, settings and policy areas each create or construct particular versions of childhood and images of the child shaped by their own theories, understanding and perspectives .... Just as there is the ‘school’ child, or the child of education, so too there is the child of child development, of psychoanalysis, of medicine, of play, of social work and so on. (Moss & Petrie, 2002. p. 20)

An example of a discourse of concern that positions children as vulnerable to neglect, abuse and other risks comes from the Minister for Social Development, Paula Bennett, and a recent government Green Paper on Vulnerable Children: Personally my first priority is the protection of vulnerable children. Every hour two children in this country are physically, emotionally or sexually abused. It has to stop. We have to make a concerted effort to protect children from the lifetime of harm abuse can cause. (Bennett, 2011, p. iii)

Discourses of concern, according to Stainton Rogers (2004), are not merely descriptive, but also carry moral invectives that require action. This has resulted in social welfare services being dominated by partial and distorted concerns to protect children from abuse; meaning that children’s other strengths, competencies and concerns are ignored, leaving children without information or unable to participate in decisions. I have been amazed at the transformation in the approach of professionals and researchers when they become aware of the influence of their constructions of childhood on how they treat children. Instead of viewing children as the passive objects of work other people do for or on children, they come to respect children’s competence and voice, listen to their stories and give them a space to be agents in coping with their own problems: The concept of generational order relates to a social construction of children as incompetent, unreliable and developmentally incomplete compared to adults, and which thus situates children unfavourably in a child–adult power relationship. Research on children takes this social construction for granted; research with children challenges it (Mayall, 2000; Alanen, 2001). Thus the motivation for doing research with children, of listening to children is both democratic – giving voice to the children – and epistemological. (Warming, 2005, p. 61)

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How professionals change their views when they have had the opportunity to work with not on children is illustrated in a report by Ronald Davie (1996) on an in-service course which involved secondary school teachers seeking out children’s views. The teachers were ‘quite astounded by the balanced views which emerged’ (p. 9). The information provided by the children was found to be invaluable, and the resulting changes transformed the relationship between teachers and children. Another reason for paying attention to children’s perspectives is that children are citizens, who are entitled to be recognised as persons, treated with respect, and allowed to participate and take responsibility (Smith, 2010). Citizenship involves togetherness, belonging and sharing of common interests, but also a sense of difference and uniqueness (Heater, 2004). Children are often viewed as ‘citizens in the making’ who are being shaped for their future roles in society, rather than contributing now. But if children are treated as competent and active participants now, rather than as vulnerable and incompetent, then they are likely to be competent and active. Children must be given the opportunity to participate in democratic systems of governance, so that they can begin to actively engage with these systems and structures that impact their lives, and influence them in a manner that promotes and protects their rights. In doing so, they live out the maxim that when children live with fairness, they learn justice. The result is that their own lives become transformed, and they begin to participate in the transformation of the world around them. (Austin, 2010, p. 253)

Social justice

‘A democratic ethos of giving voice’ through listening (Warming, 2005, p. 52) helps strengthen children’s role as citizens and contributes to social justice for them (Alanen, 2011). Recognising children’s citizenship at school maintains a harmonious school climate, and empowers children to contribute to positive change, and consequently improve their own as well as others’ well-being. Early opportunities for democratic participation nourish a sense of collective ownership and responsibility as well as skills to solve problems in collaborative ways. Perhaps most importantly, children develop a belief in themselves as actors who have the power to impact the adverse conditions that shape their lives. They develop confidence and learn attitudes and practical lessons about how they can improve the quality of their lives .... Conversely the likelihood of civic engagement is deeply threatened by schools in which children feel powerless, alienated, shameful and angry. (Rizzini & Thaplyial, 2005, p. 18)

A case study in a Norwegian school illustrates how lack of political power and respect for children’s citizenship can alienate children (Kjørholt, Bjerke,

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Stordal, Hellem, & Skotte, 2009). During a class reform process, secondary school children were frustrated at not being listened to at school. When a new structure had been introduced into the school, the existing classes (of about 25 students each) had been changed, and the students were divided into larger groups (of about 40 students). (These were then divided into smaller groups during school hours.) The children protested about constantly changing groups, and having to adjust to eight different groups. One student said, ‘We are like animals used for research purposes.’ The students disagreed with the school’s decision to change the class structure in this way, and felt badly about having their views ignored. ‘I think it should have been a majority decision, or like a democratic system. We could have had an election. It is we who are going to learn something, not the teachers’ (secondary school boy in Norway; Kjørholt et al., 2009, p. 123). A petition, signed by the students, had not even been considered, and the student council was not allowed to discuss the issue. Students were angry and wanted to hold a strike, but a teacher persuaded them to let the matter drop. They were told that the decision had already been made by politicians. Yet the children described the effect of the change as chaotic, complained that they had lost contact with many of their friends and said that their grades had been affected. They felt sure that if they had been adults they would have been listened to. This case study illustrates the feelings of alienation and marginalisation that result from ignoring young people’s perspectives. Children are part of society, and their civic identity and feelings of being part of society are forged through social relationships, shared activities and responsible roles. Treating them as lesser beings, not listening to them and ignoring their opinions, is not only unjust, but is likely to have negative outcomes for society as a whole.

Epistemology

Epistemology is concerned with the nature, scope and source of knowledge. Producing better knowledge about childhood is part of the rationale behind my interest in children’s citizenship and perspectives. Recognising that children are experts in their own lives helps researchers recognise the limitations of their understanding of childhood and opens up new understandings (Moss, Clark, & Kjørholt, 2005). Children’s perspectives contribute to more ecologically and socioculturally based research, giving a richer understanding of effective contexts for children’s development, and how children are positioned within those contexts. We are moving away from the search for ‘the universalised child’ and treating children as the objects of the academic gaze, towards finding out how children with diverse and different characteristics actively create and produce their own knowledge (Mayall, 1994; Prout & James, 1997).

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However the assumption that interviewing children is the only way of finding out about their perspectives has been challenged by a number of authors (James, 2007; Kjørholt, 2005; Moss et al., 2005; Warming, 2005). Allison James (2007, p. 261), for example, has critiqued the way that ‘listening to the voices of children’ has become a ‘pervasive mantra for activists and policy makers alike’. She says that many studies now uncritically quote children’s words, and that there is a danger that children are clumped together as a category and believed to speak with one voice. Children’s voices are not always the most important source of information, but it’s important they are considered along with other opinions and information. Consulting with and listening to children often does not result in the serious consideration of their views (or their views being acted on), and can be a mask for adult control and domination. There is also the danger that more articulate children are the ones who are heard, while others may avoid talking to adults, and feel marginalised and disempowered, perhaps due to gender, class or ethnicity (MacNaughton, 2003; Warming, 2005). If accessing children’s voice relies on verbal communication, this disadvantages some children (and especially younger children) who are more likely to express themselves through their bodies and through participation in activities (Warming, 2005). Children are social actors with specific culturally determined roles to play, but they also shape those roles, and can create new ones for themselves. The claims that are made about and on behalf of ‘children’ and the use of ‘children’s voices’ as evidence – and evidence that might be acted on – need, therefore, to be tempered by careful acknowledgement of the cultural contexts of their production. (James, 2007, p. 265)

An ecological approach emphasises that children are influenced by the roles, activities and interpersonal relationships in immediate settings such as the family or school (Bronfenbrenner, 1979a). The ecological validity of research is the extent to which it has the properties it is assumed to have by researchers. A great deal of research uses observation or interviews with parents or teachers as a tool for studying children’s roles, activities and interpersonal relationships, rather than incorporating children’s perspectives. Bronfenbrenner’s concept of ecological validity suggests that we should also be talking to children about their understanding of their experiences because: research contexts and procedures are often open to other interpretations than those assumed by the researcher; and because there is a need to establish whether the participants in research share a similar perspective to the researcher. Exploring how children experience their lives in schools, homes and neighbourhoods helps us construct better theories, which may be different from those

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developed from research which has only looked at children from the outside. American developmental psychologist Katherine Nelson argues: Thus it is necessary for psychologists to understand the nature of the child’s experience at different points in development. This requires in part the specification of the environment, as in ethological and ecological studies; it requires as well, and specifically, an effort to understand the perspective of the experiencing individual. For example, it is important to know what the child can see and hear, and how this changes as the perceptual system develops and as motor systems mature, enabling an immobile infant to crawl and then stand and walk. It requires the attempt to understand how prior experience bears on current experience in the child’s interpretation of an event, as for example, when a parent attempts to teach a new word, or when an experimenter presents a 3-year-old with a scenario of puppets who look for objects in the wrong place. (Nelson, 1996, p. 10)

To get a better understanding of children’s perspectives, it is helpful to focus on how children participate and jointly create meaning with adults or peers. Paying attention to children’s natural dialogues and interactions with social partners during their everyday lives can give useful insights into their perspectives. As children participate in cultural activities with skilled partners their knowledge is constructed, so participant observation is one valuable way of accessing children’s meanings. But there are always limitations to the representation of children’s views. According to sociologist Allison James, children’s perspectives ‘have to be regarded as standpoints, places from which the analysis sets out, rather than the definitive descriptions of empirical phenomena embodied in the words that children speak’ (2007, p. 269). And Hanne Warming warns of the shifting and context-bound nature of children’s perspectives. ‘There is no essential or authentic children’s perspective; rather children’s perspectives must be approached as multiple and changing, as well as being contextualised socially, culturally, historically and biographically’ (Warming, 2005, p. 53).

The family

Children are often seen as the appendages or chattels of their parents, and of course most children are, to a considerable extent, dependent on their parents. So it is usually assumed that the welfare of the family is synonymous with the welfare of the child, and that one should not consider the child in isolation from her family. Parents do indeed have a powerful role in the lives of children, and most have their children’s best interests at heart. Democratic families are more inclined to allow children a say and respect their contributions, but not all families operate democratically.

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Children do have different points of view from their parents, even when their parents provide a loving and caring family environment. Judgements about children’s best interests are usually based entirely on what their parents (or other adults) consider to be the case. Children’s lives are determined by adult interests, with use of their time being mainly arranged for them by adults, either to fit in with adults’ work or to provide work for adults. Children have been hidden within the ‘ideological apparatus of the family’ so that families (not children) are treated as the object of study (Oakley, 1994, p. 18). The ingrained and inherited way of accounting for children as appendices to the family hides many of the realities of children’s own lives behind the veil of the family institution. Opening up the secrets of family life and laying bare the life conditions of children ... might be a key for improving children’s own life situations as well as alleviating parents’ lives with children. (Qvortrup, 1990, p. 96)

The dominant discourse of children’s dependency within the family (and in other contexts) has been challenged by some researchers. Priscilla Alderson and Wendy Stainton Rogers, for example, have argued that children are agents, and adults dependants, in the relatively common scenario where a disabled adult is looked after by a competent child (Alderson, 2001; Stainton Rogers, 2004). Agency and dependency are not incompatible and Alderson (2001, p. 25) suggests that these are ‘not fixed, one-sided attributes, intrinsic to certain individuals or age groups’. Instead she argues that family relationships are better understood as interdependencies with both adults and children at times showing agency and dependency.

Māori whānau

Young Māori (from 12 to 25 years of age) from Counties Manukau gave narrative accounts of their everyday experiences in their whānau to Shane Edwards and colleagues (Edwards, McCreanor, & Moewaka-Barnes, 2007). Other studies have generalised about the experiences of Māori youth in their whānau settings, but the authors point out that these generalised accounts have been unable to represent ‘the complex (often contradictory) and nuanced accounts that young people offer in telling their own stories’ (p. 3). Many of the Māori children in this study expressed anger or resentment towards one or both of their parents as a result of family breakups and recombinations. For example, Paula said sarcastically, ‘We were all brought up by my dad, cause my mum she dropped us off and she never picks us up [laughs]. You know, like “oops, I forgot”’ (Edwards et al., 2007, p. 7). More frequently, however, the young people had strong nurturing supportive

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relationships with their mothers. Mark explained the difference between his relationship with his mother and his father: I didn’t really used to talk like on a personal level to my father I always used to talk to my mother. I always used to go to her ‘oh Mum, how come I’m not allowed this?’ and, ‘Mum, how come Dad said I’m not allowed to ...’ but um yeah I just ... well, I just forgot about it and let it go let it pass over my head ... or whatever so I’d always go and relay my messages through Mum [amused laugh]. (p. 8)

About a third of the young people in this study had no contact with their father, and if they did have contact with their fathers, some talked about leaving home as a result of disagreements with them. Fathers were described as staunch and hard on them. ‘You always have to be a man and stuff like that you know? So I felt like ... you know, oh I wouldn’t talk to him because he wouldn’t really care’ (Mark, in Edwards et al., 2007, p. 8). Fathers were often described as having all of the power and control in the family. Mere described how on her sixth birthday her father had to leave her birthday party after the first hour, while Paul would have liked to be closer to his dad at a younger age, and ‘hopping on your lap, giving you a kiss on your cheek and saying “night Dad”’ (p. 9). While young people acknowledged the support given by their parents (especially mothers), they were still critical of their parents and the lack of emotional availability of fathers was a common problem. According to Edwards and his colleagues, these reported difficulties within family relationships reflect wider problems among Māori whānau, including marginalisation as a result of the ongoing effects of colonisation. Fathers were often expected to work long hours in unsatisfying jobs and these stresses were reflected in gendered patterns of parent–child relationships and family breakdown. Young people wanted to spend more time in their whānau settings, reinforcing Durie’s (2004, cited by Edwards et al., 2007, p. 13) assertion that positive transformation for Māori depends on processes of whānau support and healing. Sensitising fathers to their children’s wishes for more affectionate contact, and the value of listening to their voices, is an important starting point to such a positive transformation.

Children’s competence

One reason often given for not listening to children’s voices, or not taking them seriously, is their presumed lack of competence. It is assumed that children are not capable enough to be able to participate in decisions about being involved in research or able to provide valid data (Morrow, 1994; Morrow & Richards, 1996). These assumptions about what children can and cannot do are shaped by

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powerful normative models. Almost everything that has ever been stated from a normative point of view, such as the egocentricity of preschool children or their inability to be reliable witnesses, has been shown to be wrong and to have grossly underestimated children’s competence. Davie (1996) concludes that there is no age when it is inappropriate to listen to children and that ‘listening’ should not be narrowly confined to speech. Even before the age of speech, children’s ‘voices’ can be heard by sensitive and familiar caregivers (Pugh & Selleck, 1996; Sumsion, Harrison, Press, McLeod, Goodfellow, & Bradley, 2011). Younger children are particularly likely to be viewed as unable to participate. It has been suggested that adults need to take time and make efforts to learn ‘other languages’ if they are going to be effective in listening to younger children (Moss et al., 2005, p. 5). Anne Solberg (1996) believes it is better to ignore age when working with child participants. She found her own concepts of age appropriateness were modified when experiencing events in situational contexts with children. For example, she carried out ethnographic work with Norwegian fishing community workers who were aged between 8 and 60, and in spite of age differences, children did exactly the same kind of work and used the same kind of tools as the adults. She believes researchers should use ‘ignorance of age’ as part of their professional code, so that the researcher is open to see how age is acted out differently in different social contexts. There is an increasing body of research and practice that shows that children are quite capable of having a viewpoint and expressing it, even at preschool age. It is true that we still need to develop appropriate and non-intrusive ways of accessing children’s perceptions, but already there are increasingly useful methods being developed (see chapter 9).

Ethical research and practice with children

Viewing children as citizens has implications for how we incorporate ethical principles into our research methods. Childhood studies scholars have become increasingly focused on doing ethical research that respects children’s agency and participation rights, and treats them as competent people who can contribute ideas and knowledge to researchers, rather than as the mute objects of research (Alderson & Morrow, 2011; Harcourt, Perry, & Waller, 2011). This new understanding of children has led to a critique of the dominant tendency of approaching children’s experience by ‘looking down’ (Mayall, 2002), where childhood is viewed from a large-scale perspective, through standardised tests, questionnaires and interviews that are guided by adult hypotheses and questions. Studying childhood through ‘looking up’ focuses on a more contextualised way of understanding children and treating them as actors and knowers (Mayall, 2002).

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Two key ethical questions have been suggested as basic to research concerning children. ƀLJ -LJ#.LJ1),."LJ)#(!Ƅ ƀLJ (LJ."LJ#(0-.#!.),-LJ2*&#(LJ."LJ,-,"LJ&,&3LJ()/!"LJ-)LJ.".LJ(3)(LJ they ask to take part can give informed consent or refusal? (Alderson & Morrow, 2011, p. 11) Whether the research is worth doing can be judged partly by whether the study asks worthwhile questions or uses appropriate methods, but also whether the study will do good or harm. One issue to address in carrying out ethical research is whether the topic is meaningful and engaging to children, and whether the research methods selected can answer them effectively. The chances of having participatory dialogues that reveal children’s standpoints are much greater when the topic means something to both child and researcher and when there is a comfortable relationship between adult and child (Powell & Smith, 2009). Allowing the child to take the position of the expert and the researcher to position herself as less knowledgeable seems to be an effective way of engaging children. For example, in a study of young children’s learning we used photographs of children’s engagement in play and asked them to explain to us what they had been intending or feeling (Carr et al., 2010). This approach often revealed to us aspects of the learning process that were previously inaccessible. From an ethical and rights perspective it is concerning that some research topics have been avoided or neglected because they are considered to be sensitive, and children’s participation is avoided because of their presumed vulnerability (Powell & Smith, 2009). Topics such as children’s experiences of traumatic events are often closed to research scrutiny because of the concerns of gatekeepers to protect children. For example, Nicola Atwool (2008) was unable to access the views of children in state care, despite recruiting 13 children, because even if children and foster parents consented, parents either declined or were unable to be contacted. If research is focused on children’s perspectives on services or interventions, then adult providers who are gatekeepers can deny access to children because of their concerns that children might be critical or negative about the provisions of services (though other reasons may be offered). My colleague Mary Ann Powell and I have argued that some of this gatekeeping, while well meant, is actually a denial of children’s participation rights. There is certainly a strong case for giving priority to children’s own wishes to participate in a research project, although it can be challenging for researchers to provide children with information in a way that they understand, and to get through gatekeepers and engage directly with children (Powell & Smith, 2009).

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Rather than assuming that if parents consent, children can participate in a research project, it is important that informed consent is gained from children, even young children (Smith, 2011a). Children need to understand why they are participating and that we want to hear their perspectives. They should be given adequate information about what is involved, so that they can decide whether or not they want to participate. Researchers are now finding innovative ways of gaining informed consent, even from young children (see Harcourt & Conroy, 2011; Robson, 2011; Sumsion et al., 2011). As soon as children are able to communicate verbally, researchers need to find a way to inform children and gain their consent (Munford & Saunders, 2001). Young children are reliant on adults to truthfully explain what is involved, and this is unlikely to be achieved in one session. Robyn Munford and Jackie Saunders showed children videos of a mock research interview to give them a concrete example of what participation in the research might be like. Often initial consent is assumed to be ongoing, but it is important to ensure that children remain willing to participate in research as it proceeds. In our research with four-year-olds in early childhood centres and schools (Carr et al., 2010), we had to be constantly sensitive to when children did not want to be observed and recorded, and willing to remove ourselves and our recording equipment when these were not welcome. Confidentiality is another important ethical issue. Researchers need to be able to assure children that others (such as parents and teachers) will not be told what they have said. This is not always easy to do when parents are involved, since they often assume that children should have no secrets from them. Listening to children’s views respectfully and seriously, letting them know why we are doing certain things, and providing them with effective, accessible and genuine avenues for complaint and access to advocacy, are crucial components of the process. Child participants in research projects often get no feedback on the findings of research, but Article 13 of the UNCRC says that they have the right to receive information. Researchers therefore have an obligation to tell children about the findings of their research in a form that makes sense to them. Children also have the right of ownership of material they produce for research purposes, such as photographs, drawings, writings or interview material. Like adults, children should be able to comment on how their data is interpreted and presented to others (MacNaughton & Smith, 2005). Developing an effective procedure for finding out children’s perspectives is usually not a quick or instant process. Time needs to be taken to establish a relationship of trust and reciprocity with the child. Rather than one-off interview studies, it is best to talk to the child several times or to participate with children in their normal everyday activities, as in ethnographic or participant observation

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studies. Alison Clark (2011, pp. xvii–xviii) refers to ‘slow listening’ that requires adults ‘to slow down and step back in order to see and hear in new ways’. Ethnographic work requires the negotiation of a role for the researcher. In Eileen Ledger’s study (1998) she played a ‘friend’ role, endeavouring to join in children’s activities, and asking the children’s permission to join them. The children accepted her to the extent of asking her what she wanted to be when she grew up! The child has to have some freedom in the research process to contribute and initiate ideas without being entirely constrained by the nature of the tasks (such as standardised tests) or the interview process. Interviews need to be more like conversations, and less like sitting an oral examination. Interviews still have an important role, but they need to be carefully crafted to ensure children have a genuine opportunity to give their views on what is important to them. Ledger (1998) found that direct questions often evoked brief one-syllable replies like, ‘Good’ or ‘Yup’, but that once she and the children had built up a set of stored memories and she had got to know their families and friends, she could easily initiate conversations using this shared knowledge. Megan Gollop (1998) suggests that putting yourself in a non-expert role and emphasising that you don’t know what it is like to experience something children have experienced (for example, parents’ separation) is effective. Gollop suggests some strategies that are useful when talking with children: I have found a low-key, casual, conversational approach with lots of diversions into ‘irrelevant’ territory works well. Letting the child set their own pace and agenda not only makes the conversation more natural but it also minimises the adult–child power inequality and helps establish a good relationship between the interview participants. There is no one specific way to interview a child .... Therefore for an interview with a child to be a ‘success’ a flexible approach is needed, tailoring the questions to the child’s comments and capabilities. (Gollop, 1998, p. 117)

Creative approaches can be used to facilitate children expressing and explaining their ideas, thoughts and feelings. A study by Pauline Evans and Mary Fuller (1996) used play telephones (containing microphones) and a pretend game of talking on the telephone with four-year-olds to elicit children’s explanations. Children enthusiastically played this game and talked freely when they had previously been reluctant and bored by the interviewers’ questions. Grace Borg (1998) developed an innovative procedure called ‘stimulated recall’, which was designed to study how children felt during collaborative group work. The children (aged nine to ten years) watched videos of themselves participating in a collaborative problem-solving task with three others. Borg interviewed the children shortly after they had participated in the group task, using a video of

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the group to remind them of the action. Children were given complete control of operating the video so that they could stop and start it as they wished. Watching the video was a very useful way of triggering off memories of their participation in the group problem-solving process and eliciting their reflections on it. Powell (2010) explored rural children’s lived experiences and social constructions of their childhood. She gave rural children disposable cameras, scrapbooks and art materials to record things that were special and meaningful to them about the places in which they lived, to help her understand more about their constructions of rural childhood. This visual material was then used to facilitate conversations with children about their families, schools, peers and recreational activities. In the next sections I will discuss some examples of research relying on children and young people’s perspectives, where acknowledging children’s agency has particular implications for policy and practice.

Divorce/separation

One area of children’s experience that impacts on policy and practice is how children experience family separation and divorce, and their encounters with the legal system. There is a substantial body of research on the effects of separation and divorce on children (for example, Amato, 2000; Kelly & Emery, 2003; Rodgers & Pryor, 1998). Generally this research suggests that parental separation is a time when children experience short-term distress, but that this fades over time. The majority of children whose parents separate do not experience adverse outcomes long term, but a minority of children experience adverse outcomes, such as poorer school achievement, depressive symptoms and early sexual activity. There are a number of factors associated with family transitions that make negative outcomes more likely, such as parental conflict, economic hardship, poor parental adjustment and lower parenting competence (Kelly & Emery, 2003). Factors that seem to help children’s adjustment include the support of family and friends, less parental conflict and good relationships between separated parents. More recently, researchers have sought to consider parental separation from children’s perspectives, rather than predominantly relying on adult accounts or structured assessments (e.g., Butler, Scanlan, Robinson, Douglas, & Murch, 2002; Gollop & Taylor, 2012; Halpenny, Greene, & Hogan, 2008; Smart & Neale, 2000; Smart, Neale, & Wade, 2001; Smith, Taylor, & Tapp, 2003). That children are competent and well able to articulate a view is illustrated in childhood studies oriented research on children’s perspectives. Writing up such research is difficult because even if children are facing similar issues, they may have very different views. While the majority of children may feel positive about contact with a nonresident parent, for instance, it is important to recognise that this is not the case for all children. Even two siblings in the same family may have different perspectives

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on their parents’ separation, and preferences for arrangements following the breakup. In one study, we reported on what children told us when we asked them what advice they would give to other children whose parents were separating (Smith & Gollop, 2001b). Most children thought, like Judith, that parents should listen to children, ask their advice and not force them into arrangements they did not want: I don’t think parents should always assume they know what their kids are thinking ’cos half the time what they think what their kids are thinking is nowhere near what they’re thinking and sometimes just let your kids make their own decisions instead of making them themselves ’cos that’s really annoying (Judith, aged 16). (Smith & Gollop, 2001b, p. 26)

When a separation dispute goes to a defended hearing, the relationship that children have with legal professionals makes a difference to how they feel. The importance of having a sympathetic and supportive person to represent their views is illustrated by these comments from children about their lawyers in a recent research study on relocation. Children with a sympathetic lawyer felt valued and supported, but others did not trust their lawyers and were angry when they were misrepresented (Gollop & Taylor, 2012). It feels like he understands you, like when he’s talking to you, and he asks you all the questions, like he doesn’t hurry you into asking them. (Chloe, aged 11) He was a stinker! Just because I didn’t like him. Cos I just don’t trust him. Just don’t trust him. (Charlie, aged eight) She [lawyer for the child] decided for us. She said like the total opposite thing I wanted to do. I said I didn’t want to go see my Dad and she said to the Court he does want to see his Dad (Brandon, aged ten). (Gollop & Taylor, 2012, p. 235, p. 238)

Children feel disempowered and diminished if they are ignored and not kept informed, despite the fact that adults often exclude them with the aim of protecting them from distress. We have argued that children’s competence, understanding and ability to cope are enhanced when they are part of the social processes in which decisions are made. Children are only one part of the decision-making process, however, and cannot be expected to take all of the responsibility for decisions. How meaningfully they can contribute, though, will depend very much on the guidance and interactional support provided by adults (Smith et al., 2003). Research on children’s perspectives has resulted in a definite shift in family law in New Zealand, from considering that it was a burden of responsibility for

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children to be involved in decisions about their living arrangements after their parents separated, towards requiring that children’s views are ascertained in any family law processes. The Care of Children Act 2004 replaced the old Guardianship Act and this requires that children are given the opportunity to express their views, and that they must be taken into account. This statute became a world-leading provision because it did not specify any age or maturity provisions, meaning that children of all ages must have their views taken into account (Taylor, Fitzgerald, & Graham, 2012). Lack of information for and consultation with children is now considered to be harmful. ‘Children can feel disempowered if they lack information about family transitions in which they are embroiled and need this information and understanding to be able to form their views and contribute to family and legal decision-making processes’ (Gollop & Taylor, 2012, p. 224). Children’s participation in decisions recognises their rights, and helps them cope with the stress of parental separation (and to accept any decisions that are made). This research has changed the way that parents, lawyers, judges, psychologists and social workers are conceptualising children. Instead of assuming that adults can judge the best interests of children without consulting them, it is now recognised that children have to be partners in these decision-making processes. (I will further explore impacts of divorce and separation on children in chapter 12.)

Looked after children

Research on children’s perspectives on being in foster care is another area that has important implications for policy. Ulvik (1997) describes an interview with Johanna, who was 11 years of age when she entered foster care: She starts by telling about herself being mobbed (bullied) at school, but she didn’t care ... Johanna wanted her mummy to care for her, and comfort her, but she didn’t. And there was no one else around to comfort her, either. And she says, ‘And that was too bad. I sat in my room, with my head in my hand, staring at the floor. I wondered what to do now.’ Johanna was able to tell her teacher of her stepfather’s sexual abuse ... She found that she wanted to move somewhere else. Her mummy knew about the abuse, she thinks, but she was unable to help because she was drunk, tied up with her own problems. ‘And I,’ Johanna says, ‘wasn’t aware of that emergency – the important telephone for children. I didn’t know about it at that time. If I had known, I would have turned it up in the telephone book. I would have called at once, and told them about my situation.’ What Johanna wanted, was to move to some adults who were able to notice when she was in trouble, who talked with her when she was sad. She wanted them to be kind, and that they should be willing to go

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to Disneyland. When the ladies from the child welfare came to her house at last, and told her she had to move, Johanna had as she says ‘prepared a little, because I had decided myself, that I wanted to move. I cannot bear to live here anymore. I will not, I cannot. I was eight years old. I had done some packing.’ (Ulvik, 1997, p. 4)

Johanna was able give a very articulate account of her life as an eight-year-old neglected and abused child and how alone she was. She could understand that her family was unable to offer her appropriate care and that she was in trouble. Even this young child knew what unacceptable treatment within her family was. She knew that she had a right not to be abused and she sought a solution herself. As Ulvik explains, the child’s narrative underlines her agency. She is not simply the passive victim of an abusive situation, but is able to reflect and articulate the need for change, and explain why she acted in this way. Her story shows the need to acquire specific information about and from individual children when thinking about better social welfare practice. While in the United Kingdom in the 1990s I was shocked to read about a tribunal taking place in Wales over the abuse of children in children’s homes in North Wales (Davies, 1997). The horrors experienced by children who were in state care were described by them as adults, recalling the lives of unmitigated violence and exploitation they led while in the care of the state. Children were raped, beaten, threatened and humiliated by adults who had complete and utter power over them. They were absolutely vulnerable and without anyone to turn to. No-one was sensitive to their plight or listened to their stories, even social workers who were responsible for their welfare. Many of these children’s lives were destroyed by these experiences and the cost to the state of subsequent problems such as mental illness, involvement in crime, and disturbed parenting was huge. It is important to be sensitive to the point of view of children in foster care. They often feel that they lack privacy, that their lives are known to lots of other people but not to themselves, and they may feel stigmatised because of their foster status. These feelings have a profoundly negative effect on their self-concept and confidence. Foster children are often excluded from the decision-making processes about placement in care and contact with birth parents, and not given information that would help them understand their situation. In a small study of children in foster and kinship care (Smith, Gollop, & Taylor, 2000), we found that half of the children (aged between 7 and 14) we talked to, did not understand why they were in care and not living with their parents, or the role of the various professionals in their lives, even though their foster parents tended to believe that children did understand their situations. Sometimes social workers protected children by avoiding telling them information that they

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thought might distress them. Although it can be painful for children to find out upsetting things about their family, it is better to find out some of these things earlier in a supportive situation, so that they can come to understand and accept the situation. We were also surprised to find that children were usually excluded from family group conferences and planning meetings, where decisions about their lives were made. When Gollop asked Chris (aged seven) if he knew what happened at family group conferences, he said: Chris: No. Not a clue because they shut the door. And then you have to wait up there until they’re finished. About an hour or half an hour or two hours. Int: And does Grandma tell you what happened in them? Chris: No. Int: Does your Mum? Chris: No. (Smith, Gollop, & Taylor, 2000, p. 83)

More recently, in a study of young children in foster care in the United Kingdom, Karen Winter (2010) found that the children were not listened to and that their perspectives were not taken seriously. Crystal (aged five years) and her brother Conor explained to the interviewer about their social worker: I: And what do you do when Celia [social worker] comes out. Do you sit and talk to her? Crystal: No we don’t talk to her. I: Why? Crystal: My daddy talks to her. I: I thought Celia was your social worker? Conor: I know but we try and talk to her but she doesn’t listen. I: You’re trying to talk to your social worker but she doesn’t listen? Why does she not listen? Conor: I don’t know. She just doesn’t. I: Does she try and talk to you? Conor: No she doesn’t; she just says, ‘Are you OK’ that’s all I need. (Winter, 2010, p. 193)

The failure to listen to children’s perspectives, and exclusion of children from decision-making about themselves, is still continuing in New Zealand (Atwool, 2010) and in the United Kingdom (Winter, 2009, 2010) and is a denial of children’s Article 12 rights under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The research findings on children in state care have some parallels with our research on separated and divorced families, which showed that children had been caught up in events about which they knew little. These children would

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have been helped had they had access to a known person whom they could trust who could have explained their situation and helped them to come to terms with it. Social workers often find that their statutory roles and obligation to fulfil bureaucratic requirements militate against their forming meaningful relationships with children (Winter, 2009). A recent report in New Zealand shows that social workers found it a challenge to find time and opportunity to engage with children and young people in care, and develop a relationship that facilitated children and young people’s participation in case-planning and decision-making (Atwool, 2010). Social workers’ assumptions and beliefs about children are another factor preventing the development of good relationships. For example, children are often constructed as incompetent, needing to be sheltered from discussing difficult issues that may upset them. An emphasis on the completion of age-related child development pro formas (related to the assessment of need) created a tendency in social work practice to firstly objectify children rather than attach value to subjective relational aspects of the child–social worker relationship, and secondly to underestimate the capacities and capabilities of young children in care by virtue of their age. (Winter, 2009, p. 45)

Children need to be listened to in a private setting, to have a voice in decisions about their lives, to share experiences, to get questions answered and to have a chance to learn from others in similar situations. Children, whatever their situation, need the opportunity to be listened to and have someone act on the stories they tell. While there has supposedly been more weight placed on the wishes and feelings of the child in social work practices, there is lingering reluctance and fear about allowing children to be heard. Problems with high staff turnover and large caseloads (limiting social workers to only the most urgent and pressing cases), are not conducive to allowing social workers to find time to keep contact with children, listen to what they have to say and ensure that their wellbeing is protected.

Work

Another area of children’s lives where children’s protection rights are given more attention than their provision rights is when they participate in paid work. While school is almost always regarded as ‘a good thing’ for children, work is almost always seen as harmful (Maybin & Woodhead, 2003). Concerns over children’s exploitation, maltreatment and safety during their involvement in ‘child labour’ have predominated in international treaties such as the International Labour Organization Convention (ILO 138), and the UNCRC

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(Article 32). Without denying the hazards and possible harm faced by working children, the portrayal of working children has been framed by an idealised view of Western childhood, and has tended to ignore children’s own perspectives or the realities of their lives. Idealised social constructions of childhood as a time for play and learning had created a false expectation that childhood is (or should be) work free, whereas children contribute to their families, communities and to their own well-being, even in societies where childhood is now dominated by schooling. (Woodhead, 2004b, p. 322)

In developing countries children’s initiation in work begins in infancy and remains a core feature of childhood, and there are more than 200 million children between the ages of five and fourteen working (Woodhead, 2004b). In the majority world it is clear that working is essential for the survival of children and families, and working children have been vocal in insisting on their right to work (Miljeteig, 2000). Well-meaning adults wanting to abolish child labour, forbid work below particular ages and rehabilitate child workers, offend working children and youth, according to Per Miljeteig, because children feel that they are not being respected as human beings, and their views have not been heard or taken seriously. Woodhead (2004b) argues for a more nuanced understanding of children’s work: combating harmful child labour while being mindful of the circumstances surrounding children’s work, and its possible psychosocial benefits and hazards. For example, it is important to give working children access to education and to empower them to diminish the hazards in their working lives. Children in Western countries are also likely to be involved in paid work, though for them it is likely to be a more peripheral activity that is combined with participation in education. Children in the minority world usually work outside of school hours and in the school holidays. Recent research in New Zealand suggests that in minority world contexts, too, the realities of life for many working children are being ignored, with a continuing negative perception of children working (Gasson & Linsell, 2011). This research surveyed 1,482 11- to 15-year-old children in 67 schools, and found that 32 per cent of children were involved in paid work, the most common being delivery work, followed by service work (cleaning, baby-sitting, retail). As had been found in other studies cited by the researchers, children in higher socioeconomic areas were more likely to work than children in lower socioeconomic areas with high numbers of Māori and Pasifika children. Most of the children enjoyed their work and did not want legislation to set a minimum age for children to work. Financial reward was the primary motivating force, but children also enjoyed the independence of work. The authors found

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that work was mostly a benign force in children’s lives, but acknowledged that there were situations where children were exploited. Empowering children to work collectively to improve their rights, and helping to ensure that they are not exploited or harmed, is likely to be a much more effective strategy than banning children from working, according to Ruth Gasson and Chris Linsell (2011). This is yet another area of children’s lives where concerns to protect them ignore their competency and agency, and fail to treat them as citizens.

Summary

This chapter has examined children’s citizenship and an approach to understanding children and childhood where children are viewed as social actors, rather than passive objects of adults’ observations and actions. Looking at events from a child’s perspective is necessary from a social justice viewpoint to develop fairer and more effective policies for children, and better decision-making about their lives. Children’s right to be heard and to have their views taken seriously are embodied in the UNCRC. Constructions of children as vulnerable and dependent tend to blind people to children’s competence, agency and citizenship. Even quite young children are competent enough to give an opinion and have a perspective, despite previous assumptions that children were too young to do so. Ecological and sociocultural theory also suggests that looking at the world from children’s perspectives is useful and necessary. This approach helps researchers find out more about how children experience their everyday lives, construct their own meanings and knowledge, and engage in their roles, relationships and activities. Children construct their knowledge together with other important people in their lives, and their understanding is strongly influenced by being situated in a particular cultural and historical context, which must to be taken into account. The chapter has looked at three issues concerning children where children’s civil and political rights tend to have been ignored, and children have been viewed as vulnerable, dependent and incompetent. I have argued that children from separated and divorced families, children in state care and working children have not had enough opportunity to tell their stories, and that policies should be developed to be more respectful of children’s citizenship. In some areas, particularly family law, New Zealand has been a progressive force and model for the rest of the world in acknowledging children as participants and partners in decision-making. But more can be done to ensure children are respected and treated as participants and citizens.

Part II

The Crucial Beginnings

4

Infancy

The experiences of infancy and early childhood have a significant effect on children’s immediate and long-term well-being and development. Children’s lifelong capacity for learning, forming relationships and contributing to society are all influenced by these early encounters. The experiences of infancy are particularly powerful because young children have a remarkable plasticity as well as vulnerability. It is important to note, however, that they are not the passive recipients of external stimulation, but are active participants in their own development, having an inherent drive to explore and master their environments (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Nevertheless, to implement children’s rights to survival and development, it is necessary to protect them from unfavourable environments and provide them with the opportunity to learn in optimal settings. This chapter discusses why infancy is so important and how early experiences impact ongoing development.

The importance of the early years From the time of conception to the first day of kindergarten, development proceeds at a pace exceeding that of any subsequent stage of life. Efforts to understand this process have revealed myriad and remarkable accomplishments of the early childhood period, as well as the serious problems that confront some young children and their families long before school entry. A fundamental paradox exists and is unavoidable: development in the early years is both highly robust and highly vulnerable. Although there have been long-standing debates about how much the early years really matter in the larger scheme of lifelong development, our conclusion is unequivocal: What happens during the first months and years of life matters a lot, not because this period of development provides an indelible blueprint for adult well-being, but because it sets either a sturdy or fragile stage for what follows. (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000, pp. 4–5)

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The above quotation from Jack Shonkoff and Deborah Phillips highlights the consensus among scientists about the powerful impact of infant experiences on future development. The evidence about the importance of the early years comes from three strands of research: ƀLJ (/,)Ɛ-#(.#ŦLJ,-,"LJ)(LJ,&3LJ,#(LJ0&)*'(. ƀLJ -)#&LJ -#(LJ ,-,"LJ )(LJ ."LJ #(ũ/(LJ ) LJ "#!"Ɛ+/&#.3LJ ,&3LJ "#&"))LJ experiences on outcomes for children ƀLJ )()'.,#LJ ,-,"LJ -")1#(!LJ .".LJ #(0-.#(!LJ #(LJ ,&3LJ "#&"))LJ -0-LJ society significant money and contributes to creating healthy societies. (Kagan, cited by Economist Intelligence Unit, 2012) These three strands of research will be explored in this and the next chapter.

The architecture of the brain

The architecture of the brain is laid down early in life during the prenatal period and continues till puberty, determined by a continuous process of interaction between genetic and environmental influences (Cicchetti, 2002; Farran, 2000; Fox, Levitt, & Nelson, 2010; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). The early genetically determined development of the brain is marked in early pregnancy by the birth, proliferation and migration of neurons (nerve cells) , with the full complement of neurons being achieved by the sixth month of pregnancy. The genetic blueprint for neural development has been described as ‘a rough draft’ or an ‘initial plan’ for the central nervous system (Fox et al., 2010, p. 29), which suggests that it is highly plastic and susceptible to different environmental inputs. Before birth and especially in the early months of pregnancy the foetus is particularly susceptible to negative impacts, such as exposure to alcohol, smoking, poor nutrition or maternal stress. The basic wiring of the central nervous system is completed by the time a baby is born, but there is a rapid increase in the number of synapses (connections between nerve cells) immediately before and after birth, which is then followed by a process of selective pruning. A rapid period of synapse elimination lasts until about three years of age (though it continues at a slower pace later), and this is influenced by exposure to sensory experience, which is essential for its normal development. Studies of early exposure to auditory and visual stimulation show that unless the brain experiences such sensory stimulation, it will not develop normal sensory functions. Experiments on kittens showed that if they were exposed to distorted visual experience, such as one eye getting more stimulation than the other, permanent disturbances in vision resulted (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Typical human environments include exposure to light and sound, so such synapse pruning in response to stimulation is referred to as ‘experience-

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expectant’. Normal brain growth depends on exposure to typical stimulation, including light, sound, gravity and exposure to language. The organisation of sensory and motor development is marked by the initial production of excessive connections, followed by pruning, leading to better organisation of these sensory systems. Failure to be exposed to appropriate stimulation during these critical periods is likely to result in deficits in these sensory systems. The ‘expectable environment’ also includes, according to Sharon Fox et al. (2010, p. 35) ‘the emotional support and familiarity of a caregiver’. Experience-dependent development, on the other hand, is a result of the interactions that humans have with their environments, which take place over a much longer period of time and are unique to different individuals. Experiencedependent brain plasticity involves different people responding to variations in their environment in different ways. Individual differences emerge as people adapt to unique features of their environments, strengthening old connections and forming new ones. This plasticity ensures that people are flexible enough to adapt to the particular features of their everyday lives in an ongoing way. The early immaturity of the brain and gradual growth of brain circuits allows initial learning to influence neural architecture in ways that support later more complex learning (Meltzoff, Kuhl, Movellan, & Sejnowski, 2009). Children learn to understand and process the information they experience – for example, they come to attend to and understand the meaning of the language of their mother tongue, or of any language they hear over time. There is some evidence that there are ‘sensitive’ periods when the brain is particularly responsive to certain experiences. For example, young children who are exposed to a second language can develop native-like accents and tonal patterns, whereas this is difficult if not impossible to achieve for adults (Fox et al., 2010). The nature of our experiences, particularly during a time-limited period in early development, can profoundly affect the mental framework we use to understand the world around us. Sensitive periods in child development are of interest because they represent a time frame in which our capabilities can be modified and perhaps enhanced. (Fox et al., 2010, p. 34)

Children’s well-being and development are at risk when stress overwhelms their bodies’ resources to manage threats. The nature of children’s early experience has a strong influence on their ability to control reaction to stress. Cortisol is a steroid hormone produced as a response to stress, which breaks down protein and liberates energy for use in the body. Experiences of threat, uncertainty or neglect cause children’s stress management systems to be overactivated and the overproduction of cortisol, disrupting brain circuitry and establishing a short fuse for the subsequent activation of the stress response (Shonkoff & Phillips,

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2000; Shonkoff, 2010). Young children, whether at home or in early childhood education (ECE), suffer when they experience prolonged exposure to stressful situations that they cannot control (‘toxic stress’), and when they do not have adequate support and comfort from an adult. Toxic stress and the consequent production of cortisol disrupts brain architecture, adversely affects other organs and reduces the body’s ability to respond to later stress effectively, resulting in a low threshold for later reaction to stress. For this reason, abusive or neglectful care, especially during infancy, has lasting implications and risk of negative outcomes (Dalli, White, Rockel, & Duhn, 2011; Meade, 2002; Shonkoff, 2010). On the other hand, when early experiences are nurturing, consistent and responsive, healthy brain development is enhanced. Children use secure attachments (see chapter 5) to caregivers to reduce the level of stress they experience. Warm responsive interactions and secure attachments buffer the elevation of stress hormones, and prevent heightened prolonged cortisol production in threatening situations. Neuroscience research is, however, somewhat limited in the extent to which it can be applied directly to improving the quality of early experiences for children. Much neuroscience knowledge comes from experimental studies with animals, which is impossible to generalise to complex human functions like cognition, language and socio-emotional development. While neuroscience research can tell us a great deal about conditions that pose dangers to the developing brain, it says little about what to do to enhance brain development (Fox et al., 2010; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Most methods of studying brain development are too invasive to be usable with humans, but on the other hand innovative research practices, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and robotics, show a great deal of future promise for studying the active human brain (Dalli et al., 2011). One particularly interesting development, linking developmental and neurobiological research, is the establishment of a connection between human social and language learning and neural-cognitive systems (that link the actions of self and other). There is ‘a striking overlap in the brain systems recruited both for the perception and production of action’ (Meltzoff et al., 2009, p. 285). Newborns are capable of imitating gestures like tongue protrusion and mouth opening, and this appears to be because infants share representations for the acts of self and others. Andrew Meltzoff and his colleagues suggest that social learning and imitation generate, modify and refine shared neural circuitry for perception and action. Such an explanation seems to fit very well with sociocultural theories of human development. In summary, the foundation of brain architecture occurs before birth and in the first few years of life. The environment is particularly important in providing basic sensory experiences, and these lay the foundation for later more advanced

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learning. While early stimulation is essential for normal brain development, the brain goes on adapting and changing throughout the life span. Rich early experiences are not enough on their own, however. For children to reach their full potential, it is necessary that positive early experience is followed by increasingly rich, complex and challenging experiences later in life. Early childhood is just one link in the developmental chain, and continuing engagement with the environment involving transactions and mutual modifications has an ongoing impact on development. There are dangers in assuming that early childhood is the only important period in development – for example, that it is not worth trying to help a child who has been severely deprived in early life, and that children with favourable early experiences can be subjected to later traumatic experience without worry of damage. Although such myths should be laid to rest, they should not be replaced by an even more dangerous set of myths – for example, the view that it does not really matter what happens to children in early childhood, and that they are resilient to disadvantage or trauma. Early experience is clearly very important, but by itself a good experience in early childhood cannot ensure longterm optimal development.

Deprivation of care in infancy

The concern with early experience and its effects on later development originates partly with the study of children deprived of normal maternal care. Two of these studies will be described in detail. Although these early studies have been criticised on scientific grounds, the narrative accounts of the effects of a deprived early experience illustrate some of important components of early environments. In the 1940s Austrian-American psychoanalyst Rene Spitz carried out a study of infants in two different kinds of institutions. He examined the developmental level of infants during the first year of life who were in the ‘Nursery’ and the ‘Foundling Home’ (Spitz, 1973a, 1973b). The Nursery was a penal institution for delinquent girls pregnant on admission. The infants were cared for by their mothers under the supervision of nurses, whose duties included helping the girls to acquire childcare skills. The environment of the Nursery was quite stimulating, with each infant having at least one toy and access to a range of visual and auditory stimulation: ... trees, landscape, and sky are visible from both sides and ... a bustling activity of mothers carrying their children, tending them, feeding them, playing with them, chatting with each other with babies in their arms is usually present. The cubicles of the children are enclosed but the glass panes reach low enough for every child to be able at any time to observe everything going on all around. (Spitz, 1973b, p. 780)

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The Foundling Home was a very different institution. It was a home for children whose mothers (most of whom were well adjusted and normal) were unable to support themselves and the child. Upon entry to the Foundling Home at about four months of age, the infants were more advanced than Nursery children, having a developmental quotient of 124.1 The environment of the Foundling Home was a sharp contrast to the Nursery. There were no toys and a very limited range of physical and human stimulation, despite good hygiene and nutrition: In Foundling Home the corridor into which the cubicles open ... is bleak and deserted, except at feeding time when five to eight nurses file in and look after the children’s needs. Most of the time nothing goes on to attract the babies’ attention ... when bed sheets are hung over the railing the child lying in the cot is effectively screened from the world. He is completely separated from the other cubicles .... The result of this system is that each baby lies in solitary confinement up to the time when he is able to stand up in his bed, and that the only object he can see is the ceiling. (Spitz, 1973a, p. 781)

Spitz’s findings were quite dramatic. Despite the earlier intellectual superiority of the Foundling Home babies, the Nursery babies were developing normally (developmental quotient 105) by the end of their first year, but the Foundling Home babies showed a sharp drop in progress (developmental quotient 72). During the study there was a measles epidemic and 23 of the 88 Foundling Home babies died from measles. Although the Foundling Home babies had excellent nutrition and hygiene they were extremely susceptible to infection of any kind. Forty per cent of the one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half-year-olds and 13 per cent of the up to one-and-a-half-year-olds died from the epidemic, whereas the mortality rate outside the institution was only 0.5 per cent. Of the surviving children from between 18 months to two-and-a-half years, only 2 out of 21 were able to say a few words and walk. Hardly any were able to eat alone or use the toilet. In a follow-up study between the ages of two and four, only 5 of the 21 were able to walk unassisted, the majority still could not feed themselves (12/21) or dress themselves (20/21), six were not fully toilet-trained, and language development was very limited with only two of the children having more than five words. In contrast the Nursery children, who were considerably younger: ... all ran lustily around on the floor; some of them dressed and undressed themselves; they fed themselves with a spoon; nearly all spoke a few words,

1

The developmental quotient is a measure of the child’s developmental level compared to other children of the same age. An average development quotient would be 100, while 124 is well above average.

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they understood commands and obeyed them; and the older ones showed a certain consciousness of toilet requirements. All of them played lively social games with each other and with the observers. (Spitz, 1973a, p. 788)

Not only were the Foundling Home children far behind the Nursery children psychologically, they were physically poorly developed, being 45 per cent less than the norm in weight and about 22.09 centimetres shorter in height. Spitz concluded from his studies that the mother–child relationship in the first year is absolutely critical for later development. Although he recognised the perceptual deprivation experienced by the Foundling Home children, he clearly did not feel that this was the critical missing ingredient. This classic study by Spitz retains some relevance in a contemporary context. The Nursery environment he described has implications for current issues of teenage pregnancy and sole parenthood. Aside from the penal nature of the institution, it would seem that the group childcare environment – where experienced adults are available to provide support and advice for young mothers – is an excellent one for learning about and enjoying child-rearing. In comparison, a young mother at home alone with a child in either a nuclear or sole-parent family may have a lonely and sometimes stressful time with a new infant. For the children too, the opportunities for learning are greatly enhanced by the variety of stimulation and attention in this arrangement. Spitz’s study implies that the effect of an impoverished early experience will be a devastating one. The study did not, however, follow children through to adulthood so it is not possible to say with certainty if the effect was permanent. Another early study by childhood researcher Harold Skeels (1966) is unique in that it followed through subjects from infancy to adulthood for a period of 30 years. Skeels began studying orphanage children in 1938. Most of the children had been removed from their parents because of neglect or abuse. The orphanage environment for infants as described by Skeels bears a strong resemblance to Spitz’s Foundling Home. At the age of two years, children were removed from a hospital ward to overcrowded cottages where about 35 children were cared for by one matron and a few untrained teenage girls. The lives of the children were bound by this tiny cottage where their every action was orchestrated: With so much responsibility centred in one adult the result was a necessary regimentation. The children sat down, stood up, and did many things in unison. They spent considerable time sitting on chairs, for in addition to the number of children and the matron’s limited time there was the misfortune of inadequate equipment. (Skeels, 1966, p. 163)

Skeels describes how he noticed two baby girls of 13 and 16 months of age: ‘The youngsters were pitiful little creatures. They were tearful, had runny noses,

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and sparse, stringy and colourless hair; they were emaciated, undersized, and lacked muscle tonus and responsiveness. Sad and inactive, the two spent their days rocking and whining’ (Skeels, 1966, p. 164). In fact the developmental level of the two infants was about six and seven months, so Skeels transferred them to an institution for the mentally retarded. Six months later, he noticed these same children in the institution for the retarded: ‘two outstanding little girls ... They were alert, smiling, running about, responding to the playful attention of adults and generally behaving and looking like any other toddlers’ (p. 164). Their psychological tests then, and 12 months later, showed them to be approaching normality for their age, although when they had been placed their development was considerably delayed. Skeels discovered the explanation for the improvement in the experiences of the two girls in the institution. They had been ‘adopted’ by two of the older, brighter girls and additional attention was provided by other inmates and staff. The infants were played with, taken on outings, bought toys and books: The setting seems to be a homelike one, abundant in affection, rich in wholesome and interesting experiences and geared to a preschool level of development ... The consistent element seemed to be the existence of a oneto-one relationship with an adult who was generous with love and affection, together with an abundance of affection and experiential stimulation from many sources. (Skeels, 1966, p. 165)

As a result of his observations on these two children, Skeels designed an intervention study for the orphanage children. The experimental group consisted of 13 children who were transferred to an institution for the retarded at an age of less than three years (mean age of 19.4 months), and later on, if progress occurred, they were transferred to an adoptive home (11 out of 13 were adopted). The mean intelligence quotient (IQ) of the experimental group was 64.3. A contrast group of children remained in the orphanage. These children had a mean age of 16.6 months and a mean IQ of 86.7. The experimental group was therefore less bright to start with than the contrast group. The experimental group made startling gains, while the contrast group showed a comparable decline. In the first two years of the study the experimental group gained 28.5 IQ points while the contrast group lost 26.2 IQ points. After a lapse of 21 years the two groups had continued to diverge. All the experimental children went on to lead normal lives completing a median of twelfth grade education, and about a quarter went on to college. All of the experimental group were married or self-supporting and they were working in a variety of jobs. Of the contrast group, one had died in adolescence and four were still in state institutions. They reached a median of less than third grade

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education. Very few were employed and then they were in low status jobs. Only two had married and one of these marriages ended in divorce. The Skeels’ study certainly showed that contrasting life experiences can have formidable effects on adult experience. What cannot be readily determined from his study is precisely what it was about the two environments that caused the different developmental patterns, although Skeels put it down to ‘the amount of developmental stimulation and the intensity of relationships between the children and the mother-surrogates’ (1966, p. 169). What can be added to the Spitz findings is that stimulation does not have to come from the biological mother, and that changes in the mother figure are not necessarily harmful. More recent studies of children growing up in institutions have confirmed that children with early experience in institutions are likely to have some developmental delays, as a result of lack of stimulation or consistent and supportive caregiving, as well as poor nutrition and lack of medical care, parental drug and alcohol abuse, premature birth and chaotic home situations. The extent of the effects of the institutional experience depends on the quality of the interaction and stimulation in the institution and the age when children were adopted (Beckett, Maughan, Rutter, Castle, Colvert, Groothues et al., 2007; Johnstone & Gibbs, 2007; Windsor et al., 2007, cited by Pollack, Nelson, Schlaak, Roeber, Wewerka, Wiik et al., 2010). The Ceauceşcu regime in Romania resulted in many children being placed in orphanages in conditions of severe deprivation: they included a profound lack of interpersonal interaction with children, appalling staffing levels (one staff member to 30 children), no toys or educational activities, and babies being fed by bottles propped up on pillows and kept clean by being hosed down in cold water (Rutter, Beckett, Castle et al., 2007). Michael Rutter and his colleagues’ research on Romanian children from such orphanages adopted by British families at around three-and-a-half years, showed that these children had major cognitive deficits at four years of age, and that their weight and height were below the third percentile. By six years of age, however, after removal to wellfunctioning homes, children had caught up to a comparison sample of domestic adoptees in height and weight, and made a spectacular improvement in cognitive functioning. Children adopted before the age of six months were not different from the comparison sample on cognitive measures. A significant minority of the overseas adopted children adopted after six months, however, had developmental problems, including autism-like behaviour, disinhibited attachment,2 inattention/ overactivity, and cognitive impairment. Among children adopted between 6 and 12 months, 40 to 50 per cent showed such impairments. 2

Disinhibited attachment involves indiscriminately friendly behaviour, attention-seeking and lack of reticence with unfamiliar adults.

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Removing children from institutions and placing them in stable loving families produces remarkable improvements in physical, social and cognitive outcomes (Pollack et al., 2010). ‘Even children delayed by a year or more in behavioral and physical development can achieve normal levels of functioning once they are given the opportunity to live with a loving family’ (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000, p. 258). Unfortunately, a minority of institutionalised children continue to exhibit multiple problems in cognition and behaviour, and do not show a dramatic recovery. Seth Pollack et al. (2010) found that eight- to nineyear-olds who had been institutionalised and were adopted at 12 months or older experienced neurophysiological deficits on tests of visual memory and attention, visually mediated learning and inhibitory control, but were not delayed in auditory processing, rule acquisition or planning. Good evidence exists of the power of the environment in changing developmental outcomes for the better for individuals. Experiences of adoption; early positive mothering; higher maternal education; and exposure to life changing possibilities as an adult have all been associated with major and sustained changes in individual functioning. A characteristic that these positive environments have in common is that for the most part they involve the immersion of the organism in a changed environment. (Farran, 2002, p. 9)

Since the 1980s in New Zealand, inter-country adoption has been increasing, mainly as a response to infertility and because of the lack of availability of New Zealand babies for adoption (Johnstone & Gibbs, 2012). Previous adoption research has focused on the deficits associated with institutionalisation, and fails to focus on how loving family environments can foster children’s resilience and recovery. Jocelyn Johnstone and Anita Gibbs talked to the New Zealand adoptive parents of Russian children to find out about the strategies they used to foster attachment relationships with their adopted children. Adoptive parents talked about the importance of understanding and responding to children, spending quality oneto-one time with them, being consistent, holding and touching them, providing boundaries and structure in their lives, and reducing over-stimulation. The whole process of inter-country adoption was challenging, and parents were in need of extensive ongoing support from their families and local agencies, sometimes feeling that they could have been given better support. They disliked the feeling of being scrutinised, and felt that professionals could have better supported their efforts to promote the well-being and development of their children. They understood that their children were both resilient and fragile, and that sometimes the survival strategies used by children to get through life needed to be viewed as strengths rather than negative behaviours (Johnstone & Gibbs, 2012, p. 240).

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Early experience

The work of British psychoanalyst John Bowlby in the early 1950s brought the issue of maternal deprivation to public attention. He was strongly influenced by Sigmund Freud’s theories about the importance of early relationships, as well as animal ethology theories stressing the importance of early bonding between mother and child. The essence of Bowlby’s view was as follows: What is believed to be essential for mental health is that an infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate, and continuous relationship with his mother (or permanent mother-substitute) in which both find satisfaction and enjoyment. It is this complex, rich and rewarding relationship with the mother in early years ... that child psychiatrists and many others believe to underlie the development of character and of mental health. (Bowlby, 1953, p. 13)

Bowlby emphasised the effect of separation from the mother on personality development. Children who have experienced prolonged separations from their mothers were, according to Bowlby, unable to form loving relationships with adults or with other children. Such children appeared only to form superficial relationships, and to be unable to respond emotionally to other people. In some cases he found there was an apparent craving for affection but an inability to accept it or to reciprocate. His findings suggested that there would be lasting ill effects on personality if there was prolonged institutional care or frequent changes of mother figure early in life (Rutter, 1995). The impact of Bowlby’s views in New Zealand was especially strong. Geraldine McDonald (1977, 1979) and Helen May (1992) have argued cogently that Bowlby’s ideas were wholeheartedly accepted by government departments and other bodies concerned with the health of the young child. ‘They have served to produce feelings of guilt in mothers who were, for one reason or another, separated from their children and they have been used by those in authority to justify refusals to provide day care’ (McDonald, 1977, p. 2). Rutter (1979a, 1979b, 1981) was critical of some of Bowlby’s conclusions, especially in relation to the idea that it is the early relationship between mother and child that is the foundation of the child’s character and mental health. First, Rutter argued that it was not the separation from the mother per se which was the cause of antisocial disorders, but rather that they were the result of the discord and disharmony accompanying the break. Rutter believed that it was not the breaking of bonds but the failure to form bonds which resulted in affectionless character. The lack of appropriate experience rather than separation was linked by Rutter to developmental delay. Barbara Tizard, for example (cited by Rutter, 1981), found that children reared in institutions had normal IQs despite experiencing sometimes as many as 50 to 80 mother surrogates. Even if personal relationships

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are inadequate, intellectual development can be normal if other experiences are present. He quoted evidence that lack of early bonding does impair later social relationships. Glen Dixon (cited by Rutter, 1979b) found that social behaviour to peers and teachers was severely disturbed in school-age children who had been institutionalised in early infancy. Rutter also questioned Bowlby’s emphasis on the special importance of the mother. He believed that the bond with the mother was not always the strongest and that it did not differ in type from weaker bonds with other people. These other bonds were thought by Rutter to have a very significant role in development. Children who were able to withstand highly stressful and traumatic early experiences often had close relationships with another person or several people. It is worth discussing these arguments in order to provide an historical perspective on how views on early experience have changed. Bowlby himself later significantly modified his views about early experience because of his awareness of increasing evidence which contradicted his earlier views (Clarke & Clarke, 1996; Rutter, 1995). In his later writing (Bowlby, 1988), he adopted much more of a life span ‘latency’ perspective, viewing development as influenced by ongoing interactions throughout life rather than predetermined by early experiences. David Fergusson, John Horwood, and Michael Lynskey’s (1994) longitudinal study of a birth cohort of New Zealand children provides convincing evidence that childhood experiences have a long-term effect on children’s development. A small group of highly disturbed and difficult adolescents (3 per cent of the cohort) with multiple problems (including early onset of sexual behaviour, substance abuse, conduct disorders and police contact) was studied. Young people like these preoccupy social welfare, criminal justice, educational and other agencies in New Zealand. These adolescents came from families where parents had little education; they (the adolescents) were young, poor, often unemployed and single. The parents also had high rates of criminality, alcohol and drug problems; children were more likely to be born ex-nuptially and perinatal histories were usually adverse. Multiple-problem adolescents were more likely to have been reared in changing parental environments, to have had less nurturing and consistent care and parenting, were less likely to have attended preschool and had less preventive health care, compared to the rest of the cohort. When the prospectively measured life history of children with severe multiple problem behaviour is examined, this history proves to be an unremitting account of a group of young people whose childhoods were marked by increased risks of a wide range of social, familial and other forms of disadvantage. (Fergusson et al., 1994, p. 1132)

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The number of problems experienced by these children was directly related to the number of social disadvantages they experienced. A risk score was devised for each child and used to predict the likelihood of multiple problem behaviours. Such behaviours were non-existent in the 54 per cent of the sample with the lowest risk scores, but about 24 per cent of children with the highest risk scores did develop multiple problem behaviours. The relationship between disadvantage and problem behaviour was not completely deterministic, because 13 per cent of the most disadvantaged 5 per cent of the sample were completely problem-free (compared to 81.3 per cent of the most advantaged 50 per cent of the sample). Fergusson and Horwood (2001) point out that multiple adverse family factors have a strong impact on problem behaviour in adolescence. Adolescents with multiple behaviour problems, such as conduct problems, substance abuse, police contact and mental health issues, made up a small minority (2.7 per cent) of the Christchurch sample, but they shared multiple risks and disadvantages in earlier childhood. Examination of the life histories of these young people revealed that, almost invariably, they had experienced childhoods marked by multiple social and family disadvantages that spanned economic disadvantage, family dysfunction, impaired parenting and limited life opportunities. Analysis of family history data suggested that children in the 5% of the cohort exposed to the greatest childhood disadvantage/family dysfunction had risks of multiple problem behaviours that were 100 times greater than those of children in the most advantaged 50% of the cohort. (Fergusson & Horwood, 2001, p. 292)

There are, however, a number of factors that can help children escape from early disadvantage, including networks of social support, problem-solving ability, a prosocial peer group, and schools where children are valued and learning encouraged. Development is still somewhat open-ended and not everyone with a deprived early environment is locked into a life path from which they cannot escape, as has been shown in this and other studies. Research does, however, show the very strong risk associated with adverse early childhood and family circumstances and gives some insight into why simplistic attempts to intervene by altering external control or modifying behavioural patterns are likely to fail. Such interventions as harsher law enforcement or changes in correction policies are unlikely to address the root causes of the problems, which demand major social changes. Instead, intervention has to address large-scale social and economic causes like poverty, marital violence and conflict, unemployment and substance abuse.

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Components of a favourable early environment

Having established the importance of a favourable early experience, it is now necessary to establish in more detail the particular qualities of experience that are required. They can be summed up in the following three major factors: a loving relationship, attachment and optimal stimulation.

A loving relationship

From the previous section we know that warm, loving relationships are a key ingredient of optimal early childhood experiences. Responsive, nurturing caregiving helps children control their fear and anxiety in threatening situations, and when children from stimulus-deprived environments are adopted in infancy into stable, loving families, they can recover from earlier delays in development. Parents, or the people who have the most emotional investment and availability to the child, have a profoundly powerful and long-term impact on children’s development (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). The role of parent does not have to be filled by the biological mother (or father) but instead can be filled by adoptive or foster parents, grandparents, or other primary caregivers. It is no longer believed that loving relationships can only be provided by mothers, or even a single mother substitute, or a woman. An unbroken relationship with a single person, besides being unrealistically difficult to achieve, may have dangers as well as advantages. There is evidence (Aviezer, van Ijzendoorn, Sagi, & Schuengel, 1994; Sagi, Koren, & Weinberg, 1987; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000; van Ijzendoorn, Sagi, & Lambermon, 1992) that networks of relationships (such as mother, father, grandparents and early childhood teachers) are more predictive of optimal development than the mother–child relationship alone. Bowlby, in his early work, argued that children needed the experience of a warm, intimate and loving relationship with their mothers on a relatively continuous basis. Later work has questioned this exclusive emphasis on the mother– child relationship. Bowlby believed that, ‘in no other relationship do human beings place themselves so unreservedly and so continuously at the disposal of others’ (Bowlby, 1953, p. 78). What is really meant, though, by mother love? Susan Schaffer defines it in terms of the mother’s heightened emotional involvement and preoccupation with the child. The heightened involvement may be both positive and negative. Very affectionate mothers can also be very cross with their children. Schaffer says, ‘Love brings with it sensitivity. Without it one cannot sustain the intent awareness of the other that makes possible the very prompt response to and anticipation of his behaviour that we have found to exist between mother and baby’ (Schaffer, 1977, p. 87).

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Bronfenbrenner (1979b) emphasised the intense investment of feeling and the reciprocity necessary for optimal development, which he described as ‘the enduring, irrational involvement of one or more adults in care and joint activity with the child’ (p. 5). His explanation of the phrase ‘irrational involvement’ is that ‘somebody has to be crazy about the kid’ (p. 6). Enduring involvement leads to reciprocal interaction between the child and those who care for her. Bronfenbrenner describes this enduring involvement as ‘a ping-pong game between two persons who are crazy about each other ... [and] the key to the process of human development’ (p. 6). This ‘game’ that is the key to development occurs between the child and one or a small number of people. This metaphor of ‘serve and return’ is a useful way of representing the importance of mutual responsiveness between babies and their caregivers. When babies babble, for example, and adults respond with attention, gestures or speech, or when parents soothe and comfort upset infants, this helps them learn to settle themselves when distressed (Center on the Developing Child, 2009, 2010). All of these types of interactions help build and strengthen connections in the child’s brain, and increase their capacity to cope with stress. Parental love is by no means inevitable because there are many factors that make it extraordinarily difficult for some people to make good parents. For example, mothers who are depressed have a great deal of difficulty in responding sensitively to their infants (Center on the Developing Child, 2009). Jay Belsky’s model (1984) shows that mothering is directly influenced by many different factors, including forces emanating from within the individual parent or child and from the broader social context in which the parent–child relationship is embedded, including marital relations, social networks and work experience. Developmental history (how people have been brought up themselves) works through influencing the parents’ personality and general psychological well-being, which affects how they treat their children. The characteristics of the child likewise are seen to be an important determinant of parenting, not merely the outcome of it. It is therefore crucial that we provide the kind of society in which parenthood is a rewarding experience, where people who care for children have networks of support, and where people have choices about whether to become a parent or not.

Attachment

One process that seems to be central to our understanding of why the early years are so important for learning and development is attachment. Although attachment is clearly related to the loving relationship described above, it has a more precise meaning and has been studied extensively. Attachment has been defined as ‘an affectional tie that one person forms to another specific person, binding them together in space and enduring over time’ (Ainsworth, 1973, p. 1). Attachments

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are reciprocal relationships that are usually formed in the first year of life with one caregiver or a small group of caregivers. The infant tends to become attached to whoever is most sensitive and responsive to him. The caregiver is also attached to the child. She focuses her attention on the child and receives feedback and pleasure from the infant’s responsiveness. Attachments are used by the child in order to develop ‘an internal working model’ of the self and other significant people in the world, especially the attachment figure (Bretherton & Waters, 1985; Thompson, 2008), which is used as the basis for thinking about and guiding new behaviour. Infants’ experiences with their caregivers influence their broader representations of themselves and serve as filters to help them understand new relationships. These early experiences help children establish a positive self-image, and positive views of other people. According to this theory, children’s trust in their attachment figures can be translated in later development into their own capacity to be sensitive and responsive caregivers. Attachments also help to reduce children’s fear and anxiety in stressful situations, and strengthen their feelings of competence and efficacy (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). When the infant has developed a feeling of trust in one or a few attachment figures, she feels secure enough to explore and learn about the environment, and this exploration of the environment has survival value. Bronfenbrenner’s (1979b, p. 60) famous quotation (see chapter 1) that learning is strengthened when there are increasingly complex patterns of reciprocal activity, emphasised that these interactions should be with a person who had ‘developed a strong and enduring emotional attachment’ to the child. Despite a lot of further research (Berlin, Cassidy, & Appleyard, 2008; Cassidy, 2008; Rutter, 1995), the key ideas of attachment theory as formulated by Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth remain valid in most respects. Views of attachment, however, have changed in several important respects over the years. For example, there is now no ‘all or nothing’ perspective on the period during which early selective attachments can develop (originally thought to be the first two years) and there is more acceptance of a broader time frame. The idea of ‘monotropy’ (attachment to just one person) has been somewhat modified, although infants still tend to have a much stronger attachment to one person. Children clearly develop several attachments but they are not of equal strength, and the number of possible attachments is not unlimited. There is usually a hierarchy of selective attachments among a small number of people who are closely involved with children (Cassidy, 2008). There is evidence, however, that early insecure attachments are modifiable, suggesting that ‘the prediction from attachment to children’s relationships can be moderated by the degree of risk in the family environment and can be mediated by subsequent parenting quality’ (Berlin et al., 2008, p. 341). There is an optimistic message, therefore, that amelioration of family risk, and support and guidance

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for parents to help their infants develop secure attachments, can compensate for early difficulties. If all goes well, a reciprocal pattern of interaction between caregiver and infant will develop into a secure attachment. The attachment relationship involves an intense mutual sensitivity between baby and caregiver that develops early, at between five and seven months. The infant shows her attachment with particular people by looking and smiling at them, crying or following them when they leave, greeting them on reunion, and showing less anxiety when faced with a strange or fearful situation when the attachment object is present (Cassidy, 2008). Babies who are attached do not like to be picked up or fed by strangers and are selective in their smiling, which is directed towards attachment figures. The strongest indicator of attachment is sharp infant protest at the departure of specific individuals. The significance of attachment seems to be that when the infant has developed a feeling of trust in one or a few attachment figures, she feels secure enough to explore and learn about the environment. She uses the attachment figure as a ‘secure base’ from which to explore the world around her. If an attachment figure leaves an infant in a strange situation, there tends to be a sharp drop in play and exploration and an increase in distress (Ainsworth & Bell, 1970). Children with secure attachments are able to be comforted in fear-provoking situations when their caregivers return after a separation. Attachment gradually becomes spread over a larger number of people as infancy progresses. Stranger anxiety appears a little later than separation anxiety, at about six to eight months. The peak of infants’ wariness with strangers is at eight to ten months, but they often remain wary towards unfamiliar people up till 24 months. Once children are able to understand that the caregiver has not vanished permanently, and that strangers are not unfriendly, separation and stranger anxiety subsides (Marvin & Britner, 2008). Some degree of anxiety at separation from familiar people persists well past infancy. When children are attached to a network of familiar people, it is easier for them to adjust to novel situations and people. There are links between early attachments and later social and emotional development. The longitudinal evidence of the influence of attachments on other relationships is compelling (Berlin et al., 2008). Insecurely attached infants find it more difficult to establish relationships with other adults and peers, and to control their social and emotional behaviour (Berlin et al., 2008; Center on the Developing Child, 2010; Dozier & Rutter, 2008). Early institutionalised children who have been deprived of attachment figures are prone to develop unusual social behaviour at school age, such as excessive dependency, attention-seeking, and aggressive and disruptive behaviour (DeKlyen & Greenberg, 2008). Even high-

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quality institutional care has deleterious effects, because of children’s lack of opportunity to develop selective attachment relationships to caregivers (Dozier & Rutter, 2008). Securely attached children are more likely to be confident, able to regulate their emotions, develop satisfactory peer and adult relationships, and show normal cognitive development (van Ijzendoorn & Sagi-Schwartz, 2008). Although it is common to think that an infant’s first bond is with his mother, this is by no means always the case. An early study (Schaffer & Emerson, 1964) showed that about half of the infants studied were attached to their mothers at 18 months of age, one-third to their fathers, and the rest to an assortment of people such as siblings and grandparents. ‘There is ... no reason why the mothering role should not be filled as competently by males as females. The human male’s relative lack of involvement in child rearing is essentially a cultural, rather than a biological phenomenon’ (Schaffer, 1977, p. 111). Few recent studies on the most common attachment figures have been conducted, but with the change in family dynamics towards fathers taking more responsibility for childcare, it is likely that a greater proportion of them are primary attachment figures. Interestingly, even in cultures where multiple caregiving is the norm (such as Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria), infants are still likely to have one or a small number of attachment figures (usually a parent but not necessarily the mother) (van Ijzendoorn & Sagi-Schwartz, 2008). Attachments form most readily with people who are most responsive and playful towards infants, not necessarily those who spend the greatest amount of time with them. The intensity of the relationship is important, rather than the time spent in it. Parenthood can become a lonely, stressful and unsupported business when babies are held in a close relationship with only one person. Happy separations from caregivers buffer children against the stress of future partings, and help them to move towards independence. Relationships with a small number of familiar people may be healthier in the long run, than an exclusive relationship with one person (Aviezer, Van Ijzendoorn, Sagi, & Schuengel, 1994; Howes, Phillips, & Whitebook, 1992; Schaffer, 1977). Attachments to figures other than parents do not have an adverse effect on other attachments (Howes & Spieker, 2008). Israeli fathers were reported in the nineties as taking a very active role in childcare, especially in kibbutz settings (Aviezer et al., 1994). The organisation of kibbutz life allowed fathers and mothers to spend equal time with their children; hence fathers had more time to be available to their children and no aspect of childcare was regarded as the exclusive responsibility of either parent. Fathers were therefore more likely to be involved in playful responsive behaviour with their infants. This was reflected in kibbutz infants having a lack of preference for one parent over the other and relatively high rates of secure attachments to fathers (67 per cent, Aviezer et al., 1994).

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The collective sleeping arrangements that used to be common on Israeli kibbutzim are an interesting test of the impact of multiple caregiving. During the day metaplot (or nurses) had almost exclusive care of children, though parents visited and played with their children. With communal sleeping arrangements, night caregivers, often not well known to the children and less permissive than parents or metaplot, looked after the children at night. There is now a consistent body of evidence to show that collective sleeping arrangements are associated with more insecure attachments (Aviezer et al., 1994; van Ijzendoorn & Sagi-Schwartz, 2008). Ambivalent relationships with caregivers (a type of insecure attachment) are over-represented among children who experience communal sleeping (van Ijzendoorn & Sagi-Schwartz, 2008). It may be that the greater number of ambivalent attachments associated with collective sleeping arrangements are due to the inconsistent responsiveness that occurs when children have different caregivers during the night and day. Kibbutz children, however, usually develop just as close relationships with their parents as children not reared with different caregivers, and the kibbutz generally provides high-quality care for children. Like other non-parental care arrangements, however, kibbutz care varies in quality and this makes a difference to security of attachment. The availability of caregivers to respond to infants’ signals is influenced by the number of infants they are caring for, as has been shown in research where infants in children’s houses with a one-to-three adult/ child ratio are more likely to be securely attached than those with poorer adult/ child ratios (Howes & Spieker, 2008). Kibbutz care has now evolved towards more family responsibility for childcare with most children sleeping at home. With the disappearance of collective sleeping arrangements, secure attachments have come to prevail and are similar to the levels among non-kibbutz children. These studies are a useful reminder that the nuclear family arrangements which prevail in the West are not the only ones which can provide secure and responsive adult environments for children.

Optimal stimulation

Young infants in the earliest days and months of their life are highly dependent on their caregivers. One of the most important steps in their learning and development is to move from caregivers’ external regulation of infant actions and states, towards gradually shifting the responsibility to the infant. This process first occurs when establishing patterns of sleeping and waking, and soothing crying (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). The caregiver has firstly to establish a connection with the infant, then learn to read and understand her behaviour, then gradually encourage and allow her to take over and self-regulate her own behaviour. Psychologists call this

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‘self-regulation’, and it is the beginning of that most important of attributes for children’s later lives: agency. It seems clear that one of the essential ingredients of an optimal environment for infants is stimulation. However, there is a danger in the attitude that one should surround babies with stimulation: stimulation without pattern, variation or distinctiveness or that is not in tune with the baby’s behaviour may be meaningless and irrelevant. Infants whose parents can interpret, adjust their own behavior, and respond appropriately to their bids for attention, moods and states, expressions of interest, and efforts to communicate their needs are more advanced on virtually all assessments of developmental and cognitive status. (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000, p. 245)

Many research studies have provided evidence about the type of stimulation that is beneficial in infancy (Clarke-Stewart, 1973; Elardo, Bradley, & Caldwell, 1975; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000; White, Watts, Barnett, Kaban, Marmor, & Shapiro, 1973; White, Kaban, Attanucci, & Shapiro, 1978). Firstly, during early infancy, physical stimulation that is firm, gentle and relatively frequent seems to be advantageous both in calming a crying infant and making him more alert to his surroundings. An infant is not a passive receptacle who can be filled with experience. Infant states vary from sleep and drowsiness to alertness, activity or fussiness. The caregiver has to judge what kind of stimulation to offer depending on the infant’s state. Playing peek-a-boo with a baby may evoke a smile if he is alert and attentive but may evoke crying if he is restless. Sensitivity to the baby’s behaviour is clearly necessary before stimulation is given willy-nilly. One effective way of soothing a fussy baby has been found to be continuous monotonous stimulation such as singing or rocking. Even swaddling has been found to have this effect (Schaffer, 1977). A second type of stimulation that is important in early infancy, and also in the second year of infancy, is frequent and distinctive verbal stimulation by the caregiver. If the caregiver talks or reads to the infant, development seems to be enhanced. The child’s ability to understand and use language later on tends to be accelerated when there is early verbal stimulation. Initially infants can distinguish all sounds from languages across the world, but they become increasingly proficient at discriminating the sounds they are exposed to, and the complexity of their vocal output increases when they have a social audience (Meltzoff et al., 2009). A crucial factor in facilitating language development is a close, affective relationship. Alison Clarke-Stewart (1973) found that eye-to-eye contact was an important feature of verbal stimulation and the most effective language learning

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emerges from mutual engrossment in some activity. The warm and trusting relationship that emerges from play and games is a necessary groundwork for the development of communication. There is an intricate interrelationship between play, language and affective relationships. See chapter 7 for a more detailed account of language development. One factor several researchers have stressed is the contingent responsiveness of the mother. In early infancy responsive caregivers will react quickly to their infant’s crying. Crying makes up an increasing amount of an infant’s day until about six to eight weeks, and then begins to decline. It is perhaps surprising to learn that when caregivers respond promptly to infant crying instead of ignoring it in the first few months of life, babies tend to cry less and develop other forms of communication more quickly later on (Bell & Ainsworth, 1972; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Caregiver responsiveness seems to relate to the infant’s feelings of control over his environment. According to Clarke-Stewart: ... by the mother’s prompt, contingent, and consistent response to his signals, the infant learns that his behaviour does have consequences and that his actions can control his environment. This belief leads to motivation which is a necessary basis for further learning – a generalized expectancy of similar control in new and different environmental and social settings. Thus early response-contingent stimulation may become a perpetuating condition for competence and information-seeking as well as for the formation of social relationships. (Clarke-Stewart, 1973, p. 4)

Being able to explore a safe environment with plenty of variety is essential so that children can develop skills with manipulating objects and learn to understand spatial relationships. Through exploration and play the infant gradually builds up schemes that enable him to develop progressively more complex ways of dealing with the world. Hence opportunities for infants to explore their immediate environments safely are really valuable, for example, making the living area and kitchen cupboards accessible, collecting small objects of different shapes, having available plastic containers of different sizes so that children can experiment with pouring water from one container to another. Keeping some different play materials in reserve is helpful, so that children do not become too bored with existing ones. There is no particular need for special toys. Ordinary objects are usually full of interest for infants and toddlers. Although the full-time attention of an adult is not essential, the research seems to indicate the importance of someone being available when an infant is playing – to respond to signals for help such as when an object is frustratingly out of reach, to talk to the child about the play and to make things accessible, and to ensure safety. Several studies indicate that caregivers need to be actively involved with the child in play at least some

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of the time (Elardo, Bradley, & Caldwell 1975; Clarke-Stewart, 1973; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). An essential ingredient of a stimulating environment is that children have the opportunity to engage with another person (or persons) in shared experience of events and objects. When an adult shares attention with an infant over some external object or event, this joint attention provides a common ground for communication and teaching, and is the beginning of infants’ ability to project their own experience onto other people (Meltzoff et al., 2009). (I introduced this concept in chapter 1 as an important concept in sociocultural theory, and again in chapter 2 as an example of a responsive learning context.) The first signs of joint attention occur when infants start to follow an adult gaze in their first six months of life, and this gaze-following becomes more sensitive and sophisticated by the age of one year. Andrew Meltzoff and his colleagues argue that the actions of self and other are intricately connected and that there is an overlap in the brain systems used both to perceive others’ actions and produce one’s own actions. Jerome Bruner (1995) thought that the two most important pieces of knowledge that children acquire in infancy are: firstly, that other people are also agents dedicated to achieving goals; and secondly, that there is a ‘standing for’ relationship between arbitrary signs and the world of experience. Before the child can acquire this knowledge there needs to be a ‘meeting of minds’. Joint attention (Schaffer, 1992; Smith, 1999; Tomasello, 1999) is a process where children and adults (or peers) are jointly focused on objects, activities or ideas. This usually happens in brief episodes during the day when a child turns to a caregiver if he strikes a difficulty or an interesting situation. The caregiver usually responds with support, information, a label, an extended idea or shared enthusiasm. These joint attention episodes seem to be a core teaching and learning context for infants and are most likely to occur in novel and challenging environments which contain responsive caregivers (Smith, 1999). The following example of an episode of joint attention of a 17-month-old girl, A’s, interaction with a caregiver, comes from a study of under two-year-olds in early childhood centres: A sitting by carer. ‘Es a my socks,’ says A. ‘Your socks, these yours?’ says carer, kneeling. A points, ‘Dat sockey’. Carer says, ‘You’ve got socks, he’s got socks.’ A replies, ‘Yes’. Carer says, ‘You want to fix it, good girl.’ Carer tries hood. ‘I had the hat,’ says A and pats head. A walks outside, puts foot in boot as she holds the wall, vocalizes, ‘Ah, ug’. Carer asks, ‘Can’t get it on?’ A replies, ‘I push it’. (Smith, 1999, p. 94)

This example shows the intense mutual sensitivity involved in joint attention, with the teacher carrying out a conversation with the child over the simple

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caregiving routine of putting on her socks, boots and hat. The teacher interprets the child’s communications, understands what she is trying to do, and provides the necessary support. The child is comfortable with the teacher and initiates the episode of interaction herself. The teacher extends the child’s language but adjusts her own language so that the child can understand her. This and other examples of joint attention show how children come to co-construct their understanding in the context of meaningful and engaging activities with other people, preferably those with whom they have warm relationships and intersubjectivity (a shared focus of understanding and purpose). It is this self–other equivalence that is the starting point of social cognition and precondition for infant development, according to Meltzoff (2009). The ability of infants to share attention and meaning with another person is also seen in another important process which emerges between the ages of six and 12 months, social referencing. Social referencing occurs when an individual’s interpretation of people, objects or activities is influenced by the understanding of another person (Feinman, 1982). Thus infants commonly look to their mothers or caregivers when faced with a situation of uncertainty, such as the presence of a stranger or a novel object or activity. Children look towards the caregiver to see how he or she is responding to the novel event. If the child picks up an unfamiliar object and sees her father smiling, for example, she is likely to interpret his reaction as an indication that he likes the object, and to continue playing with it. If, however, he frowns or shakes his head, the child may cease to touch the object. Social referencing illustrates how construction of meaning is a shared process from an early age. This process is a particularly important way of transmitting emotional reactions between people – for example, fear of dogs, lawnmowers or people who are different in some way.

Summary

This chapter has presented evidence that the first years of life are a time of exceptional plasticity and vulnerability for children. Brain architecture starts to develop prenatally with the rapid proliferation of neurons, followed after birth by selective pruning. Early brain development is experience-expectant, depending on exposure to typical stimulation during a critical period, such as light, sound, gravity, exposure to language and emotional support, for normal growth. Experience-dependent development occurs over a longer period of time, allowing individuals to adapt to variations in their environment, and to develop brain circuits which support complex learning. Exposure to excessive stress such as threat, uncertainty or neglect causes the body’s stress management systems to be overactivated, resulting in the overproduction of cortisol, which disrupts brain circuitry and prevents children from managing their later reactions to stress.

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Experience of sensitive, responsive caregiving helps children to reduce their cortisol production, and manage their response to stress. The research on children deprived of sensitive care during infancy shows that low levels of human and physical stimulation are associated with delays in physical, social, emotional and intellectual development. This research suggests the need for personal relationships and a variety of experiences during infancy if normal development is to occur. Children who have been deprived in early childhood through, for example, being in institutional care, have shown evidence of recovery when they are transferred through adoption by stable loving families. Recovery from early deprivation is easier when children are adopted before the age of six months. Although institutionalised children can recover if placed into stable environments, there is evidence of lasting cognitive and social difficulties in some children. The components of a favourable experience were examined from the point of view of the importance of love, attachment and stimulation. Parental love is not inevitable but influenced by many factors, such as the parent’s own experience of being mothered, or environmental conditions of poverty. Love results in a heightened sensitivity to the infant. It need not necessarily be provided by one person only, or be continuous, or come from a woman. Attachment or bonding is the process by which caregiver and infant form a reciprocal relationship in the first year of the infant’s life. Attachment to one or a small number of familiar figures encourages the infant to explore the world and conquer her fear of strange situations. One key ingredient to attachment and love is stimulation. Distinctive, frequent and varied stimulation, which is attuned to the infant’s state, is necessary for normal development. The types of stimulation which have been shown to be important include: frequent physical stimulation, such as being picked up or cuddled; the verbal stimulation of being talked to in an affectionate context; joint attention to an activity, idea or object; contingent responsiveness to the baby’s signals; and the opportunity to explore a safe interesting physical environment. Opportunities for infants and young children to engage in joint attention episodes, where they share attention to an external object, event or action with another person, are crucial to help children to extend their communicative and social skills, including understanding the perspectives of others and self-regulation. Shared cognition is the starting point of infant cognitive and social development.

5

Early Childhood Education

Skills beget skills. All capabilities are built on a foundation of capacities that are developed earlier. This principle stems from two characteristics that are intrinsic to the nature of learning ... First, early learning confers value on acquired skills, which leads to self-reinforcing motivation to learn more. Early mastery of a range of cognitive, social, and emotional competencies makes learning at later ages more efficient and therefore easier and more likely to continue. (Heckman, 2011, p. 6)

The previous chapter discussed how and why the experiences of infants are so important for learning. The early years remains the focus for this chapter, but we look in more depth at ECE settings outside children’s own homes, which most New Zealand children encounter before they start school. I outline the policy story that led to New Zealand ECE becoming recognised internationally for its good practice, including its holistic bicultural curriculum, Te Whāriki. I discuss the evidence that shows that high-quality ECE can have a profound impact on children’s well-being and development, and explain different perspectives on the meaning of quality. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the research showing that investing in high-quality ECE is cost-effective and has benefits for all of society, not just children. Part of growing up for most New Zealand children before they turn five involves participating in out-of-home early childhood settings, such as education and care centres,1 kindergartens, playcentres, kōhanga reo,2 Pasifika centres3 or home-based settings. In 2012, 95 per cent of New Zealand new school entrants had participated in ECE (Ministry of Education, 2012). An increasing proportion of very young children are participating in ECE, so that 33.5 per cent of all 1 2 3

Known in other countries as childcare or day care centres. Māori language immersion centres. Pacific language immersion centres.

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enrolments in 2012 were of zero to two-year-olds. The rates of participation for under three-year-olds have doubled since 1990. This growth in participation of preschool children in ECE seems to be taking place in the majority of developed countries of the world (Kamerman, 2000). We must not forget, however, that even though young children are spending increasing amounts of time away from home, it is still the home environment and parental caregiving that make the lion’s share of the contribution to their learning outcomes (NICHD, 2002; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). One implication of this is that ECE should be focused not only on outcomes for children, but on making connections with families, to support and build on family strengths. Care and education cannot be separated in the early years, since education for young children must include care if it is to provide the sensitive nurturance and responsiveness necessary for learning and development (as described in chapter 4). In many countries a misleading dichotomy between care and education still exists, with separate funding and administrative arrangements for care and education. New Zealand was one of the first countries in the world to fully integrate responsibility for all ECE services within the education system (Moss, 2000). For young children, learning occurs best within the context of close and caring relationships either from parents or other caregivers, so that when I use the term ECE, I am referring to services that incorporate both care and education. While current political rhetoric is sympathetic to recognising the importance of ECE, New Zealand (and the majority of other developed countries) still put most resources into educating older children. Figure 5.1 shows the productivity of investment in the early years of life compared to later investment (Heckman, 2011). The author, Nobel Laureate and economist James Heckman, says that the diagram summarises a substantial body of literature on the returns to investment at different stages of the life cycle. He argues that to overcome early disadvantage, it is much more effective to invest in early intervention, since most efforts to help adolescents to recover from disadvantage have been relatively ineffective. Heckman believes that non-cognitive skills such as motivation, sociability, ability to work with others, attention and self-control have an ongoing importance in later life, and that they can be more easily learned in early childhood. The importance of these skills is that they facilitate the transfer of learning to new and different situations. Heckman (2000) is critical of the preoccupation with cognitive skills and academic ‘smarts’ as measured by test scores to the exclusion of social adaptability and motivation in early childhood research. Similarly, other researchers have warned against the exclusive emphasis on literacy, and urged attention to other essential capacities:

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Rate of return to investment in human capital

Programs targeted towards the earliest years

Preschool programs

Schooling

Job training

0–3

4–5

School

Post-school

Figure 5.1 Rates of return to human capital investment at different ages: return to an extra dollar at various ages. From Heckman, J."J. (2008) Schools, skills and synapses. Economic Inquiry, 46(3) 289–347. Reproduced with the permission of John Wiley and Sons.

... such as initiative, self-confidence and persistence in learning, as well as ability to work co-operatively and resolve conflict with peers – all of which are core characteristics of students in a successful school, citizens in a healthy community, and the workforce of a prosperous nation. (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2007, pp. 4–5)

In this chapter I will show how participation in high-quality ECE can support the learning of all children, and can help to compensate for social and economic inequalities. Investment in early childhood has benefits, not only for children, but for families and for the society at large through supporting cultural survival, economic productivity, and a more equitable distribution of wealth and education.

Philosophy of ECE in Aotearoa New Zealand

When the administration of early childhood education (kindergartens and playcentres) and care (childcare centres) was integrated in 1986, this was a key historical event that helped to set the scene for the introduction ten years later of New Zealand’s early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki. The success of Te Whāriki as a guide to early childhood practice has been recognised internationally, so I

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include an introduction to it here because of its relevance to readers locally and globally. It is also important to discuss Te Whāriki to help provide a context in which to interpret research on other ECE approaches and philosophies. The curriculum was co-written by Māori authors Tilly and Tamati Reedy, and Pākehā authors, Margaret Carr and Helen May. The Māori title, by which it is universally known, means ‘a woven mat for all to stand on’, reflecting its holistic and bicultural vision, and that its principles and strands can be woven into many patterns, enabling diverse types of ECE centres to find it relevant. It includes four broad principles: empowerment, holistic development, family and community, and relationships; and five strands: well-being, belonging, contribution, communication and exploration. The curriculum is based on sociocultural theory stressing the role of socially and culturally mediated learning, and children’s participation in shared meaningful activities. Other people, culture and the tools of culture (especially language), institutions and history are acknowledged to have a powerful influence on children’s learning. Rather than one path for development, there is a variety of potential developmental pathways. Children’s learning is believed to emerge from cultural goals with the guidance of community practice and expertise. This approach also fits well with Heckman’s emphasis on the importance of non-cognitive skill, and strengthening children’s ongoing learning dispositions, rather than on specific intellectual skills. The curriculum emphasises the critical role of socially and culturally mediated learning and of reciprocal and responsive relationships for children with people, places, and things. Children learn through collaboration with adults and peers, through guided participation and observation of others, as well as through individual exploration and reflection. (Ministry of Education, 1996b, p. 9)

Children, even very young children, are treated as active constructors of their own knowledge and understanding, rather than passive recipients of experiences. Everyday activities in different settings reflect social and cultural practices and are the vehicle for acquiring meanings. Teachers take an active role and participate with children in joint activities co-constructing meaning and encouraging children to take an active and inventive role. Teaching is not mere transmission of knowledge but a process of sharing meanings and understandings. This approach is supported by the findings of the United Kingdom Effective Provision of PreSchool Education study, which showed the importance of joint involvement and sustained shared thinking in everyday activities (Sylva & Taylor, 2006). An integral part of the theory of Te Whāriki is the concept of learning dispositions. These are ‘habits of mind that dispose the learner to interpret, edit, and respond to experiences in characteristic ways’ (Carr, 1997, p. 2). They include

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such aspects as learning to persevere with difficulties rather than giving up and avoiding failure, communicating with others, and being imaginative. Dispositions enable children to recognise, select, edit, respond to, resist, search for, construct and modify learning opportunities (Carr, 2001; Carr, Smith, Duncan, Jones, Lee, & Marshall, 2010). Learning dispositions are situated within dynamic sociocultural contexts, however, and not separated from the world of action. Children are active in their own development – their learning is not just the effect of inputs or external forces. Teachers using this perspective acknowledge that children have knowledge and skills already and give them the opportunity to interpret and explore the environment themselves. Changing power relations within such contexts may enhance or threaten a child’s sense of self as a learner. This approach to learning rejects an orientation in which children are motivated by avoidance of failure, difficulty and negative judgements from others. When children worry about being wrong this inhibits their disposition to learn. Dispositions are similar to the five ‘key competencies’ in the New Zealand National School Curriculum. ‘More complex than skills, the competencies draw also on knowledge, attitudes, and values in ways that lead to action. They are not separate or stand-alone. They are the key to learning in every learning area’ (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 12). The key competencies listed in the school curriculum are: thinking; using language, symbols and texts; managing self; relating to others; and participating and contributing. In my earlier discussions of childhood studies theory in chapter 1, I explained the importance of how children are constructed in society, and how constructions influence the way children are treated. Te Whāriki views children as agents and as independent social actors, rather than as lesser persons progressing through socialisation into adulthood, or the passive subjects of teaching. Te Whāriki draws attention to the importance of contexts that position children as capable and competent. Learning dispositions are a key ingredient in the facilitation of transfer, or having the authority to go beyond what was originally taught – ‘authoritative, accountable positioning’ (Greeno, 2006, p. 538). Te Whāriki also recognises the value of the ‘funds of knowledge’ (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005) in children’s cultural and family backgrounds. It ‘recognizes that families have valuable competence and knowledge from their life experiences, and that knowing about these family resources opens up new possibilities for learning and classroom teaching’ (Carr et al., 2010, p. 21). Such valuing of family resources is in contrast to a deficit-based understanding of families as lacking in parenting skills, education and knowledge. Such deficitbased approaches are very common in research on the effects of ECE on lowincome families. Current research and theory in ECE suggest that positive feelings about

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learning, and dispositions to go on learning, are more likely to occur where there is a curriculum, like Te Whāriki, where adults are encouraged to engage jointly with children (and children engage with peers) in meaningful activities and problems. ‘Academic’ early childhood curricula where children are taught isolated skills, such as letter and number recognition, without these being embedded in meaningful contexts, are likely to lead to early feelings of failure and avoidance of challenge for a substantial group of children. A new way of assessing the learning that is valued in Te Whāriki has been devised through the development of a narrative formative approach to assessment called Learning Stories. These are discussed at more length in chapter 9. The use of traditional learning assessment tools such as checklists or running records has not proved useful in relation to Te Whāriki. I have explained the philosophy and rationale for Te Whāriki in this section, without referring to the considerable critical literature about it (e.g. Nuttall, 2003, 2013; Soler & Miller, 2003; Smith, 2011c). The volume of this literature attests to the way that Te Whāriki is taken seriously both in New Zealand and internationally, and the value of critical reflection on the document to enrich it and ensure it continues to evolve with the emergence of new theory and research, a process that should keep it alive and prevent its stagnation.

Research on the effects of ECE

Research on ECE has made a major contribution to our knowledge of the effect of early environments on children, and towards discovering the essential components of such environments. Such research has been drawn on in discussions of educational and family policies in many countries, and has recently led to widespread rethinking of the administration and funding of ECE. An overview of the research suggests that high-quality ECE has a long-term impact on children’s lifelong capacity for learning, forming relationships and contributing to society, and on equalising chances for children from different social and economic circumstances. Several reports in New Zealand have highlighted the powerful impact of ECE, and the importance of investing in highquality early childhood education (Carroll-Lind & Angus, 2011; Dalli, White, Rockel, Duhn et al., 2011; ECE Taskforce, 2011; Mitchell, Wylie, & Carr, 2008; Smith, Grima, Gaffney, & Powell, 2000). ‘Convergence in the results of substantial evidence, based on well-designed longitudinal research studies and cost-benefit analyses, reveals positive long-term effects for individuals who have experienced high-quality early childhood education compared to individuals who have not’ (ECE Taskforce, 2011, p. 21). Some of the evidence concerning long-term effects and the nature of quality is presented below.

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Compensatory ECE programmes

In the United States during the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson launched his ‘War on Poverty’, which included a number of initiatives in the preschool area, designed to break the cycle of poverty and disadvantage and to give poor children a good start at school. Many psychologists were involved in the development of these programmes, and had a keen interest in finding out whether children’s development could be changed by these enriched programmes. Federally funded Head Start programmes were focused on improving children’s IQ, school achievement and mastery of formal concepts; improving social relationships with adults and peers; and reducing deviance and delinquency, through special teaching in the preschool years. Head Start included many different programmes which approached the provision of compensatory education for preschoolers in many different ways, from highly structured repetitive, drill-like programmes (Bereiter & Engelmann, 1966), to cognitively based open framework programmes focusing on the child’s experiences and actions in solving problems at his own level of development (Weikart, 1972). The length and timing of programmes also varied, from two or three summer sessions, to daily sessional preschool programmes, to all-day programmes lasting for one or more years. Some programmes went beyond taking children out of their home environment, and involved the parents either through home-visiting or including the parents in the programme. One of the most famous and often cited early intervention studies is David Weikart’s Perry Preschool Project (Berrueta-Clement, Schweinhart, Barnett, Epstein, & Weikart, 1984). The project studied 123 disadvantaged black youths who were randomly assigned to a high-quality preschool programme, based on Piagetian principles of active cognitively based learning, when they were between three and four years of age. Long-term follow-up data from the age of three to nineteen were collected on the children who had experienced the enriched preschool programme compared to a similar control group of children without the programme. The lasting beneficial effects included: improved school achievement; lower rates of school failure, special education placement and school dropouts; higher rates of post-secondary training; decreased delinquency, crime and welfare dependency; lower rates of teenage pregnancy; and higher rates of functional competence. Economist Steve Barnett (1995) reviewed the long-term effects of 36 early intervention studies that followed children through to school. The programmes were either high-quality model programmes (like the Perry Preschool Project) or everyday large-scale programmes (mostly Head Start). The weight of the evidence establishes that ECCE [Early Childhood Centre Experience] can produce large effects on IQ during the early childhood

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years and sizeable persistent effects on achievement, grade retention, special education, high school graduation and socialization. ... Evidence for effects on high school graduation and delinquency is strong but based on a smaller number of studies. These effects are large enough and persistent enough to make a meaningful difference in the lives of many low-income children. (p. 43)

More recent reviews of model early intervention programmes have shown that these early findings have been replicated (Karoly, Greenwood, Everingham et al., 1998; Karoly, Kilburn, & Cannon, 2005, cited by Mitchell et al., 2008). The findings are similar to those of Barnett (1995), showing short-term (but not longterm) gains in IQ, gains in educational achievement, reduced special education placement, increased school graduation, and decreased crime and delinquency. The best outcomes were associated with programmes that had more qualified staff, more favourable staff–child ratios and greater intensity.

Everyday ECE programmes

The effects of ECE can also be explored by research examining everyday programmes delivered as part of a universal service. One such study is the Child– Parent Center Project, based in Chicago. It involved the provision of preschool education in or near public primary schools in 24 centres serving 100 to 150 predominantly poor, three- to five-year-olds. These programmes had a significant component of outreach family support to work with parents, in addition to intensive and ongoing work focusing on improving children’s educational skills. Children who participated in the programme had significantly higher rates of school completion, lower rates of grade retention and special education placement, and lower rates of juvenile arrests (Reynolds, 1994; Reynolds, Temple, & White, 2011). The participants have been followed up until adulthood, and the effects have been lasting. The New Zealand Competent Children, Competent Learners study followed 500 children who had participated in ordinary Wellington preschools, from 4 to 20 years of age. The study showed that high-quality ECE was associated with better reading, mathematics and literacy achievement at age 14 years, and that these effects were independent of parental education or income. Children had higher average scores if they had three or more years of ECE (Wylie & Thompson, 2003; Wylie, Hodgen, Ferral, & Thompson, 2006). The longer children had attended ECE and the higher the quality, the greater were the effects on children’s competency. The socioeconomic mix of children in ECE settings had an ongoing impact on competency, with lower socioeconomic status children doing better in mixed settings. By age 16 years, there were continuing effects of ECE on outcomes (Wylie, Hodgen, Hipkins, & Vaughan, 2008).

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The British Effective Provision of Preschool Education (EPPE) project investigated the effects of preschool education and care on the development of 3,000 three- to seven-year-old children (Sylva, Melhuish, Sammons, SirajBlatchford, & Taggart, 2004). Three-year-old children who had attended a variety of types of preschool education were followed until age seven, and their developmental progress compared to a group of home children who had no or minimal preschool experience. The study showed that preschool experience enhanced the all-round development of children, including reading and mathematics scores and social/behavioural measures, and that longer duration and higher quality preschool continued to impact on outcomes for children at age seven. The ECE settings with more qualified staff achieved better cognitive and social/behavioural outcomes. The effects were particularly powerful for children who came from more disadvantaged backgrounds. The United States National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) longitudinal study is one of the few studies that follows children from birth until adulthood, and looks at the effects of children’s naturally occurring participation in non-parental ECE. This comprehensive longitudinal study looked at the relationships between children’s experiences in childcare and their development over time (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). The study found that there was a surprisingly high level of non-parental childcare in the first year of life, with 72 per cent of infants experiencing it. Children in exclusive maternal care were not different from children who had experienced childcare, but quality of childcare (responsive and sensitive caregiving plus structural measures of quality) was a consistent predictor of children’s cognitive and language performance at three years of age. Later follow-ups at third grade (eight years of age) showed that experience in better quality childcare continued to be associated with higher scores in maths, reading and memory. More hours of care, however, were associated with poorer work habits and poorer social skills. Family variables were, however, much more powerful than childcare variables in predicting child development outcomes (NICHD, 2000; 2005). While there are variations in findings according to country, the overall findings are that participation in quality ECE has both short- and long-term positive effects on children’s numeracy, literacy and other cognitive outcomes. One study (the NICHD project) showed some evidence of longer hours in ECE being associated with problem behaviours, but these associations did not persist in the longer term. The EPPE study found high-quality ECE participation after three years of age reduced the antisocial behaviour associated with longer hours and early entry (Mitchell et al., 2008). The focus of our national early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki, has been strengthening learning dispositions (known also as key competencies). These

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combinations of ability, inclination and sensitivity to occasion are seen in such skills as ability to work with others, perseverance and self-control. In their review of the effects of ECE programmes, Linda Mitchell and her colleagues devote a chapter of their report to learning dispositions and socio-emotional outcomes (Mitchell et al., 2008). The report shows the links between learning dispositions and a mastery orientation to learning where children focus on effort rather than fears of failure. Mitchell et al. (2008) also point to the importance of ‘identity’, which influences characteristic patterns of strategic action and orientation to learning. Learning identities are what make children feel positive about learning and likely to go on learning (have a mastery orientation), or feel negative about learning and give up in the face of difficulty. Children draw on these identities developed at home and in the community as they elaborate and negotiate their identities as learners at ECE centres and schools. Two qualitative New Zealand studies (Ramsey, Breen, Sturm et al., 2006; Carr, 1997, 2000) cited by Mitchell et al. (2008) explored contexts that weaved together cognitive and non-cognitive learning. Karen Ramsey et al. (2006) showed how information and communications technologies (ICT) could be used to enhance family participation and children’s storytelling competence, by adding a mode of communication (visual, oral and physical). ICT provided a common language and enabled the children to take responsibility, collaborate and teach others, and engage with the wider community. The second study explored four-year-olds’ learning in the construction area of an early childhood setting (Carr, 1997, 2000). Episodes of joint attention and negotiation about difficulty were contrasted with episodes focusing on ‘performance goals’ (avoiding challenge, being good). Where adults provided collaboration and challenge in joint tasks, the initiative stayed with the child who tended to persist with difficulty. But where adults mostly provided tutorials, support or approval, children did not persist with difficult tasks and had low challenge intentions. Forty-seven studies were found by the reviewers that analysed the relationship between participation in ECE and learning dispositions and socio-emotional outcomes (Mitchell et al., 2008). Positive associations between ECE participation and these outcomes were found in 25 studies, generally showing positive effects when the settings were of good quality with better staffing, links with families, positive communications and responsive interactions with children. There were some small negative effects in terms of increased aggression, and antisocial and worried behaviours in 13 studies, generally associated with extensive and long hours and an early start in out-of-home ECE, as well as lower levels of quality. Positive associations between ECE participation and development of learning dispositions have been found in studies carried out in everyday ECE settings

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in New Zealand, England, Northern Ireland, and Canada, and intervention programmes in the US. Gains have been found in the short and the long-term, although the English EPPE study found no significant effects by age 7. This may be because of lack of cohesion between the schooling and the ECE contexts. (Mitchell et al., 2008, p. 58)

The nature and components of quality ECE Defining quality Quality is defined as the essential components of early childhood environments that are valued in our society, and which support the well-being, development and rights of children and support effective family functioning. (Smith et al., 2000, p. 44)

Throughout this chapter I have talked about the value of participation in highquality ECE programmes, so it is necessary to explain in more depth what is meant by quality. The above definition of quality captures two important aspects of quality, the subjective and objective aspects. Quality has sometimes simplistically been assumed to consist of objective variables that have been empirically shown to support positive child development outcomes, but the issue is much more complex than that. Quality is also subjective because it includes aspects of ECE settings that incorporate our cultural values that differ depending on families, communities and societies. In Aotearoa New Zealand, for example, most ECE settings would include the promotion of Māori reo and tikanga,4 as most of us share a bicultural vision for children in this country. It should be acknowledged there is considerable critique of the concept of quality in ECE. For example, post-modernists (Burman, 1994; Dahlberg, Moss, & Pence, 1999) reject a discourse of quality, because they associate it with the dominance of a decontextualised child development approach, and its offering of ‘certain and objective truth, the individual’s progress through universal developmental stages, a “grand narrative”’ (Dahlberg et al., 1999, p. 100). Child development knowledge has been described as ‘a slippery base’ for practice because research only approximates practice and does not explain what experience means to the child. Moreover, child development research is situated in history, and the dominant discourses and values of the time (Stott & Bowman, 1996, cited by Dalli et al., 2011, p. 29). Perhaps controversially, I have chosen to continue to use the term ‘quality’ and draw on developmental research, but to acknowledge a wider discourse about 4 Language and culture.

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quality as ‘negotiated and problematized in practice’ (Dahlberg et al., 1999, p. 142), and to seek definitions of quality through a framework of sociocultural theory as expressed in the approach taken in Te Whāriki. Gunilla Dahlberg and her colleagues’ arguments remind us that there are different perspectives on quality, and that good practice involves judgements as well as cultural and social values. Dahlberg et al. (1999), like many others in the ECE world, are great admirers of the inspiration provided by the Reggio Emilia centres in Italy. Reggio centres are collectively committed to a particular vision of the child as ‘rich’, engaging actively in the world, co-constructing meanings with adults and peers, and as citizens with rights and responsibility. This vision contrasts with language in some disciplines that describes children as having ‘deficits’, being ‘at risk’, ‘deprived’ or ‘with special needs’. Some aspects of the Reggio vision are shared by Te Whāriki but our New Zealand curriculum also has its own unique perspective and theoretical foundation, drawing upon Pākehā and Māori knowledge. Like the post-modernists I reject the view that there is ‘one true way’ of providing quality ECE, and acknowledge that quality will involve negotiation and argument between stakeholders in local settings, and the balancing of multiple perspectives. My own view concurs with that of Miriam Rosenthal (1994), however, who believes that it is important to continue to search for relevant measurable variables through empirical research, while acknowledging and including cultural and social values in the research. I cannot accept that each stakeholder’s view is of equal value, as this would lead to a completely relativistic acceptance that ‘anything goes’, and elevates the perspectives of adults over children (Smith et al., 2000). In relation to the subjective and value-based aspects of ECE quality, I also draw on a discourse of rights arising out of the UNCRC. I argue that if we want ECE to implement the rights of children to survival, development, cultural identity, and an education that meets their potential, and listens to and takes into account their voice and perspectives, then only ECE of high quality can meet these aims. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment Number 7 (2006, para 1) makes it clear that ‘young children are holders of all rights enshrined in the Convention and that early childhood is a critical period for the realization of these rights’. It has often been assumed that children’s participation rights (to express their views and have them taken into account) do not apply to younger children, but the General Comment emphasises that respect for young children’s agency is an important aspect of their rights. This means treating young children as capable and competent, rather than simply as vulnerable objects of protection. Quality is an important construct because we cannot understand the effects of ECE without knowing about its quality. Educational policies sometimes

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concentrate on increasing the number of children attending early childhood centres (participation), without considering quality. Indeed, there is evidence that participation in low-quality ECE is harmful for children, and that the risks of harm from low quality are greater for children who are exposed to other risks (such as poverty) (Hausfather, Toharia, La Roche, & Engelsmann, 1997; NICHD, 2000, 2003).

Measuring outcomes

A child development perspective on quality is described by Carmen Dalli et al. (2011, p. 30) as ‘quality as a measured outcome’. Early empirical work on the nature and impact of quality from this perspective started with concern about the effects of participation in non-parental childcare, but researchers moved away from the all-or-nothing comparison of home versus childcare settings, towards searching for the particular aspects of non-parental or parental care that had a positive or negative influence on children’s learning and development. Decades of research have made clear to policy makers that one cannot make blanket statements about the superiority of exclusive maternal care, paternal care, or non parental care. In each case the quality of care appears crucial; the development of children is affected by the quality of care received both at home and in out-of-home care facilities and by the extent to which the care is sensitively adjusted to be appropriate given the child’s developmental and individual needs. (Lamb, 1998, p. 81)

Structural quality

Structural quality concerns aspects of quality that are relatively easily observed and measured, and are therefore easy to regulate. Examples of measures of structural quality which have been shown to be important, and many of which are incorporated into early childhood regulations, are as follows: ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ

/&.Ƒ"#&LJ,.#) !,)/*LJ-#4 -.ŤLJ.,#(#(!ŻLJ/.#)(LJ(LJ2*,#( -.ŤLJ-.#&#.3 0)/,&LJ-.ŤLJ1!-LJ(LJ1),%#(!LJ)(#.#)(./,-LJ) LJ."LJ*"3-#&LJ(0#,)('(.LJ-/"LJ-LJ-*ŻLJ+/#*'(.ŻLJ(/',LJ) LJ toilets, safety and equipment.

Early evidence relating structural quality to measures of children’s development was found in a major United States research project called the Cost and Quality study (Helburn et al., 1995). Two of its main findings were that:

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The quality of child care is primarily related to higher staff–child ratios, staff education, staff wages, administrators’ experience and curriculum support, and teacher turnover. In addition, certain characteristics discriminate among poor, mediocre, and good-quality centers, the most important of which are teacher wages, education, and specialized training. (Helburn et al., 1995, pp. 320–321)

States with more demanding licensing standards have fewer poor-quality centres, while centres that comply with additional requirements beyond those required for licensing provide higher quality services, showing that the regulatory environment for early childhood education makes a major difference to quality (Helburn at al., 1995). More recently the NICHD longitudinal study found linear associations between the number of recommended standards for quality met (such as ratio, group size or staff qualifications), and child outcomes at 24 and 36 months. Structural variables such as child–adult ratio and staff training matter because of their effect on the sensitive and responsive caregiving (‘process quality’) (NICHD, 2002). Caregiver training and favourable child–staff ratios improve the responsiveness and sensitivity of the staff interactions with children, which has a positive impact on children’s cognitive and social competence and reduces the number of children’s problem behaviours. It makes sense that when there are fewer children per staff member, staff can develop warmer relationships and more intensive interactions. A New Zealand study (Smith, 1996) also confirmed the importance of training, showing that staff with three-year early childhood training had better planned, resourced and managed programmes, and that children had more positive and responsive interactions with trained staff. That staff training also leads to a higher quality of caregiving is a consistent and well-replicated finding (Dalli et al., 2011; Mitchell et al., 2008). A Canadian study (Goelman, Forer, Kershaw et al., 2006) showed that not only ratio of adults to children, but number of adults in a classroom, was an important predictor of quality, so that a centre with two adults and eight children provided better quality than one adult with four children. The authors suggest that the greater number of staff not only provide additional supervision, but also allowed staff to consult with each other, deal with issues collaboratively and reflect on their work. This study showed that there were five significant direct predictors of quality – wages, education level, number of staff in a room, staff satisfaction, and whether the centre received free or subsidised rent or facilities. Parent fees and the use of centres as practicum sites for students were indirect predictors of quality. Higher wages were associated with higher levels of staff satisfaction, probably because staff felt valued and supported in such centres. Parent fees were

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important because they allowed centres to hire better-qualified staff, and pay wages that encouraged staff retention. The importance of wages as a predictor of quality was also found in my New Zealand study (Smith, 1996).

Process quality

Process quality consists of the general environment and social relationships and interactions taking place in the early childhood setting that are directly experienced by children and families. Process quality is obviously affected by structural quality. For example, interactions and relationships have been shown to be directly related to staff–child ratios, group size and staff training. Unfortunately, though, favourable structural aspects (such as favourable staff–child ratios) do not always guarantee good process quality. Process quality has been defined as: ... a well-articulated programme of good care, developmentally appropriate activities for children, nurturing staff members who interact with children to promote their emotional security and development, and a physical environment which provides adequate stimulation and opportunities for a wide variety of activities. (Helburn et al., 1995, p. 26)

A review of the literature on teachers’ interactions with children concludes that the most important aspect of quality in early childhood programmes is the interactions between adults and children (Kontos & Wilcox-Herzog, 1997). Teachers should be involved in playful interaction and joint involvement with children’s activities rather than monitoring and supervision, because a predominance of controlling rather than reciprocal interactions is associated with less optimal development. The essence of quality lies in the nature of the interactions between children and adults, the elements of which are: ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ

,#*,)&ŻLJ,-*)(-#0LJ(LJ1,'LJ,&.#)(-"#*/&.-LJ1")LJ&#-.(LJ.)LJ(LJ(!!LJ1#."LJ"#&,( /&.-LJ1")LJ(!!LJ1#."LJ"#&,(LJ#(LJ-",LJ."#(%#(! /&.-LJ1")LJ-/**),.LJ"#&,(Ɖ-LJ&,(#(!LJ(LJ()/,!LJ2*&),.#)( /&.-LJ 1")LJ Ŭ,'LJ "#&,(Ɖ-LJ /&./,ŻLJ &(!/!LJ (LJ #(.#.3ŻLJ (LJ (!!LJ with their families (Mitchell et al., 2008).

A crucial component of process quality is children’s attachment to their teachers, highlighting the importance of warm relationships and sensitive and responsive interactions. The relationships that children have with their first early childhood teachers are very influential, especially for infants. Children tend to get attached to teachers who are more involved with them, who respond to their social bids and who are sensitive to their needs. There is also some evidence that secure attachments with teachers can compensate for other insecure attachments,

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but there is no evidence that secure attachments with teachers adversely affect attachments to parents (Howes & Spieker, 2008). Early childhood centres need to pay especial attention to facilitating attachment between teachers and children (especially for under-one-year-olds). Such procedures as having a ‘special friend’ or primary caregiver for children, or a teacher who is responsible for a small number of babies, are useful approaches. This teacher can facilitate children’s attachment to her, by getting to know ‘her’ children well and being particularly responsive and sensitive to them. Intersubjectivity between adults and children, where adults can share the perspective of the child in the context of interesting and meaningful activities or joint attention, is an important aspect of quality (Smith, 1999). Joint attention enables adults to have a shared framework of meaning with children so that they can understand children’s intentions, interpret any difficulties they have, and provide help where it is needed. I have suggested that joint attention episodes are an important micro-indicator of quality, because centres that provided more joint episodes in my study of 100 centres were of better quality, having a higher proportion of trained staff and a smaller group size. Only a third of under-two-yearolds in my study (Smith, 1999) experienced joint attention with a teacher, perhaps reflecting the assumption of many teachers that infants are too young to learn.

Policy and quality

Since the 1990s there has been a rapid improvement in the quality of most ECE in New Zealand. The Strategic Plan for ECE (Ministry of Education, 2002) aimed to increase participation and also to improve quality, and our ECE system has greatly benefited from these policies. Between 2004 and 2009, rates of participation increased, the number of ECE staff with qualifications greatly increased, there was better access to and provision of professional development and educational innovations, and there was improved understanding and implementation of Te Whāriki (Mitchell, Meagher-Lundberg, Mara, Cubey, & Whitford, 2011). Unfortunately, that steady progress towards developing an excellent system of ECE in this country has been slowed recently, due to budget cutting as a response to the economic downturn. Funding for trained staff, professional development, innovation and parent support have all been cut. The question of whether having fully qualified teachers in ECE centres is important for quality was tested in the Early Childhood Teachers’ Work Study (Meade, Robinson, Smorti et al., 2012). Until 2011 the New Zealand government funded centres with 100 per cent qualified staff in education and care centres at a higher rate than it funded centres with 80 per cent or less qualified staff. In 2007 the government announced that it would not pursue a target of 100 per cent of qualified staff in ECE centres and that funding would be cut for centres with 100

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per cent qualified staff to the same levels as centres with 80 per cent qualified staff in 2011. The study used two collective case studies – comparing staff–child interactions in five centres with 100 per cent qualified staff and five centres with 50 to 79 per cent qualified staff. In the centres with fully qualified staff, teachers interacted more with children than teachers in centres with fewer qualified staff. Teachers in the 100 per cent centres were more responsive to children, and scored higher on: modelling and encouraging children to use positive reinforcement; modelling and guiding children in the context of centre activities; asking openended questions; fostering language development; participating with children in activities and play; and providing complexity and challenge for children. Children in the 100 per cent centres were more likely to be involved in an education programme, working with symbols systems, and to have more resources. Two of the five centres with 50 to 79 per cent of qualified staff, however, did better than the 100 per cent centres on incorporation of tikanga and te reo Māori into their programmes, perhaps because these centres had more Māori in leadership roles. The study showed that centres where all staff were qualified benefited from consistent high-quality care and education where complex play was supported, and more teacher–child interactions, more conversations between adults and children, and more episodes of sustained shared thinking took place. Teachers also had greater pedagogical expertise when all were qualified and they were better able to link theory to practice. The study showed how short-sighted the government was to cut funding for qualified staff, a policy that is likely to have harmful repercussions in the future.

Relationships with families

One final but very important component of quality in ECE is communication with and sensitivity to families/whānau. Children move between the worlds of home and ECE centres, but the family still has the most powerful impact on outcomes for children. It is therefore important for there to be reciprocal and balanced relationships between ECE centre staff and parents so that parents have a sense of belonging, their cultural and family values are respected by ECE staff, and the knowledge and resources within families can be drawn on by centres. ECE centres should be responsive to the messages that parents themselves provide about how they want to be supported. While ECE teachers come and go in children’s lives, parents have a lifelong connection to their children, so it is important that parents are empowered by their children’s participation. Unfortunately, there have been fewer studies looking at outcomes for families of their children’s participation in ECE than there are of outcomes for children. It has been found, though, that centres that engage parents in their children’s early education, such as through assessment and documentation of children’s learning, tend to encourage

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complementary activities and learning at home. Parenting outcomes associated with participation in ECE services include greater acceptance of children’s behaviour, more positive parenting, better parental knowledge of child learning and more learning activities at home (Mitchell et al., 2008).

Cost effectiveness and equitable outcomes

While it may not be the foremost consideration for advocates of children’s rights and well-being, cost effectiveness is an important aspect of ECE. The findings of this research should be communicated to politicians and policy-makers who are responsible for the allocation of funding to ECE programmes, and to the public whose taxes pay for such programmes. According to American economist Robert Lynch, the provision of universal high-quality early education for all three- and four-year-olds who live in poverty costs billions, but in the long term produces impressive dividends. He wrote about these economic benefits in 2005: By about the 17-year mark, the net effect on budgets for all levels of government combined would turn positive. Within 25 years, by 2030 if a nationwide program were started next year, the budget benefits would exceed costs by $31 billion (in 2004 dollars). By 2050, the net budget savings would reach $61 billion (in 2004 dollars). (Lynch, cited by Calman & Tarr-Whelan, 2005, p. 15)

I have previously alluded to some of the evidence on cost-effectiveness in the introduction to this chapter, in relation to Heckman’s work. Cost-effectiveness refers to the ratio of the costs of programmes, to the benefits they produce. The benefits are usually measured through looking at the increased wages (and tax takes) associated with better education and jobs, reduced costs of benefits for people who are dependent on welfare, and reduced costs in crime and remediation of educational and mental health problems. A New Zealand ECE Taskforce Report (2011, p. 22) summarised the cost–benefit ratios for six US longitudinal studies that followed children from early childhood to adulthood (in the case of the Perry Preschool Project to age 40 years). The cost–benefit ratio varied from the lowest of 3.23 in the Carolina Abecedarian project, to 16.14 for the Perry Preschool Project, with other values having a median value of about 8. This means that for every dollar invested there is a return of eight dollars or more. As a result of a Chicago programme for low-income children who had participated in community-based, high-quality public preschool programmes (Child–Parent Centers) between the ages of three and five, there was a remarkable 18 per cent return on investment for the initial cost of the preschool programme (Reynolds, Temple, White et al., 2011). Unfortunately, many politicians tend to focus on short-term outcomes and have difficulty recognising the value of investment in ECE, when it may take 17 years to reap the full benefits of this investment.

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Swedish economist and sociologist Gosta Esping-Andersen (2008, 2009) has shown how investment in ECE can reduce inequalities in children’s educational achievement and minimise social exclusion. He argues that there is a high return on ECE investments because they can influence both cognitive and non-cognitive skills. ‘The rate of return rises exponentially the younger is the child, suggesting that pre-school and early-school investments yield disproportionally high net returns’ (Esping-Andersen, 2008, p. 22). Poverty tends to be inherited from generation to generation unless there is intervention, and there is a particular risk that some groups, such as single mothers or immigrants, will remain poor. He says that the link between children’s social origins and children’s life chances has not changed since our grandparents’ generation, and that the education system is ‘inherently biased in favour of a middle-class culture that unintentionally penalizes children from lower social strata’ (Esping-Andersen, 2009, p. 113). ‘Cultural capital’, such as knowledge of the school system and how to make good choices for children, is also inherited, and has an even more powerful effect than socioeconomic status on educational success. Esping-Andersen (2008, 2009) is in favour of generous parental leave provisions because parental time investment in children is such an important determinant of good outcomes. Helping parents to be able to return to work after looking after young children is an important way of reducing poverty and improving educational outcomes for children. The incidence of child poverty reduces by a factor of three or four when mothers work. Child poverty also creates social costs for governments – in the United States about 4   per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Esping-Andersen argues for high subsidies for ECE to make it affordable and accessible for parents, as in Sweden where the government subsidises 85 per cent of the cost of ECE and spends about 4 per cent of GDP on it. (In New Zealand less than 2 per cent of GDP is spent on ECE.) Esping-Andersen’s research shows that investment in highquality ECE and support for parents (such as parental leave) has had a significant influence in the Nordic countries on reducing the inheritance of poverty and poor education, and equalising chances of success for disadvantaged families. For example, in Denmark children from low-income backgrounds achieve four times better on international tests than German and United States children from similar backgrounds. Participation in high-quality ECE can diminish the negative effects of low parental education, having few books in the home, being poor or being of immigrant status. Investment in universal high-quality ECE can eliminate the inheritance of poverty and low achievement from one generation to the next. A current controversy is over whether ECE services should be targeted or universal. Currently the New Zealand government is considering policies that would target subsidies to lower income, Māori and other ‘priority children’

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(ECE Taskforce, 2011). It is true that the impact of high-quality ECE is greater for children from low-income families, but there is evidence that the provision of universal services is more effective than targeting. Esping-Andersen (2008) says that a major obstacle to effective targeting is having appropriate mechanisms to identify the most high-risk families, and that such mechanisms have high transaction costs. He believes that additional special incentives should be provided for high-risk communities in addition to a universal approach. There are other robust arguments in favour of universal rather than targeted ECE services. There is clear evidence that universal access to quality ECEC [early childhood education and care] is more beneficial than interventions targeted exclusively at vulnerable groups. Targeting ECEC poses problems because it is difficult in practice to identify the target group reliably, it tends to stigmatise its beneficiaries and can even lead to segregation at later stages of education. Targeted services are also at more risk of cancellation than universal ones. (European Commission, 2011, p. 5)

United States researcher Steve Barnett (2011) reports larger economic gains and greater cost effectiveness when children from all socioeconomic groups participate in quality preschool. He argues that universal ECE programmes will reach a greater proportion of poor children, will produce larger educational gains, and will lead to economic benefits for the nation. He also shows that middle-class children fail, drop out of school and may be inadequately prepared for school and that this is costly to governments. Middle-class children also benefit from quality ECE, so cutting off middle-class children from the benefits of participation in ECE is likely to introduce a raft of new social and economic problems and be costly both for families and society. Barnett also cites evidence that disadvantaged children gain more from participation in ECE if they are in groups where there is a mix of socioeconomic status groups. This finding has also been replicated in the Competent Children, Competent Learners project in New Zealand (Wylie, Hodgen, Hipkins, & Vaughan, 2008).

Summary

Throughout the developed world, including New Zealand, children are increasingly spending considerable time in their childhood attending ECE centres, and this experience has a powerful effect on their ongoing learning. New Zealand’s ECE history has been a positive story, with the integration of education and care and the introduction in 1996 of the early childhood curriculum guidelines, Te Whāriki. This holistic, bicultural, socioculturallybased curriculum views children as competent and capable and encourages dispositions (such as perseverance) and learning goals rather than performance

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goals. It also respects, values and builds on the ‘funds of knowledge’ inherent in families and cultures. Research on the effects of participation in ECE has been ongoing since the 1960s, when several programmes were developed to alleviate poverty and compensate for deficits in disadvantaged families. Another strand of research has looked at the impact of participation of children from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds in everyday ECE programmes. It is clear from both strands of research that, if programmes are of high quality, participation in ECE has a longterm effect on cognitive (school achievement, performance on cognitive tests) and non-cognitive (motivation, self-efficacy, social skills, responsibility and commitment to learning) child development outcomes, with the effect being particularly powerful when children come from low-income backgrounds. The question of what is meant by quality has been a controversial one, with post-modernists disputing that there is any one fixed model of good quality. This chapter has argued that quality consists of both subjective and objective components. Subjective aspects of quality depend on what is valued and negotiated, and vary according to communities, while objective aspects of quality involve measured outcomes. There are likely to be many overlaps between the subjective and objective aspects of quality. Structural components of quality include adult–child ratio, group size, staff training, staff stability and staff wages. Process quality is mediated by structural quality and is about the responsiveness, sensitivity, joint engagement and learning support provided by teachers for children. A recent New Zealand study by Anne Meade and colleagues (2012) has demonstrated that reducing one aspect of structural quality (teacher qualifications) is associated with a reduction in the overall process quality of the interactions between teachers and children. Finally, the chapter has shown that investing in high-quality ECE is cost effective, since it promotes outcomes that reduce costs (better education and employment, reduced welfare dependency). This means that for every dollar invested in high-quality programmes there are likely to be long-term benefits for individuals and society, as well as increased cultural capital and reduced inheritance of intergenerational disadvantage. The chapter has suggested that there should be universal access to high-quality subsidised ECE programmes for all children, but that additional resources should be applied to children and families who are poor or subject to other risks in their lives. It is important that a fair share of society’s resources be directed towards enriching development in infancy and early childhood, as well as ensuring a continuing rich environment in later childhood.

Part III

Domains of Learning

6

Being and Becoming Sociable

Children start to become social beings in infancy, when babies make connections between their own actions and those of others. This chapter discusses social and emotional behaviours, which are inseparable, showing how warm reciprocal relationships and engagement in dialogue enhance children’s social skills, shared meanings and internal models of self. Children’s sense of self – important for their ability to self-regulate – is not fixed, but emerges from discourse within everyday activities. Engagement with peers also plays an important part of becoming a social being, with resolution of conflict being an important way of learning about others’ perspectives, negotiating, and exploring differences and similarities. Imaginative play involves children’s experimentation with social roles, ‘possible selves’ and relationships. Antisocial behaviour like aggression and bullying is a serious problem for a small number of children and the chapter discusses the importance of preventing such behaviour. Learning is embedded in social interactions with other people in the context of our everyday lives, a process that starts from birth. As we engage with other people we learn who we are, how to understand others and their points of view, how to play and work together, how to care for each other, and how to negotiate and resolve conflicts. Through engaging in social interaction and communication with others, our thinking is challenged and supported, and we become able to master more difficult tasks. Engaging with others helps us to understand others’ minds and to extend our own. Social and cognitive learning are therefore inseparable. Reciprocity is a key learning disposition (see chapters 2 and 8 for further discussion of learning dispositions) that involves engaging in dialogue, negotiating mutual sense and ideas, communicating with others, taking into account others’ perspectives, and sharing responsibility. The beginning of reciprocity is in infancy – usually in the context of parent–child interactions – but it blossoms during the preschool years into shared conversation, play, cooperation, and giving and

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receiving practical and emotional support, both with adults and peers. Reciprocity involves intersubjectivity and co-construction of meaning, and is a crucial part of social competency contributing to learning identity. While the origins of reciprocity may be biological, it is clearly socially situated and shaped through the everyday contexts of children’s lives. It is a disposition that influences children’s lifelong learning (Carr et al., 2010).

Early manifestations of sociability

Even very young infants have certain behaviours that predispose them towards social interaction and the rapid acquisition of knowledge about their social world. Meltzoff (2009) says that the myth of ‘the asocial infant’ is one of the most pervasive in social science, and asserts that the human infant is far from being a social isolate. Meltzoff refutes human development perspectives from Freud, Piaget and Skinner that the newborn is cut off from others, and that his response to the world consists mainly of a few reflexes, such as sucking and grasping. Meltzoff proposes a ‘like me’ theory, which is the starting point of social cognition and development, not the outcome of it. This theory has three steps, the first of which is immediately after birth when infants are able to detect and see similarities between their own actions and other people’s actions. ‘The child, even the newborn, can watch the movements of other people and immediately recognise that “those acts are like these acts” or “that looks like the way this feels”’ (Meltzoff, 2009, p. 35). Secondly, infants understand the link between their own acts and underlying mental states. For example, infants understand that there is a relationship between striving to achieve a goal and their own bodily efforts. Thirdly, when infants see others acting in certain ways, they understand that others are acting ‘like me’. ‘Infants integrate the ability to relate self-other at the level of action (Step 1) with their own self-experience (Step 2) to yield a deeper understanding of what lays behind the behavior of others’ (Meltzoff, 2009, p. 36). Very young infants imitate facial expressions and gestures, and follow the gaze of adults. They learn through projecting their own experience onto other people, and interpret the behaviour of others by using themselves as models, as a result of shared brain systems for perception and action. Infants have three social skills – imitation, shared attention and empathetic understanding – that are foundational for ongoing learning (Meltzoff, Kuhl, Movellan, & Sejnowski, 2009). Learning through watching others (imitation) is much faster and more efficient than trial and error, and others who are apparently ‘like me’ serve as a proxy for one’s own learning. Imitation in a primitive form exists in the first few weeks of life. For example, infants will observe and imitate such behaviours as opening and closing the mouth, protruding the tongue and puckering the lips (Bower, 1979; Meltzoff, 2009). Imitating experts in the culture helps children acquire diverse

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behaviours without any explicit teaching. Examples include speech patterns, mannerisms and use of instruments (such as computers or telephones). Shared, or joint, attention to some external object, event or action (discussed in chapters 1, 5 and 8) provides a common ground for communication and a useful way to get to know others’ minds and intentions (Bruner, 1995; Meltzoff et al., 2009). A revolution in children’s understanding of the world occurs at around 9 to 12 months (Tomasello, 1999). Children begin to understand other people as intentional agents like the self, within the context of joint attention between themselves, an adult and an external object, action or referent. Joint attentional episodes are ‘an essential middle ground of socially shared reality – between the larger perceptual world and smaller linguistic world’ (Tomasello, 1999, p.  97). They are defined intentionally and gain their identity and coherence from the joint engagement. To explain how joint attention works to build meaning, Michael Tomasello asks us to imagine being an American in a Hungarian railway station where there is no joint language. In this situation, if the American wants to buy a ticket then he is likely to make himself understood through actions, such as giving and exchanging a ticket and money. The third social skill that Meltzoff (2009) attributes to infants is the capacity to feel and regulate emotions and to be empathetic. When adults appear to hurt themselves or cry, infants will try to comfort the adult, perhaps by offering a cuddle, a teddy bear or a bandage. By 18 months children show concern for an adult who is in a hurtful situation (even without affective cues) and to try to help the adult through prosocial actions (Vaish, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2011). Being empathetic is reliant on understanding that other people have feelings too. As children become better at seeing other perspectives they are better able to express empathy.

Social competence and early relationships

In chapter 4 I showed how children’s lifelong capacity to develop relationships with others is based in their early reciprocal interactions with caregivers. ‘Interactional synchrony’ refers to the way a caregiver and child ‘converse’ together. Speaker and listener move together in ‘a dancelike pattern’ during a communication sequence (Richards, 1974). The mother smiles and looks at the child, the baby responds by paying attention and quietening her body movement, and this response is followed by excitement, babbling and smiling. The mother’s behaviour is closely attuned to the actions of the baby. Infants are active and competent contributors to their relationships with caregivers. Their social competence is influenced by how successful they are in getting a response from their environments.

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Human infants and young children have the big shiny eyes, high foreheads, soft skin, plump cheeks, round and chubby feet and hands, smell of milk, tendency to cuddle up, and uncoordinated movements that generally evoke automatic feelings of tenderness and nurturance in adults, and not to evoke feelings of hostility and fear. (Meadows, 2010, p. 51)

The attractive appearance of babies is generally effective in getting adults to respond with care, attention and stimulation. Infant social competence is influenced, both by adults’ responsiveness to infants’ signals, and by individual differences in infant behaviour. It’s important to recognise the importance of dialogic interactions between children and others, and that both partners play a role in the relationship. Sensitive and responsive relationships that promote social and emotional competence emerge through the ‘serve and return’ interactions that occur between a parent and a baby. In these interactions, young infants make behavioural bids for interaction through babbling, facial expressions, and gestures. A parent who is sensitive to the meaning of these bids will respond with the same kind of vocalising and gesturing ... . These interactions begin within the first month after birth and gradually increase in emotional complexity over the first year resulting in a ‘secure’ attachment between the parent and child. (Wouldes, Merry, & Guy, 2011, pp. 36–37)

While the quotation above refers to interactions between parents and children, there is evidence that secure attachment relationships also develop between early childhood staff members and children in a similar way, provided that the staff members develop responsive and reciprocal relationships with them. Staff members’ opportunity to develop relationships with children depends on the quality of the setting, especially adult–child ratio, staff stability and the training of the staff (Ahnert, Pinquart, & Lamb, 2006; Howes & Oldham, 2001; Howes & Spieker, 2008) (see chapter 5). Attachments to parents and other caregivers are independent, though they develop in a similar way. Insecure attachments with both parents and other caregivers provide a higher level of risk for children, but insensitive mothering can be compensated for by sensitive caregiving by other caregivers (Howes & Spieker, 2008). Attachments to parents are more salient than attachments to early childhood staff, since the latter come and go in children’s lives, while parents are usually there for the long term. Nevertheless, it is important to provide the best quality conditions for secure attachments as possible in early childhood centres, as this can enhance children’s resilience and long-term social competence.

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One problem arising out of the dependence of the child development field on attachment theory has been the lack of attention to other research about relationships that are equally important for understanding children’s social development. Researcher Judy Dunn (1993) says that parent–child relationships: ... differ in several other dimensions that might well appear likely to be important for children’s development. For example, they differ in dimensions of a broad emotional nature: in mutual warmth, the frequency with which mother and child enjoy moments of expressed affection, and the frequency of conflict. They differ in shared involvement in daily activities. They also differ in dimensions that include both emotional and cognitive aspects, such as shared communication about feelings, shared humour (a key feature of adult intimate relationships), and self-disclosure. They differ also in the pattern of power and control in the relationships – not just parental control, but also control by children. (p. 21)

Sharing feelings and experiences are thought by Dunn to be very important in children’s social development. Children learn to understand their own and others’ emotions by hearing their parents and other people talk about their feelings and experiences. Even children as young as two or three are interested in their parents’ feelings, and Dunn illustrates this with observations of mothers sharing their feelings and experiences with attentive children about such things as finding a dead mouse or having a nightmare. Dialogue about inner states (either with parents or siblings) has been shown to predict the amount and sophistication of children’s pretend play, and their understanding of other people’s beliefs and feelings. There is a remarkable stability in children’s understanding of emotions from the age of three onwards (Brown & Dunn, 1996). When children have the opportunity to discuss emotional experiences while in conversation or joint play with a sensitive caregiver, this helps them to regulate their own behaviour and emotions (Oppenheim, Nir, Warren, & Emde, 1997). Participation in family discussion about people’s feelings and why people behave in certain ways is an important aspect of the social environment that has a lasting effect on children’s social understanding. In the course of everyday interactions with their social partners, children learn to ‘know others’ minds’ (Bruner, 1995, p. 3).

The self How shall we deal with self? I think of Self as a text about how one is situated with respect to others and towards the world. (Bruner, 1986, p. 130).

Self has been defined as ‘an organizing mental process and a regulator of experience’ (Emde, Biringen, Clyman, & Oppenheim, 1991, p. 252). The sense of self

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or ‘self-concept’ has value because it provides a narrative for actions that help to guide and regulate our behaviour, and to develop a coherent sense of our world and how we relate to it. It helps us maintain a sense of who we are, minimise pain and maximise pleasure, keep a balance between our sense of self and our relationships with others, and avoid social exclusion. There is no such thing as a rational unitary self since our sense of self is embedded in history and culture, and the discourses, power balances and affordances they contain (Meadows, 2010). The self, from a sociocultural perspective, is assumed to be primarily relational and acquired during cultural practices and social interactions in the social world. The old view that infants had no idea of ‘me’ and that their notion of ‘self’ was undifferentiated and disorganised is not in tune with recent research (Meltzoff, 2009; Meadows, 2010). As explained earlier, Meltzoff argues that very early on babies have a biological tendency to reference their own actions to those of others, and to operate on the ‘like me’ principle. Infants expand their ideas of self through their experiences in their physical and social worlds (Tomasello, 1999). They strive to reach for objects, turn their heads, kick their feet and observe their own bodies, to find out about their capabilities and limitations. Early ‘conversations’ between infants and parents involving intense mutual attention and turn-taking (and later joint attention) provide a context where infants’ sense of self benefits from an outside reference point for their own actions. Social and physical activities provide the roots of agency and self-concept in the first year of life and: ... lead to increasing subjective self-awareness on several fronts: recognition of oneself in a mirror, and an increasing ability to use this recognition to operate in the world: awareness of oneself as an agent, developing into mastery motivation and a sense of self-efficacy, but also to awareness of oneself as a subject to judgement by others; ability to self-regulate, thus avoiding emotional distress ...; and awareness of oneself as a social person in interactions with other social persons and developing scripts of how such interactions should proceed. (Meadows, 2010, pp. 66–67)

The development of language in the first few years extends the possibilities of engaging in talk about the past and future, and this is the beginning of autobiographical memory involving the personal construction and sharing of life experiences (see chapter 7). The self is ‘a product of innumerable life experiences in cultural space’ (Nelson & Fivush, 2004, p. 507). Children develop a sense of their own personal history and autobiographical memory by discussing memories of past experiences, such as going on a picnic or getting a new bicycle. My own grandchildren are really fascinated by photographs of their past experiences, and spend hours with their grandfather looking at photographs on the computer, and

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re-living those experiences. The portfolios used as documentation for Learning Stories assessments (see chapter 9) are an excellent way of building children’s sense of self and learning identity, as these narratives of children’s learning can be shared with peers, teachers and family members. The self is also socially constructed through discourse, according to Dorothy Holland, William Lachicotte, Debra Skinner, and Carole Cain (1998). Communications and social practices convey messages about who we are and the nature of our relationships. The subject of the self is always open to the power of the discourse and practices which describe it. Socially constructive selves are subject to positioning by whatever powerful discourses they happen to encounter. (Holland et al., 1998, p. 29)

People develop concepts of themselves as social actors within their social and cultural worlds, and these ideas influence their agency and control over behaviour. Children act on the world from the positions into which they are persistently cast. I carried out a case study of a four-year-old, Lisa, whose teachers and parents saw her as painfully shy, and as a peripheral participant in her kindergarten (Smith, 2009). Initially Lisa did not engage in talk with her peers or teachers, except with one friend and one teacher. The case study illustrated how Lisa’s (and others’) perception of herself changed, and teachers and parents came to see her as selectively engaging with others and exercising agency when she chose to. Mutual engagement in a widening repertoire of activities opened up new opportunities for Lisa to engage in reciprocal interaction, and her teachers and parents positioned her differently. Discourses about her competence, and approval of her expertise, helped to move her from peripheral engagement to being a confident, initiating and powerful learner. The case study illustrated the changing nature of identity and how it is constructed and reconstructed during participation in the discourses and practices of everyday settings. Early dialogues between adults and children and between children and their peers are important for the development of a sense of self and the moral values attached to the self. Children come to differentiate their own bodies from others and to regulate their actions in terms of internalised moral rules about what they should or should not do. They are not necessarily aware of the rules but they have ‘procedural knowledge’ which is based on their participation in day-to-day activities and experiences with caregivers. They learn the rules of the social world through relationships with others and through shared experience; for example, through taking turns with others, paying attention to the distress of others or monitoring the emotional reactions of others.

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The fundamental modes of development become differentiated so that a basic positive morality occurs through internalizing the do’s of everyday interactions. This morality includes elements of a sense of reciprocity, an internalized sense of everyday rules (e.g., about what to do, when, and what belongs where), empathy, and some internalized standards. Affect plays a major role as pleasure in ‘getting it right’ and is confirmed by the caregiver’s expression of pride for the child’s accomplishments. (Emde et al., 1991, p. 261)

Identity

The boundaries between concepts like self, subject and identity are blurred and the words are often used synonymously (Vadeboncoeur, Vellos, & Goessling, 2011), but identity is an important concept in sociocultural theory, which has major implications for children. Identity is a result of participation within social settings over time in relationships with other people (van Oers, 2009 cited by Fleer, 2010, p. 117; Nolen, Ward, & Horn, 2011; Vadeboncoeur et al., 2011). ... identity is negotiated and internalized through relationships with others in social practices ... . Internalization is a transformative process of making cultural tools and semiotics individual and transforming them through ongoing participation in social practices. (Vadeboncoeur et al., 2011, p. 226)

The cultural tools that mediate identity include language (and meaning), ways of communicating, cultural norms and expectations. Children appropriate these cultural resources, but take an active and critical role, and develop a sense of ownership over the influences they absorb as they do so (Fleer, 2010). Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin explains that when we speak, we borrow the words of others, but populate the words with our own intentions (cited by Vadeboncoeur et al., 2011, p. 226). There has to be a sense of connection between the individual and social practices for them to want to participate. Children tend to join learning activities when they can connect to those activities, feel able to demonstrate their competence within them, and have a feeling of belonging with others in the group who are also participating. Artist Rod Eales spoke at an early childhood research hui in Dunedin (2013) about building a culture of art in her early childhood centre, and creating an identity as artists for three- and four-year-old children at her centre. Children were taken to visit art galleries and encouraged to think about what they liked about different pictures, and about how and why people make art. They learned to observe and critically reflect on the meaning of art, and the language of line, colour and composition, as well as develop a repertoire of visual marks through their own ongoing long-term drawing and painting projects. They also visited artists’ studios and worked alongside resident artists. Eales emphasised how she

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tried to focus on the children’s intentions rather than trying to impose her own, but nevertheless she offered provocations for children’s thinking by giving them still life compositions to paint, and taking them out to photograph (and later paint) landscapes on the Otago Peninsula. Children worked in small groups sharing ideas and discussing their work, and with the help of their teacher produced astonishingly beautiful work that Eales put together into an exhibition at the local art society. On a later occasion, one of the children was standing besides a stranger in an art gallery looking at pictures, when she turned to the other person and said, ‘I’m a famous artist!’ Identities are fluid and localised by participation in particular social worlds at different times. I have recently looked after my grand-daughter and responded to her request for morning tea ( jam sandwiches!), complying with her request from my identity as a grandparent; and when a colleague emailed me to ask if I would give a lecture to her class, my academic identity ensured my agreement with this request. Even at this late stage of my life, identity is fluid, so imagine how much more so it is for children and young people. Expectations about the nature of childhood and how young people should behave are embedded in the discourses of their lives. Researchers Karen Nairn and Jane Higgins (2009, p. 30) define the ‘child–adult’ border as the way ‘young people move backwards and forwards between identities associated with childhood and adulthood’. Identity is particularly fluid for young people because of the fluctuations, transitions and uncertainties in their lives. One of the participants in Nairn and Higgins’ research, Laura, juggled the demands of school and paid work, and her outside interests (horse-riding). Laura was frustrated that she was being treated as a child at school, whereas at work she was treated like an adult. At school (in the final year) she said, ‘We were still sort of babied and yeah, weren’t really treated like adults’, but at work she was expected to supervise younger children. ‘And I’ve got people under me, well I’ve got the school age kids and that’s alright, they do as I tell them’ (Nairn & Higgins, 2009, p. 33). This example shows how Laura negotiated the discourses that positioned her in different ways, as a younger dependent and as a responsible manager, in formulating her identity. Laura’s experience challenges a conceptualisation of childhood as a linear movement from one stage to the next. Instead, young people move backwards and forwards between different identities as they negotiate the child–adult border (Nairn, Higgins, & Sligo, 2012; Nairn & Higgins, 2009). More generally, as people move through time and between different contexts, identities are shifting and context-dependent, and always unfinalised (Vadeboncoeur et al., 2011). Another important fluid and shifting aspect of identity is cultural identity, and this is deeply connected to participation in cultural practices. Knowing where

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children come from and building on what they bring with them is important to support cultural identity. Teachers who engage with and respect children’s whānau and language are more likely to have supportive relationships with Māori children. ‘Māori who are secure in their cultural identity and self-concept have higher educational aspirations and outcomes than those who are less secure’ (Macfarlane & Macfarlane, 2012, p. 32). Early childhood settings have to know about, respect and value Māori children’s cultural context, in order to help lay the foundations for their cultural identity. A conversation between a kaiako (teacher) and a Māori child in a kōhanga reo is reported by Mere Skerrett (2007, p. 9), which illustrates how children’s cultural identity can shift according to language. The kaiako asked Tamaiti why he changed from speaking Māori to speaking English, and he replied that when he spoke Pākehā he was Pākehā, and when he spoke Māori he was Māori. Researcher Belinda Borell (2005, cited by Nairn et al., 2012) found that the identity of young Māori in South Auckland grew out of their connections to locality and community. It was not only having knowledge of Māori language and culture that enabled these young people to identify as Māori, but participation in activities, such as hip hop, that enabled them to be proud of their street and neighbourhood and express tribal identity in an urban setting. Marama was a young Māori woman in Nairn et al.’s (2012) study, who was highly capable academically, a top sportswoman, and a participant in school cultural groups and committees. Her cultural identity was strongly framed through belonging to a collective group of Māori, but her identity also emerged out of her extended family, her friendships, and her sporting and school activities. She was proud of being Māori but aware of the deficit discourses about being so. She knew that her mother had not finished fifth form, and was determined to be successful in education herself. She joined other Māori students on a university recruitment trip for the fun of ‘Māoris being Māori’, suggesting that she combined strong aspirations for herself, and an affiliation with a collective Māori identity. Māori and Pasifika participants in Nairn et al.’s research were acutely aware of how their success or lack of it might reflect on their ethnic group, offering ‘explicit articulations of their cultural identities as collective enactments of identity’ (p. 175).

Self-regulation and moral internalisation

Self-regulation is an important attribute that cuts across all aspects of human behaviour, and marks the child’s transition from helplessness to competence. Yet learning to self-regulate depends very much on relationships and interactions with others (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000).

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The need to delay gratification, control impulses, and regulate emotions is one of the earliest and most important developmental tasks confronting children, and later success in many life domains depends critically on children’s mastery of this self-control skill. (Poulton, 2011, p. 49)

Children increasingly regulate their reactions as they grow, especially if they are in supportive relational contexts. As early as three or four months of age, children regulate their visual attention, and soon after can regulate their sleeping and crying. Children experience emotions from infancy, so controlling emotions starts to happen early on in life. For example, getting angry because you have to wait for a turn or laughing when other people hurt themselves are not acceptable in most cultural contexts, and children have to regulate and manage such emotions. Understanding and regulating emotions is very important and challenging, and mastering this skill provides a strong foundation for future wellbeing and mental health. Cultures differ in what is considered an appropriate expression of emotion, making it especially difficult when children cross over from one cultural setting to another – for example, when the culture of their family does not match with cultural practices in their early childhood centre (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Children display emotions from soon after birth and are sensitive to emotional cues from other people in the first year, as described earlier; more self-conscious emotions like shame and guilt appear later (about 18 months); by the age of two to three years children are able to use language to correctly describe their own and other people’s emotions and to talk about past and future emotions; and by four to five years they are increasingly able to reflect on emotions and understand differing emotional reactions to events. Distressed infants or toddlers actively work to avoid or ignore emotionally arousing situations, using such strategies as reassuring self-talk or changing goals. Emotions are integral to children’s sense of self and of who they are, and help them to interpret the world around them. The ability to understand and control emotions is not, however, an inevitable outcome of growing older, but rather arises out of everyday speech and contexts where children are given the opportunity to reflect on emotions, to be sensitive to other people’s emotions and to affectively distance themselves from their immediate emotions (Kuebli, 1994; Meadows, 2010; Wellman, Harris, Banerjee, & Sinclair, 1995). Children learn about feelings and regulation of them when they have adequate support and dialogue from consistent, familiar and available caregivers who talk and communicate regularly with them. A mutually responsive orientation between adults and children (as opposed to a power assertive approach) has a positive impact on children’s ability to internalise their parents’ messages and

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to self-regulate their own behaviour. In families where there is a power assertive approach to discipline, especially when it involves physical punishment, children have more difficulty in self-regulating their own behaviour (Durrant, 2011; Kuebli, 1994; Meadows, 2010; Smith, 2005a, and see also discussion of discipline in chapter 2). Of particular importance in promoting moral internalisation are interactions which sensitise children to an ‘other-oriented’ inductive style of reasoning, drawing attention to messages about how it feels to be on the other end of hurtful actions or talk (Smith, 2005b). Talking about feelings (both their own and those of others) and a warm affective climate are also important. Caregivers (parents or teachers) can help to legitimate children’s feelings by entering into authentic emotional relationships with children and recognising them as people who can interpret and understand the emotions of others. One of the learning dispositions we identified in our ethnographic study of four- and five-year-old children was resilience, and this seems to be very much dependent on the ability to self-regulate (Carr et al., 2010). We defined it as the capacity to apply a set of skills to cope with or recover from adversity or stress, or as researcher Guy Claxton defines it: being ‘ready, willing and able to lock onto learning’ (Claxton, 2002, cited by Carr et al., 2010, p. 87). This means staying focused in spite of interruptions, setbacks or errors and persevering with a task through to completion. Taking authorship or ‘authoritative and accountable positioning’ (Greeno, 2006, p. 538) is an aspect of resilience that can be seen when children use their expertise to orchestrate complex projects like making concrete, building complex carpentry constructions or creating a ‘treasure island’ (Carr et al., 2010). There are long-term consequences when children do not acquire self-regulatory skills in childhood. A New Zealand longitudinal study of self-control (measured at 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11 years) showed that children who had less self-control during childhood had poorer health, lower income, less education, and were more likely to smoke, be teenage parents and be involved in crime, in adolescence and adulthood. Even taking into account the effect of other risks, poor self-control was associated with negative outcomes at age 32 years. Psychologist Richie Poulton (2011) suggests that self-control is one of the most important of the non-cognitive skills associated with success in life.

Peer interaction

Being able to interact successfully and maintain satisfying reciprocal relationships with peers is an essential part of the development of social competence. Indeed, peer culture is ‘at the core of reproduction and change’, according to sociologist William Corsaro (2009, p. 302). Establishing a dialogue and having a common language (verbal or non-verbal) and having the opportunity to share interests and activities with others are the bases for peer interaction (Carr et al., 2010). Language

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helps children to achieve collective intentionality, co-construct meanings, achieve a sense of togetherness and create a zone of proximal development (ZPD) for each other (Tomasello & Rakoczy, 2003; van Oers & Hännikäinen, 2001). The development of the skills needed to engage with peers has important long-term consequences, since children who have difficulty interacting with peers are at risk of social maladjustment later in life (Katz & McClellan, 1991; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Establishing relationships with other children is a central task of the early childhood years. The success with which young children accomplish this objective can affect whether they will walk the path to competence or deviance as they move into the middle childhood and adolescent years. Learning to play nicely, make friends, and sustain friendships are not easy tasks, and children who do them well tend to have well-structured experiences with peer interaction starting in toddlerhood and preschool, and, in particular, opportunities to play with familiar and compatible peers. (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000, p. 180)

As children gain physical, motor and communication skills, they become equipped to become more independent of adults and interested in engaging with peers. It used to be considered that children below the age of two were not really interested in each other (Bowlby, 1969), but peer group interaction has now been shown to start much earlier. Even two-month-old babies take an interest in each other, six-to-nine-month-olds try to attract each other’s attention, and ninemonth-olds and older begin to imitate each other in play. Children less than a year old attract each other’s interest, share affect and imitate (see Box 6.1, Singer & de Haan, 2007). Infants and toddlers today often have early opportunities to engage with peers in early childhood settings, a context likely to give them more opportunities to develop social skills earlier than used to be typical. Peer interaction allows children to learn in the context of play with a cognitive equal. Children become attracted to their peers because they can share their view of the world. Adults are simply unable to participate with the same interest in the activities of a toddler or preschooler. Sharing similar skills, interests and pleasures provides a good platform for peer interactions and relationships. ‘Peers share an interest in such activities as jumping off a step 20 times and wearing pots as hats – activities which interest the most devoted mother to a far lesser extent’ (Rubenstein & Howes, 1976, p. 602). Peers extend the possibilities for social interaction and allow the development of such skills as turn-taking and shifting from one role to another. These help children build up a sense of the ‘generalised other’, which is important for social and cognitive development. Toddlers learn to coordinate their behaviour and contribute to social interaction when practising with peers who are as inexperienced as themselves (Rubin, 1980, p. 30).

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Box 6.1 Playing together at the baby’s level Jason (0:9) sits on the rug on the ground holding a rattle. He strikes the ground with his arm so that the rattle makes a noise. Margy’s (0:10) attention is attracted to this noise and she crawls towards Jason. When Jason stops, she reaches towards the rattle, but Jason pulls his arm back and begins to rattle again. Margy watches. By chance she finds a plastic ball with something inside it. When Jason stops again, she begins to rattle with the ball. Jason now looks attentively at Margy and when she stops he recommences his own rattling. They look at each other and laugh. Making contact Merel (0:5) holds an interesting toy in her hand, but her attention is mainly directed towards Bram (0:5). She touches his arm and laughs at him, but Bram is looking more intently at Merel’s toy and doesn’t notice her attempt at contact. Merel persists and with her hand strokes his face. At this, Bram looks at her and Merel gets a beaming smile from him in return. Singer & de Haan, 2007, p. 29.

After the age of two, the complexity and length of reciprocal peer interactions increases markedly. The transition to an early childhood centre involves unfamiliar adults and children, as well as a novel physical environment. Gaining access to a peer group in an early childhood centre is one of children’s first challenges in such group settings (Corsaro, 1988). Children constantly order and reorder social events and, as they do so, learn more about social position and communication. Playing alongside another child in parallel activities, or offering to help are some of the strategies children use to gain entry into the play of other children (see Box 6.2, Carr et al., 2010). This is a delicate process and children are frequently rejected. Preschool children often show their affiliation to peers with such statements as ‘We’re friends, right?’ This is frequently the signal for them to coordinate their activities in associative play. Or conversely they can exclude each other with statements like, ‘I’m not your friend’ or with comments such as, ‘Nobody else can come in, right?’ or other variants such as, ‘This is our house not your house’ (Carr et al., 2010, p. 58). Some of the access strategies children use include physically moving into the ongoing play area, trying to do something similar to the other children, circling the play area, disrupting the play, asking for access, asking the teacher to gain access for them, offering an object, greeting and suggesting other

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Box 6.2 The sandpit (an unsuccessful attempt) After wandering around for a while, inside and out, watching the other children, Ofeina1 walks over to the sandpit where a boy (who spoke Tongan) is playing. She picks up a cup and fills it with sand. He wanders off and she is left alone in the sandpit. She continues to fill up the cup and calls after him, ‘Cup of tea?’ but there is no response. She continues then to fill up jugs and cups, smoothing off the tops with intense concentration. There are children playing nearby on trolleys and on the climbing frame and she sits and watches them for a while before, after twenty minutes in the sandpit, she suddenly jumps up and runs off. Carr, Smith, Duncan, Jones, Lee, & Marshall, 2010, p. 65. 1 Ofeina is 4 years old.

activities (Corsaro, 1979). Corsaro was surprised to find that children were about twice as likely to receive a negative response to their access attempts as a positive one. Corsaro concludes that children protect their ongoing play by resisting access by others. Corsaro (2009) argues that within peer cultures children make persistent attempts to gain control and share it with each other in opposition to adults. They develop a shared sense of injustice about the rules and produce strategies to resist them. For example, in one narrative: Children who were shovelling sand into their dump truck responded to a teacher announcing clean-up time. One child said, ‘Clean-up time! Ain’t that dumb! Clean-up time!’ and another child replied ‘Yeah, we could just leave our dump trucks here and play with them tomorrow’ and ‘Yeah, clean-up time is dumb, dumb, dumb!’ (Corsaro, 1979)

Another example, known as the ‘little chairs routine’, was observed among toddlers in an Italian preschool for two- and three-year-olds. They developed a favourite game of playing with small chairs – pushing them around the room, bumping them into each other, lining them up, and walking across them saying, ‘I’m falling’ but keeping their balance. Although teachers told them to be careful, they did not intervene, even though the chairs were for sitting on and not for walking on. This was an example of the ‘creation and embellishment of a routine of peer culture among very young children, but also a challenge to the teachers’ authority’ (Corsaro, 2009, p. 303). Such episodes serve to consolidate children’s growing sense of affiliation with peers and give them a sense of power and control.

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Box 6.3 Painting a house (successful engagement) Ofeina carefully paints a picture of a house with Kyung-Ja watching beside her. They are talking to each other as Ofeina paints. She pretends she is going to paint Kyung-Ja and playfully daubs the paint at her. KyungJa ducks away laughing. A teacher joins them and talks to Ofeina about her picture. Ofeina tries to write her name and writes four of the letters. She runs off to get her name card, comes back and attempts to write her name copying the card. She writes two more letters. The teacher mounts her picture onto black paper for her and hangs it up. Now Kyung-Ja sits down to paint, with Ofeina standing beside her ‘helping’. Ofeina is holding the paintbrush and Kyung-Ja is telling her where to put the paint. KyungJa takes over the paintbrush briefly before Ofeina takes the painting and puts it on a piece of black paper. They use the stapler together with Ofeina lining it up and Kyung-Ja helping to push it down. ‘I’m helping Kyung-Ja,’ Ofeina tells the researcher. Carr, Smith, Duncan, Jones, Lee, & Marshall, 2010, pp. 67–68.

Through the group identity that develops in the peer culture, children learn more about their own social identity as well as how to relate to others. According to Corsaro (2009) children do not just absorb the adult culture, but have a series of negotiations and interactions with adults that help to define peer culture. Adult and peer cultures, however, are not entirely separate. The organisation and design of an early childhood centre or school programme can support or constrain children’s interactions with peers. Our research (Carr et al., 2010) suggests that children’s dispositions towards reciprocity in peer play are influenced by context, and are invited and promoted (or not) by aspects of early childhood centres or school. For example, allowing children long periods of uninterrupted joint involvement in play allows children to get to know each other and to develop skills of dialogue, negotiation and compromise. Children who have difficulty gaining entry to a group can be helped by suggesting a role for them in play, or offering an interesting joint activity that provokes interaction (for example playing a card game). Teacher conversations with children can draw on shared experiences or knowledge of their home settings, and this can be used to build affiliation between peers. Once children go to school at five in New Zealand, opportunities for collaborative peer interactions are quite limited according to our observations, but peer interactions continue in the playground beyond the gaze of the teacher. It’s

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important to remember, though, that children in non-Western societies spend a great deal more time away from adult supervision. They may live on the streets, work to support their families or are fleeing violence, and these conditions encourage the development of a strong sense of group solidarity (Corsaro, 2009).

Imaginative play

It might seem inappropriate to discuss imaginative play in a chapter on social development, because it involves symbolic representation, important in the development of thinking (cognition). Most imaginative play, however, involves communication, social interaction and experimentation with possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986, cited by Carr et al., 2010, p. 31). This is an example of how difficult it is to separate out domains of learning and development. Imaginative play involves many different domains of behaviour – thinking, language, social relationships and emotions. Vygotsky viewed imaginative play as leading development because it creates a zone of proximal development for the child (Vygotsky, 1978). In play, the child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behaviour; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself. As in the focus of a magnifying glass, play contains all developmental tendencies in a condensed form and is itself a major source of development. (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 102)

Vygotsky argued that pretend play has two critical features. Firstly, it creates imaginary situations in which children can learn to delay the immediate satisfaction of their wishes. Secondly, it contains rules for behaviour and the opportunity to practise the use of them in imaginary situations. Pretend play allows children the chance to separate thought from action, to control impulses and develop reflective and self-regulatory behaviour. For example, when children use a shell to represent a cup, they are experimenting with the meaning of ‘cup’ and separating this meaning from the type of objects usually associated with it. This separation of meaning from objects allows children to develop abstract thought involving symbol manipulation in the absence of concrete reality. Vygotsky thought that by participating in dramatic play children learned the rules of moral behaviour. For example, when a child pretends to be a teacher and tells children to obey the rules, children are showing their growing awareness and understanding of the moral authority of the teacher. Imaginative play also helps children cope with emotional concerns, such as fear of being lost, danger or death, and is a resource that children use in their everyday life, rather than a preparation for adult competence (Strandell, 1997, cited by Corsaro, 2009). In our ethnographic study of four-year-olds, one of the

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Box 6.4 It’s treasure time Henry collects a piece of shiny wrapping paper (from a local chocolate manufacturer) from the craft table. Henry says to Peter, ‘Shall we make a treasure map?’ Henry helps Peter find a suitable piece of shiny paper. He says, ‘Here Peter, here it is, have this one, it’s the same as mine. Now we can do it. Let’s roll them up. Let’s roll them up like this.’ Both children roll their maps together. Henry says, ‘Here Peter. You do it like this, I’ll show you’. Henry demonstrates to Peter how to roll his map from the corner on an angle so that it gets longer. Peter looks closely at Henry and then starts rolling his map the same way – he finishes and then holds it in front of himself. Henry finishes his and holds it up in the air, Peter does the same. Peter says, ‘There’s mine, it’s the same as yours eh Henry?’ and Henry replies, ‘Yep, mine is bigger than yours.’ Peter laughs. Henry says, ‘Let’s go. Let’s go find the treasure.’ Peter and Henry walk together to the doors, Henry is calling out loudly to anyone who might be listening, ‘It’s treasure time, it’s treasure time.’ Peter unrolls his map and holds it in front of him, Henry does the same. They move outside to the sandpit. The two children dig in the sandpit, using spades and digger, filling a truck with sand, and every now and then referring to the map and saying, ‘Ha, ha!’ Summary of episode from Carr et al., 2010, p. 156.

learning dispositions we observed frequently was imagination (Carr et al., 2010). We saw the ability to go beyond the immediate and to connect with other imagined worlds as an essential disposition to create possible worlds and new opportunities. ‘Imagination is about creating images of the world and seeing connections in time and space by extrapolating from earlier and other experiences’ (Carr et al., 2010, p. 30, see Box 6.4 for an example from the study). Because pretence involves symbols being used to stand for or designate actions, words or objects, it signals a marked increase in children’s thinking power and ability to engage in representational thought. The very first signs of pretence occur at about 12 months in fleeting gestures such as putting a spoon up to the mouth when not eating, or a head on a pillow when it is not bedtime (Fein, 1979). These early gestures usually refer to the self, but about the middle of the second year the toddler begins to use pretence on others, for example, feeding a teddy bear. Children increasingly use substitute objects in their play, such as a wooden block for a gun or a cup. While preschoolers prefer realistic objects to use in play‚ they become more and more able to do without them and rely on ideas or words as they approach five. There is a shift towards

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Box 6.5 Shopping and feeding baby Lisa and her friend Theresa are playing a family game together – both are mothers and have their babies (dolls). The teacher is involved from time to time and ‘visits’ them as they play with their babies. The episode starts with a plan to go shopping and ends with morning tea after the children have fed their babies mashed potatoes. At the start Lisa says, ‘Let’s go for a walk and show (teacher’s name) what we are playing’, and the two children chat to each other and to the teacher about going shopping with their babies to get food. The teacher asks if she can come to visit later for a cup of tea and Lisa says that she can. The teacher says that she will bring her baby and asks if they want her to buy milk. Theresa says that they are going to buy milk and that she should bring her baby. The children play with the babies and take them shopping. Theresa says that the ‘baby’ is sick and that they are taking her to the doctor. They get food for the babies, and some milk and sugar for the teacher’s visit, on their shopping trip. Lisa says that she is making a cake and Theresa says that she is making muffins. They discuss birthdays and how old they are. The teacher ‘knocks on the door’ and says her baby is sick. Lisa says that the baby needs medicine and that she has some from the doctor. There is a discussion of babies’ names (influenced by the name of Theresa’s baby brother). The teacher asks the girls what they bought at the shops and they reply baby food. Theresa gives the teacher her coffee. Lisa and Theresa make mashed potato with yellow dough (the baby food) and pretend to add milk to it. The teacher chats to them about their babies (‘Your baby is being very good Lisa.’ ‘Yum, look the baby likes that.’ ‘Do you think I could have another one?’ ‘ Lisa, she is enjoying that, you got mashed potatoes.’) Lisa says, ‘You have to mash them so it’s nice.’ Carr et al., 2010, p. 38.

playing with others after two years of age (Howes, 1985). Researcher Carollee Howes found that over half of a group of two-year-olds with childcare experience engaged in cooperative pretend play, and all of a group of three-year-olds did. She observed quite complex cooperative role-play (e.g. a wedding with bride and groom) among two-year-olds in a kibbutz children’s house. Parents and teachers have an important role in encouraging and supporting children to engage in imaginative play by initiating pretend dialogue with children in infancy. The view that teachers or parents ought to stand back and allow children to play without interference is challenged by a sociocultural perspective.

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Instead, adults can work within children’s zone of proximal development, by scaffolding children’s pretence. Initially adults may initiate play, but as children develop competence in pretend play, the adults can withdraw and allow children to take over. Suggestions from adults can also set off play episodes with minimal intervention, or adults can enrich children’s play by intervening in the childinitiated play episode with a novel idea or interesting props. Adults can also encourage pretend play indirectly by providing children with the opportunity to engage in a variety of experiences and activities, which can give children lots of ideas for play. Adults need to be acute observers and to judge sensitively when intervention will impede or stimulate rich and complex pretence. The shopping and feeding baby example (Box 6.5) illustrates a teacher’s sensitive involvement in children’s pretend play. The early childhood classroom context can, to a greater or lesser extent, afford imaginative play. It is interesting to note a Russian researcher’s comment that imaginative play was hard to observe in kindergartens for two- to three-year-olds in Russia (compared to home environments), because they had a culture of object play (Diachenko, 2011). In contrast we found that imaginative play was common in the New Zealand early childhood centres we observed (Carr et al., 2010). One affordance was ‘the resources and tasks that provided opportunities for pretend play with objects and with other children’ (Carr et al., 2010, p. 169), and another was the valuing of imaginative play and possible worlds by the teachers. When Henry and Peter were playing treasure games, the teachers were happy to be called ‘Captain Hook’, and when Lisa and Theresa were playing family games, the teacher joined in by being a friendly neighbour.

Friendships Most people agree that a crucial feature of friendship is that it is a reciprocal relationship between two people with both affirming it. Reciprocity or mutuality of affection is of particular significance: such reciprocity distinguishes friendship from one child’s desire to be liked by another, when that other doesn’t return the preference. (Dunn, 2004, p. 2)

Friendships are specific attachments between two people that involve maintaining contacts as well as sharing interests, feelings and concerns. Friendships are central to children’s well-being and are a source of social capital, supporting their capacity to cope with stress and challenge in the future (Weller, 2007). Friendships open up exciting new worlds that can be shared, and provide emotional support. A friendship is often the child’s first close relationship outside the family and is different from relationships with siblings. Children care about their friends, are motivated to spend time with them, and maintain friendships even in the

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face of conflicts. Children’s friendships are important for cognitive and social development, because they involve a combination of emotion and understanding (Dunn, 1993, 2004). Friendships have great power because they are linked with the development of self-confidence, social understanding and the formation of later relationships. It used to be thought that young children could not form real friendships until about the age of six, but Dunn (2004) shows that even under-two-year-olds seek out others as companions, prefer to be with particular children, comfort each other, miss each other and share feelings. If young children have the chance to get to know other children they do develop friendships; and children in group settings, such as early childhood centres, have these opportunities. It also used to be thought that early friendships were unstable, but Dunn’s research showed that four-year-old children she observed had had the same friend for an average of two years (Dunn, 2004). Her observations showed that these children cooperated in a sophisticated way, sharing imaginary worlds, understanding what their friends intended and playing complex games. Early friendships ‘involve a meeting of minds that is a key first step in understanding what another person feels and thinks, and it reflects a kind of intimacy and trust’ (Dunn, 2004, p. 33). Friendships develop on the basis of common interests and activities. Young children set up simple norms based on a ‘we–they’ feeling, and often there is a preoccupation with the protection of interactive space. In an episode of pretend play involving Buzz, Clara and Sylvia playing in a play tent, Clara tells her young brother to get out of the tent, and Buzz says, ‘No kids allowed’ to exclude other children. Clara tells Dennis who is trying to enter. ‘We’re not going to play with you. Sylvia is not going to be your friend’ (Carr et al., 2010, p. 58). This episode illustrates how useful it is to have play partners to help you protect your play area and activity, as a space for your active joint involvement in activities. There is a change in the quality of friendships during the school years reflecting children’s growing understanding of other people. There is greater intimacy, more awareness of moral responsibility and more sophisticated ways of handling disputes. Loyalty, self-disclosure and trust are important components of friendships during middle childhood, as children’s mind-reading and emotional understanding grows. Dunn argues that friendship quality is related to moral understanding because children with friends are more altruistic and likely to show understanding of interpersonal relationships about moral issues. A less attractive feature of school friendships is that they often involve animosity or gossip about other people. Dunn cites an observation by psychologist Susan Isaacs of a fiveyear-old boy, Conrad, talking to a friend, Jane: Conrad: When Lena makes anything and says: ‘Isn’t this nice?’ I say: ‘No, it’s horrid’, because I don’t like Lena. I hate Lena, don’t you?

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Jane: Yes. (Isaacs, 1937, cited by Dunn, 2004, p. 36)

Important components of school-age friendships are loyalty, honesty, reciprocity and commitment (Singer & Doornenbal, 2006), so friendships are an important emotional forum for moral learning. One important moral principle is not to give away a friend’s secret. In Elly Singer and Jeanette Doornenbal’s study of 9- to 13-year-old Dutch foster children’s narratives about friendship, the children were told a fictitious story about the betrayal of a child’s secret about being in love with another. Children then told their own stories about being betrayed by a friend, and revealed their emotions at being betrayed and their implicit assumption that ‘real friends never reveal a secret’: I can’t gain much by yelling and shouting. But she has to know that I’m very, very angry. She’d promised to keep her mouth shut! I think it’s important that she knows what I feel. Because otherwise, she’ll think ‘I can do that again’, and then ... yes, then it will go on for ever. So I think you really have to show your anger. (Laura, 9, Singer & Doornenbal, 2006, p. 235)

Another response was to hide their feelings and try to pretend they felt nothing, even though they felt shame, anger, confusion and sadness: I wanted them to think that they can’t tease me with that [being in love], that they don’t have to abuse me with that, because it doesn’t work. But inside I feel sad and guilty, because I shouldn’t have trusted her. (Janneke, 10, Singer & Doornenbal, 2006, p. 237)

Where younger children are more likely to emphasise that friendships grow out of common activities, older children stress more abstract ideas of friendship such as loyalty, acceptance and understanding (Epstein, 1989). Older children also talk more about the motivational aspects of friendly behaviour, for example, intending to be kind, not just performing a kind action. They also see friendship as involving an exchange of affection, not just being a playmate. Children become more aware of the importance of stability in friendship as they come to know more about the thoughts, feelings and motives underlying friendly behaviour. Friendship starts with activities and interactions, but becomes something that lasts over time and space. Psychologists Barry Schneider, Judith Wiener, and Kevin Murphy (1994) suggest that there are seven major building blocks of friendship: 1. propinquity or proximity, so being together with other children in casual encounters in school or neighbourhood supports friendship formation. 2. the opportunity to engage in shared activities, especially play.

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3. similarity in terms of attitudes, values, interests and abilities is helpful. Age, sex, race and social status are less important with increasing age, although there is still a tendency for friends to be similar in these characteristics in adolescence. 4. tangible support and instrumental assistance are often offered between friends and cement friendship, even when children have to give up personal rewards. Friends are expected to stand up for each other, particularly in conflicts with third parties. 5. increasingly important in middle childhood and adolescence are intimacy and self-disclosure where children are able to share personal information with friends. 6. trust is an expectation in friendship so friends are meant to keep secrets and fulfil promises. 7. reciprocity, where children can participate equally in talk and action, is an essential attribute of friendship. Since children’s social behaviour tends to remain stable after the preschool years, it is important for adults to thoughtfully and intentionally assist children on the pathway towards making friends. The design of early childhood and school settings can be more or less supportive of children’s opportunities to get to know each other, and work together. Good working relationships and interdependence are likely to be encouraged if there are plenty of engaging activities that support communication. In early childhood settings, supporting and resourcing imaginary play gives children lots of chances to make friends. In our ethnographic study in new entrant classrooms, we saw fewer opportunities for collaborative and communicative work for five-year-olds, because children were often expected to work silently and independently (Carr et al., 2010). Activities and curricula that support group collaboration and communication, like group problem-solving, help children make friends. Parents can play a role in supporting their children’s friendships by setting up ‘play dates’ and sharing trips and celebrations with other families or allowing friends to come along.

Conflicts When children play together there are of course quarrels. They irritate each other, they both want or find something different, or they get really angry. Teachers and parents often find this tiresome. Crying, angry or whining children – we’d all much rather see them playing happily together without conflict. (Singer & de Haan, 2007, p. 69)

Conflicts, however, play a very important role in children’s social development, since it is through these exchanges that children learn how to compromise,

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Box 6.6 Successful conflict resolution Timo (3:6) and Sylvano (3:6) are playing together in the building corner. Timo tries to take the blocks from Sylvano. He pulls the blocks towards him, out of Sylvano’s hands and says, ‘I like you, I like you. That alright?’ ‘No, that’s not right,’ says Sylvano, but he lets go of the block. Timo immediately says, ‘I get you a new one for you,’ and walks away with the block. ‘I get a new one. And you one too, heh?’ Sylvano goes on playing with another block lying in front of him. Timo walks towards several blocks. ‘I got it!’ he shouts, ‘I got it! Look!’ He picks up a new block and gives it to Sylvano. Sylvano turns round smiling and takes the block, ‘A new one, thank you.’ Timo goes and sits on the ground by the blocks and the children play on together. Singer & Doornenbal, 2006, p. 85.

negotiate, establish common ground, share information, and explore similarities and differences (Smith & Barraclough, 1999). If there is conflict over goals, this prompts children to reflect on the reasons for their goals and compare their goals to those of other children. Conflicts therefore teach children about understanding the perspectives of other children and, it is hoped, compromising to reach acceptable solutions. Conflicts between peers in the classroom provide opportunities for learning to understand and regulate emotions, so teachers can use conflicts to encourage children to consider their own and others’ feelings. Conflicts help children learn the rules and understand the opinions of others, and without them there can be no moral and cognitive development (Killen & de Waal, 2000, cited by Singer & de Haan, 2007, p. 95). Box 6.6 gives some examples of the sorts of conflicts that take place between preschoolers. Conflicts are very common among young children. We observed two-thirds of a sample of 200 under-two-year-olds in early childhood centres engaging in conflict over a 20-minute observation, most commonly over possession or use of objects (Smith & Barraclough, 1999). United States and Japanese studies have shown that two- and three-year-old children engaged in conflicts about five to eight times an hour, while in the Netherlands they occurred 12 times an hour (Singer & de Haan, 2007). Whether or not adults intervene to try to settle personal conflicts among children depends partly on culture. Corsaro (2009) says that in non-Western cultures adults do not tend to get involved in entering into and settling conflicts, and children are expected to settle their own conflicts as part of learning to be

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members of the culture. The extent to which conflicts occur in early childhood centres is in part due to the activities made available to the children, the physical settings (space and number of toys and activities), and the attitudes of teachers. When we interviewed New Zealand early childhood teachers of under-twoyear-olds about whether they would intervene in children’s conflicts, most teachers did not see conflict as a problem and preferred not to intervene unless they saw another child at risk (Smith & Barraclough, 1999). Teachers often regarded conflict as a normal part of learning, and preferred to monitor peer interactions and intervene only when necessary, leaving children to resolve their own conflicts. Teachers did, however, in another study intervene in about half of all conflicts between under-two-year-old children. Teacher mediation is probably more necessary with infants and toddlers (compared to older children) when they are learning to relate to their peers. Teachers used a variety of strategies to deal with conflict, such as scaffolding children’s use of language to negotiate with peers (‘use your words’), suggesting other strategies (such as turn-taking), or redirecting children to other activities. They were aware of and sensitive to what children could do on their own without adult help, but willing to provide adult guidance and support if required.

Aggression

Aggression is defined as intentionally harming another person (Killen & Coplan, 2011, p. 306). It involves knowing that someone else can block what you want to do, and that your actions can cause distress and are likely to change someone else’s behaviour. Aggressive behaviour tends to start in the second year as unfocused outbursts of anger, such as a child grabbing a toy from another child. It is initially more likely to be instrumental – aimed at getting back an object or some territory – than physical, or aimed at hurting another person. It is important to differentiate aggression from conflicts, as these are lower level and easily resolved. Later in childhood, aggression tends to be more verbal (threats and name calling) or relational (exclusion or spreading rumours). The internet, social media and mobile phones have greatly increased the scope for verbal and relational aggression during middle childhood and adolescence (Killen & Coplan, 2011). Being together in a group setting provides an opportunity for aggression between peers, and conflict occurs regularly in early childhood settings without escalation into aggression (Smith & Barraclough, 1999). Aggression can be triggered by the same sorts of situations as low-level conflict, but aggression is intentional and hurtful. For young children aggression often involves the sheer insistence of having one’s way. An example we observed was a toddler wanting to get onto a rocker that was occupied by another child, and to achieve his goal, he head-butted the other child.

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Most childhood aggression is an opportunity for learning about how to get on with peers. However, a small number of children, perhaps 2 to 3 per cent, develop stable patterns of problem behaviour in childhood that, if unchecked, may lead to a lifetime of delinquency and crime. Stable patterns of antisocial behaviour beginning in early childhood predict criminal and delinquent behaviour in adolescence and adulthood. Gerald Patterson et al. (1989) show that such behaviour often results from harsh and inconsistent parental discipline, lack of positive parental involvement, and poor monitoring and supervision of children’s behaviour. Lack of internal self-control is the outcome of such a parental regime. Parents inadvertently train an escalating level of coercive behaviours, such as hitting and physical attacks, by positively reinforcing them or punishing them inconsistently. Prosocial acts are often ignored or punished. Children first learn to use aggressive behaviours against other family members and then transfer these to group settings such as early childhood centres and schools. Antisocial children tend to be socially unskilled in peer group entry, quick to respond to provocation, and lacking in understanding of social signals and peer group norms, outcomes frequently associated with rejection. Deviant social behaviour is also associated with much poorer academic achievement. Children with such deviant behaviour often associate with children with similar behaviour, positively reinforcing each other’s noncompliance and discouraging conformity. The outcomes can be school dropout, unemployment, substance abuse, marital problems and serious crime. The earlier in childhood these problems begin, the more likely they are to lead to chronic offending. Researcher Gerald Patterson et al. (1989) show that interventions with adolescents and young adults have poor records of success. Early childhood is a better time to start intervening to prevent negative social behaviours. Intervention for serious antisocial behaviour is, however, unlikely to be effective unless parents (as well as teachers) modify the way that they interact with aggressive children. John Church and John Langley (1990) argue that parents and teachers must both be involved in intervention, which must involve clear rules, around-the-clock monitoring and supervision, reward for satisfactory performance, and sanctions for failure to comply. The term ‘conduct problems’ encompasses aggressive behaviour and includes ‘a spectrum of antisocial, aggressive, dishonest, delinquent, defiant and disruptive behaviours’ (Fergusson, Boden, & Hayne, 2011, p. 60). The beginnings of such conduct problems are usually in early childhood, but they are likely to extend over the life course and cause problems in adolescence, such as criminal activity, substance abuse, teenage pregnancy, impaired parenting and poor physical and mental health. The prevalence of conduct problems is in the region of 5 to 10 per cent within the 3- to 17-year-old population, resulting in more than 40,000 children with significant levels of conduct problems in New Zealand. Genetic,

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socioeconomic, family and peer variables influence children’s trajectories into conduct problems. Children reared in violent homes with inconsistent discipline, and where there have been changes of parents, are at increased risk of conduct problems. Peers play an important role, particularly during adolescence. Even young people who have not had a problematic behavioural history can develop conduct problems when they associate with antisocial peers. Young people whose antisocial behaviour starts later are more likely to outgrow these problems, than young people with a life-course trajectory of conduct problems (Fergusson et al., 2011).

Bullying

Bullying or repeated aggressive behaviour is a serious social problem in many countries in the world, and there are many mental health problems such as depression, low self-esteem and even suicide associated with it. Many young people have been subjected to years of harassment and suffering from bullies, despite their fundamental democratic rights to be spared such oppression and humiliation in school and elsewhere. Article 19 of the UNCRC says that children have the right to be protected from all forms of violence, and that includes bullying, so New Zealand has an obligation to address this issue. New Zealand has one of the highest youth suicide rates in the world so we should be very concerned to prevent possible causative factors like bullying. About 100 under-25-year-olds commit suicide annually in New Zealand, and although the rates have declined in the last ten years, our suicide rate is still twice that of Australia’s (Skegg, 2011). A student is being bullied or victimized when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other students ... . It is a negative action, when someone intentionally inflicts, or attempts to inflict, injury or discomfort upon another ... . Negative actions can be carried out by words (verbally), for instance, by threatening, taunting, teasing and calling names. It is a negative action when somebody hits, pushes, kicks, pinches or restrains another by physical contact. (Olweus, 1993, p. 9)

Bullying differs from aggression because it is carried out repeatedly and over time. It can be carried out by one person, or by a group upon one person or several (although it is more usually directed at a single person). Bullying is also characterised by an imbalance in power or strength between the bully and the victim. There are many kinds of bullying including physical (hitting, kicking), verbal (insults, name calling, derogatory judgements) and social (malicious gossip, exclusion, inviting others to torment an individual) (Meadows, 2010). Technology has now made bullying online or by mobile phone very easy to do, and much more difficult to monitor.

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A Swedish researcher (Osvaldsson, 2011) looked at how young people described being bullied on an internet site for young people experiencing mental health problems. Here is an example: School was hell too. Bullied, everything from words, to rumors, to beatings and knife threats. I have swapped schools several times, but they are closely located, and therefore the problems continue, when there are contacts between schools. In other words, the bullies knew people in the new schools, so it simply continued. (Anonymous child, Osvaldsson, 2011, p. 320)

Estimates of the extent of bullying suggest that it is a very common problem throughout the world. Twenty-seven per cent of British primary school children reported being bullied, and 33 per cent of Israeli children (Meadows, 2010). A study of 821 New Zealand 16-year-olds and 439 of their teachers showed that about a third (30 per cent) of young people felt unsafe at school because of bullying. Almost half (45 per cent) reported being bullied at school and 12 per cent said that they experienced frequent bullying. While students and teachers had similar perceptions on the whole of the prevalence of bullying, students were much more likely than teachers to say that students would not report bullying to teachers, (Nairn & Smith, 2002). Schools are an important (but not the only) site of bullying. A great deal of bullying takes place away from the gaze of the teacher in playgrounds, or away from the school itself, but whether or not teachers are aware of bullying in the school setting is less important than whether they do anything about it. Teachers’ response varies with school culture (Nairn & Smith, 2002). There is now considerable research to show that schools can reduce bullying through the attitudes, routines and behaviour of staff. It is possible to provide a school climate that discourages bullying and redirects this unacceptable behaviour into more appropriate channels. School-based programmes initiated in Norway have resulted in reductions of up to 50 per cent in bullying. The success of the Norwegian programmes has been attributed to the major input of resources into anti-bullying in Norway (Elsea & Smith, 1997). Providing and disseminating models of good practice in relation to preventing bullying is one effective way of reducing the incidence of bullying. Case studies of two New Zealand primary schools and one intermediate school that had effective anti-bullying programmes were carried out by Michael Gaffney and Nicola Taylor (2004). The case studies showed that the leadership of the principal in deciding that change was necessary was crucial in order to alter school cultures. Principals established a ‘big picture’ and shared it with the school staff, encouraging them to join and implement a school-wide strategy towards improvement:

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It was no longer about what adults did to students but about making it okay to talk about what kind of social environment people wanted and then agreeing as to whom had what responsibilities for making it happen. The adults in each school as well as the students were given opportunities to develop relationships within the school and decide how they would like them to be. (Gaffney & Taylor, 2004, p. 19)

A variety of general strategies was used, such as the establishment of clear expectations with consistent, immediate and clear consequences for behaviour. Relationships were crucial, both among the staff, among the students, and between the staff and students. It was important to engage everyone and establish mutual respect. These schools recognised that change could not come from the adults alone, and that it was crucial to gain student support and utilise students as a major resource for change. For example, at Wilford Primary Schools all students were taught peer mediation skills, while some students were given the official role of peer mediators. At Papatoetoe Intermediate School safety audits were conducted three times a year to monitor the level of violence, identify who was being bullied and who was doing the bullying. It was important to establish a caring culture and a feeling that school was a safe place. Students knew what to do if they saw a bullying incident, and were prepared to actively intervene if necessary. To establish successful anti-bullying programmes, it is first necessary to increase awareness of the bully–victim problem and advance knowledge about it (Olweus, 1993). Monitoring of bullying activity and the establishment of a clear message about the total unacceptability of bullying in any form are essential. No effective programme can be instigated without the involvement and engagement of the students so that everyone knows what is meant by bullying and what can be done to prevent it. Having a curriculum and school climate where there is opportunity to work collaboratively on group activities and where there is a more cooperative relationship between students is less supportive to bullying. The involvement of peers in addressing the issue brings about a more positive ethos in school communities, and projects, such as befriending schemes, peer mediation and active listening, have all been found to be effective (Cowie, 2011). The internet is a new arena for a particularly iniquitous type of bullying that allows perpetrators anonymity and is difficult to monitor. ‘Intimidation is quickly being augmented by humiliation, destructive messages, gossip, slander, and other virtual taunts communicated through email, instant messaging, chat rooms and blogs’ (Williams & Guerra, 2007, p. s15). Children can be bullied through emails, texts, chat rooms, mobile phones (including the use of photographs), and through the creation of websites targeted

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at particular students, for example, inviting peers to vote on the ‘biggest geek’ or ‘the sluttiest girl’ (Campbell, 2005). Reports of prevalence suggest that up to one in four children are bullied through the internet (Campbell, 2005; Williams & Guerra, 2007), so this is a really serious problem. Cyberbullying is more likely to occur in schools where there are low levels of supervision and harsh discipline, and it is associated with victims’ depression, anxiety and absenteeism from school. It is a particularly difficult form of bullying to combat, as the audience is much larger than it is for face-to-face bullying, children are unlikely to discuss it with adults, and because it often occurs out of school hours, which makes it difficult for schools to control it (Agatston, Kowalski, & Limber, 2007). Like other forms of bullying, cyberbullying is unlikely to be challenged unless schools, teachers and children are actively involved in creating a climate antithetical to bullying. Cameron (2007) recommends that teachers work with students to raise awareness and empathy for bullied students, and that bystanders are encouraged to speak out against bullies. Preventive interventions are most effective if addressed at a whole school level focused on changing beliefs and behaviours towards fostering greater trust and cohesion (Williams & Guerra, 2007).

Summary

Children start to become social shortly after birth, with newborns capable of making connections between their own behaviour and the action of others through a ‘like me’ process. Babies imitate facial expressions, gestures and actions and have three essential social skills – imitation, shared attention and empathetic understanding. Children’s capacity to develop relationships with others is formed in experiences of early reciprocal dialogic interactions with caregivers. ‘Serve and return’ types of interactions encourage the development of secure attachments. Parents are usually the first and most important attachment figures, but infants can also attach to early childhood teachers, if they are sensitive and responsive. Children learn about feelings by sharing experiences with others, and preschoolers observe and share feelings with adults and peers. The development of a concept of self is important because it helps children regulate behaviour and develop a coherent view of the world. The self is constructed through discourse and activities within the context of everyday life experiences and cultural spaces. The self is not fixed, but open to modification and reconstruction through experiences. Early dialogues about shared experiences and memories, and what is allowed and what is not, are important in shaping a sense of self. Children learn to self-regulate their emotions and actions during early childhood. Babies regulate their visual attention, crying and sleeping and later on their emotions. By 18 months infants display emotions and respond to

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emotional cues, and by two or three years can use language to describe emotions and learn to control their emotions. The presence of familiar, regular caregivers who communicate with children and mediate their behaviour responsively helps children to internalise parental messages and regulate their own behaviour. There are worrying long-term consequences when children do not acquire selfregulatory skills in childhood that include poorer educational, health and life outcomes. Being able to develop satisfying reciprocal relationships with peers is essential to the development of social competence. Recent research shows that even babies as young as two months show an interest in each other and in the first year children take an interest in peers and imitate them. Children engage with peers at a similar level, because of shared skills, interests and pleasures. The complexity and length of peer interactions increase markedly as children enter preschool. Establishing dialogues and gaining access to peer play are often necessary strategies as groups of peers frequently resist others gaining access. Preschool children often start challenging adult authority in order to strengthen their affiliation with each other, and acquire a sense of power and control. Adult and peer culture are not entirely separate. Adults have an influence on children’s opportunities to engage with peers through their organisation of the social and physical environments in early childhood centres and schools. Friendships are reciprocal attachments between people who share feelings, interests and concerns. Having friends is crucial for children’s well-being, but is also an important source of social capital in later life. Even young children have friends, and many of these are lasting. Early friendships often involve the development of a ‘we–they’ feeling, so that friends affiliate with each other and exclude others. Friendships in later childhood involve loyalty, self-disclosure and trust, and friendship concepts are more abstract than in earlier friendships. Adults are able to facilitate friendships by the thoughtful design and organisation of early childhood and school settings. Conflicts serve an important role in children’s social development as they provide opportunities to see others’ perspectives, explore similarities and differences, and to negotiate and compromise. Most conflicts between children are settled without adult intervention, though research with under-two-year-olds showed that adults intervened in about half of all conflicts. Teachers generally believe that conflict is a normal part of learning, and prefer to keep a watching brief and only intervene when necessary. Imaginative play is a peer activity that Vygotsky viewed as crucial for development, because within such play children learn to separate thought from action and to develop self-regulatory behaviour. Imaginative play also helps children to cope with fears of danger or death, and to connect to other possible

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worlds in creative endeavours. Pretend play appears fleetingly in the first year of life, but becomes increasingly social and complex toward the age of two or three, depending on children’s opportunities to play. Aggression is different from conflict, as it involves intentional harm of another person. Only 2 to 3 per cent of children develop stable patterns of aggressive and disruptive behaviour that can develop into serious conduct problems in adolescence and adulthood. Conduct problems begin in early childhood and are associated over the life course with problems such as early pregnancy, substance abuse, and poor physical and mental health. Bullying is repeated aggressive behaviour over time on the part of one or more students against another. It is characterised by an imbalance of power between bully and victim. Bullying is a common problem throughout the world, and one study showed that almost half of 16-year-olds in New Zealand experienced it. School bullying-prevention programmes have successfully discouraged bullying, and case studies have shown that leadership, shared involvement and commitment by staff and students, monitoring, clear consequences and school-wide strategies are effective in reducing bullying.

7

Language and Culture

Language transforms experience first by creating new channels through which the human environment can act on the child ... at the same time, the learning of language transforms the individual in such a way that he is enabled to do new things for himself, or to do old things in new ways. Language permits us to deal with things at a distance, to act on them without physically handling them. (Church, 1961, pp. 94–95)

This chapter describes the genesis of language, perspectives on its development (behavioural, linguistic, cognitive and sociocultural), and the deep connection between linguistic, socio-emotional and cognitive domains of development. Language is the main mediator of culture, and children have a right to acquire their cultural identity through their language. Hence it is essential to value and promote te reo Māori as well as other minority languages, to encourage bilingualism and support cultural identity. The chapter ends with suggestions about ways that parents and teachers can support children’s language acquisition. Language opens up new opportunities for thinking, learning, action, communication and relationships. Its acquisition drives the development of the individual and the culture. Language helps children to control their own actions and thinking, to puzzle over and resolve difficult problems, as well as to form relationships, communicate and collaborate with other people. Language enables cultures to evolve to meet the demands of contemporary contexts much more quickly than they could have done through biological evolution (Brown, 1973). Cultural evolution is the transmission of information such as knowledge, art, tradition or technology from person to person or from generation to generation. Language and culture are intricately related to each other, since language is a cultural tool through which we make sense of our individual and collective worlds. Language permits members of a community who have had certain experiences to share them with others to whom the experiences are inaccessible, and to transform the way individuals interact with the people, places and things in their environments.

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In our research (Carr et al., 2010) on children’s learning dispositions to learn, we identified that one key disposition was ‘reciprocity’, because it opens up so many possibilities for children to learn from social partners. Reciprocity enables children’s learning through engagement with others whom they know and trust, and in collaborative reciprocal conversations and interactions with other people with whom they share meaning. Language is the main tool through which children’s disposition towards reciprocity can progress, as it provides a mediating tool or shared framework through which children come to understand other people, and the places, things and events in their lives. ‘Acquiring and using a natural language contributes to, even transforms the nature of human cognition – just as money transforms the nature of human cognition’ (Tomasello, 1999, p. 94.) In the next sections I will present some of the main theories about language acquisition, culminating with a stronger focus on sociocultural theory.

Behavioural theory

Operant conditioning theory has been used to explain the acquisition of language (Staats & Staats, 1964). According to behavioural theory, language is acquired through reinforcement and imitation. For example, during infancy, babbling occurs in virtually all babies at around two months. Early babbling tends to include sounds from all languages, but after three to four months it becomes more similar to the sounds in the immediate language environment. Behaviourists argue that infant babbling is shaped by adults in the environment into language. For example, when the baby produces a speech-like utterance like ‘mama’ or ‘hullo’, adults around are likely to respond positively with warmth and approval. The sound of their own babbling is a reinforcer for infants and their own vocalisations gain additional reinforcing effectiveness as they become similar to the mother’s speech (Bijou & Baer, 1965). When infants make certain sounds (such as ‘gynyah’ to mean, for example, ‘give me that’), they are rewarded, because the adult complies and provides the desired result. Adults reward closer and closer approximations to the appropriate word, with faster compliance to infant demands as the language becomes more comprehensible. Behavioural theorists argue that children imitate on many levels when acquiring language, from the vocal sounds of a model, to the imitation of words, sentences and so on. Children are thought to acquire meaning by the pairing of objects or references (such as a cup) with the word which represents the object (‘cup’) (Osgood, 1964). By repeated simultaneous pairings of the object and the word, through a classical conditioning process, the word comes to evoke some portion of the sensory response or meaning evoked by the actual object. For instance, if a child’s mother says, ‘drink’ while he is actually drinking he will develop an understanding of the word. This explanation of meaning acquisition

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has been criticised by Vygotsky (1962), as it only accounts for the external purely quantitative aspects of meaning, and does not address consciousness and thought. There has also been widespread criticism of behaviourists’ accounts of the role of imitation in language development, from linguistic, sociocultural and cognitive perspectives. Although it seems intuitive that children learn language by imitation, it is a problematic assumption. It is clear that although children learn from the language that surrounds them, they rarely repeat exactly what adults have said, and have their own unique way of expressing things that are different from adult language. They produce unique sentences rather than repeating adult forms. They typically shorten adult utterances and remove inflections (tenses, plurals, etc.) and function words. For a sentence like ‘Daddy will be angry’ a two-yearold might say, ‘Daddy angry’. Children are unable to imitate speech unless they already have some understanding. Children take from the language environment those features that fit in with their underlying knowledge or understanding of language (Bloom, 1975; G. Wells, 2009). Language is not deliberately taught, and children do not simply learn what they hear most often. Researcher Gordon Wells (2009) found, for instance, that children learn to answer questions before they ask them, and hear far more questions than answers.

Linguistic theory

Linguist Noam Chomsky (1965) developed his theory to explain linguistic creativity, for which he did not find reinforcement theory an adequate explanation. Children quickly develop a capacity to produce and understand a large number of meaningful sentences they have never heard before. Chomsky argues that human beings have an innate speech-processing mechanism or a language-acquisition device (LAD). In order to produce new sentences all the time, the child, according to Chomsky, needs a system of underlying rules, or a transformational grammar. There are two levels of linguistic analysis. The first, surface structure, refers to the actual spoken or written sentence and the second, deep structure, refers to the speaker’s intended meaning. The ability to transform a sentence and express similar and related meanings in different ways is basic to linguistic creativity. A transformation involves changing the surface structure of the sentence while the deep structure remains the same. For example, an original simple kernel sentence might be ‘the girl catches the ball’. Transformations upon the sentence could produce several variations: ‘The girl caught the ball’; ‘Who caught the ball?’; ‘the ball was caught by the girl’; ‘the girl did not catch the ball’. The basic kernel sentence has been transformed through the use of past tense, questions, passive and negation. Chomsky’s argument for an innate disposition to language was, firstly, that certain features of language such as rules for combining noun-phrase/verb-

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phrase combinations occur in all languages – he called these linguistic universals (Cruttenden, 1979). Secondly, the adult speech heard by a child is difficult to learn from, because of its hesitations, false starts and repetitions. In order to explain children’s rapid acquisition of syntax and linguistic universals, Chomsky believed that one must postulate some sort of pre-tuned capacity to learn language. There have been many criticisms of Chomsky’s LAD. While it is true that humans are well adapted physically for language through their vocalising apparatus (speech organs), and through their acute hearing for the range of speech sounds, there is no evidence of any innate specifically linguistic ability (Bower, 1979; G. Wells, 2009). The emergence of common syntactic and semantic structures (universals) is better explained by the fact that all humans interact with their environment, and language performs specific (initially) practical functions for users (Fein, 1978; Nelson, 2007; G. Wells, 2009). The development of syntax reflects the relationship between people and objects in the world. Chomsky’s mistake, according to Gordon Wells (2009), was in thinking that every child has to construct language on their own, but in reality children are inducted into language through their involvement in the activities of families and communities.

Cognitive theory

According to Piaget (1937), the child’s action experiences are the basis for the development of language skills. In order for language to develop there needs to be the prior development of relevant cognitive structures. Early language emerges out of the sensorimotor stage (the first two years). Researcher Lois Bloom explains the cognitive position clearly: Children learned precisely those words and structures which encoded their conceptual notions about the world of objects, events and relations. Children learned that things exist, cease to exist, and can then recur; that people do things to objects; that objects can be owned and located in space. In retrospect, it seems quite obvious that these would be the things that children talk about at the end of their second year. (Bloom, 1975, p. 262)

In other words, children need to experience the world by acting on it, to build up their understanding, before they can learn language. Cognitive theorists tend to see language as just one aspect of cognitive development (Bower, 1979). The developmental sequence of concepts will, therefore, influence the sequence of language learning. For example, the fact that space adverbials (‘over there’) develop before time adverbials (‘yesterday’), which are followed by manner adverbials (‘carefully’), reflects the order in which children understand these concepts (Cruttenden, 1979).

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Cognitive theory shifted the emphasis from the syntax of language towards the relationship between syntax and underlying meaning or semantics. Bloom (1975) points out that an analysis of the sentence ‘Mommy sock’ as ‘x word + x word’ or ‘noun + noun’ is not particularly useful. It is necessary to know the context of the child’s utterance or the controlling features of the environment before one can interpret the intent. Language is used to describe the relationships between objects and events in the real world. For example, ‘Mommy sock’ when mother was putting the child’s sock on meant, ‘mommy is putting my sock on’. This sentence has an agentive–objective function. When the child said, ‘Mommy sock’ while holding up her mother’s sock, she meant, ‘Mommy’s sock’. The latter sentence expresses a possessive function. It is only through looking at the semantics of the sentence and the function of the language that one can usefully analyse syntax. Cognitive theorists argue that children learn agent–action–object relationships before they acquire language through their actions (and those of others) on the environment. Their first language is structured around their need to express these agent–action–object relationships. Most human action includes an action, an agent, an object, a recipient of the action, an instrument, a focus and a time marker. In order to understand human action, then, one needs to know what was done ‘to what, by whom, where, by what instrument, and in what order’ (Bruner, 1978, p. 67). Action is related to the structure of speech in a non-arbitrary manner. Joint action requires that people share experiences, and intersubjective sharing, turn-taking and role-taking experience between the mother and young infant is the genesis of language. The child’s knowledge of pre-linguistic communication, related as it is to a world of action and interaction, provides him with tell-tale clues for constructing and testing hypotheses about the meaning and structure of the discourse into which he quickly enters. (Bruner, 1978, p. 83)

Sociocultural theorists agree that understanding (or meaning) are closely linked, but they argue that understanding does not develop before language but that language and meaning develop simultaneously.

Sociocultural perspectives

Whereas cognitive theory emphasises that cognitive structures must exist in the individual before the development of language, sociocultural theory holds that children’s cognition develops through the use of language and communication. Vygotsky saw language as having an empowering and liberating function, because it provides control over action, allows distancing from experienced reality and the possibility of reflection on it, and opens up a new world of dialogues, ideas, experiences and possibilities (Parrilla, 1995).

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Because they are embedded in society, children can absorb and develop language and cultural understandings of that society. For Vygotsky, language and culture were intricately related, since language is the means of entry into a culture. Interactions in a social context are the driving force for language development. Language is at first mastered collaboratively with an adult or a more competent peer solely with the objective of communication. Then it becomes internalised and serves as a means of conscious control and thought. Aspirant members of a culture learn from their tutors, the vicars of culture, how to understand the world. That world is a symbolic world in the sense that it consists of conceptually organized, rule-bound beliefs systems about what exists, about how to get to goals, about what it is to be valued. There is no way, none, in which the human being could possibly master that world without the aid and assistance of others for, in fact, that world is others. (Bruner, 1985, p. 32)

Vygotsky (1962, 1978) emphasised the link between language, meaning and thought. He believed that each word was a concept and that the meaning of words represents a close amalgam between thought and language. He saw the development of meaning as an evolutionary process in children’s development. Word meaning is a basic unit for understanding thinking because it is both necessary for communication and for consciousness. Word meanings develop in the process of discourse over joint activity and then are internalised to become self-directing speech and thought. An interpersonal process is transformed into an intrapersonal one. Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relations between human beings. (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 57)

Internalisation occurs gradually as children come to use language as a tool to help them solve problems and plan activities. Children in the preschool and early school years talk to themselves out loud while they solve concrete problems. Piaget called this external speech ‘egocentric speech’, but Vygotsky saw it as a stage in the transfer of social collaborative forms of speech into speech for problemsolving and thinking. While Piaget thought that it disappeared, Vygotsky thought that it had become internalised. Vygotsky saw that language opened up all sorts of possibilities for controlling behaviour; for example, behaviour becomes much less impulsive once children acquire language. Language comes to be used for planning and organising activities. In the preschool years speech is used while children are solving a problem, and then it

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is used before children solve a problem. Initially, language is closely tied to what children are doing, but gradually meaning is separated from action. Vygotsky saw imaginative play as an important process in children’s control of meaning. Children can ‘play’ with meanings and detach them from the real situations in which they are usually embedded. In play a child spontaneously makes use of his ability to separate meaning from an object without knowing he is doing it ... . Thus through play the child achieves a functional definition of concepts or objects. The creation of an imaginary situation is not a fortuitous fact in a child’s life, but is rather the first manifestation of the child’s emancipation from situational constraints. (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 99)

Vygotsky saw play as a context in which children learned to act against their most immediate impulses and learn self-control in the process of following the rules of the game. Children, he believed, subordinate action to meaning in play, whereas in real life, action is dominant over meaning. Since operating with meanings is the path to abstract thought, the control of meaning through imaginative play is a crucial step towards higher, more advanced thinking. Sociocultural theorists argue (in opposition to a Piagetian view of language) that there is little evidence that cognitive insights always appear before linguistic achievements (Rice, 1989; G. Wells, 2009). Language and cognitive competencies emerge at the same time. For example, children learn that objects still exist even though they have disappeared just when they learn to say, ‘all gone’. The two domains of language and cognition develop synchronously. Children attend to the parts of language they are able to understand and ignore those that they cannot (G. Wells, 2009). Children are ‘seekers after meaning’ and as they learn, incorporate new meanings into their developing language system. Nelson (1996, 2007) emphasises the individual’s own contribution to human cognition and language. She highlights how individuals contribute to and derive from participating in activities, as well as the constraints and supports of the activities themselves. Children take part in activities without fully understanding what they are about, or how they are structured, but through participation learn their ‘parts’. The child, from Nelson’s perspective, is the active participator and constructor of knowledge in the interaction, rather than the child’s skilled partner or ‘guider’. Language is a representational system with a dual function, an internal cognitive function and an external communicative function, but young children’s use of language is not independent of the activity and context where it takes place. There are qualitative differences in the use of language at different phases of development. Once preschoolers have developed a basic sentence grammar and a large vocabulary, they can speak articulately enough to be understood by

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strangers and use language effectively in their play and activities; they are ready to move on to acquire mastery of language to tell stories, make plans, and talk about abstractions. Nelson describes the importance in shaping the child’s mind of preverbal social experiences in caregiving and play activities with primary caretakers. Infants become tuned in to particular people, things and activities. Participation in events is an important aspect of infants coming to understand language. Through their participation, infants learn the parts played by others and are actors themselves. They are active participants in events such as feeding, bathing, dressing, putting to bed, and games like ‘peekaboo’. Parents provide signals to guide the child’s participation such as ‘Do you want a bath now?’ so that the child comes to associate an entire sequence of events with many variations, with the event (and language) of bathing. During the first undifferentiated level, children can only build up meanings by direct experience. Children gradually narrow their word meanings to the relevant aspects of the events and references used around them and their current activities or wishes. Towards the end of the first year, play, imitation, and intentional communication through gesture and communication mark the emergence of a new ‘mimetic’ use of language. This is expressed in such activities as symbolic play, i.e. using an object to stand for something else (a banana for a telephone), which requires mental representation of familiar activities. Linguistic representations come to express meanings that are evident in the social situations children participate in. Children can express their meanings verbally and convey information to others on the basis of their experience. During the mimetic stage children learn to communicate intentions, plans, skills and rituals. The language of the community becomes part of children’s interactions with others. Language is an inextricable part of activities, and not just a way of conveying information from one person to another. The first three years of life involve a transition from the level of representation of events or episodes to a system of socially shared representations relevant to action in the real world. Nelson believes that once children have developed this basic capacity for sharing the same speech forms, the path is laid for the development of true language forms and structures. The emergence of mediating language allows language to be used to convey knowledge about the world, people, social and cultural interpretations of events, imagined possibilities, plans and theories. Complex information can be transferred from one mind to another. There is a major advance in representational language at about the age of four years, when the child makes the transition from an experientially based system to a language-based system. Children become able to coordinate their own individually constructed knowledge with culturally established systems, through language. Language must be well developed for it

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to have a mediating function, which involves a slow process requiring expanded grammar and meaning systems, and memory for patterned information. Meanings are developed through the discourse of everyday life, not over one occasion but over many. Children’s participation in discourse involves extensive practice with checking their own internal representation against that of others. Eventually the child can listen to another’s description of an unfamiliar event and incorporate it into her own meanings. Children at this point can be aware of the differences between their own understandings and those of someone else, and realise that two views of the same situation are possible. Culturally organised knowledge as an abstract system (not just through discourse) now becomes increasingly available. Nelson (2007) emphasises the importance of memory, which involves the conservation, organisation and transformation of meaning, and is therefore crucial for learning. Learning is dependent on meaning because ‘meaning is subjective by virtue of its relation to experience’ (p. 11). Personal memories of life experiences (autobiographical memory) emerge gradually over the preschool years, usually starting to accumulate after the age of three years (Nelson & Fivush, 2004; Fivush & Nelson, 2004). Adult scaffolding helps children to focus their attention on the event, and organise their perceptions into a coherent whole, and this improves later recall. Recalling events is also aided by the opportunity to talk about them with others. The acquisition of autobiographical memory, an important developmental crossroads, involves a sense of self (mediated by gender and social and cultural processes) and the individual’s experience of an event at a particular point in time and space. Autobiographical memory enables children to have conversations with others about their past experiences, and provides an organised internal representation of these experiences. It allows children to revisit the past and think about the future, from the basis of past experiences, and helps them acquire narrative structure as they set the events in time and place, and meaningful emotional contexts (Fivush & Nelson, 2004). Nelson proposes that autobiographical memory arises out of the child’s experience of representational language, and opportunities to discuss these shared experiences with others. Language has a specific cognitive function in adult humans, an intramental representational function, that enables us to understand others’ narratives, conversations, perspectives, and knowledge or belief representations, and at the same time keep them separate from our own experiential system of knowing. When developed, this function makes it possible for the child to represent in her own mind what someone else has presented her in linguistic form, and to keep that representation distinct from her own experientially based knowledge or memory. (Nelson, 2007, p. 208)

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A brief account of normal language development Preverbal development There are major individual differences in the ages at which children learn to talk, but the sequence of language development is similar in most children (G. Wells, 2009). The contexts in which children grow up influence what is available to be learned. A number of important precursors to language appear in children well before they say their first words. Human infants early show evidence of a heightened perception of speech compared to other sounds. Differential response to voices, such as smiling to the mother’s voice, can be observed as early as four months. Even at three months infants can discriminate between ‘ba’ and ‘pa’. Infants also learn that they can control the behaviour of others through their own signals. Initially the child’s experience of crying and caregiver response establishes that the vocal mode is an effective way to communicate. Rudimentary ‘conversations’ through sound and gesture have been observed between mothers and babies at around two months. Babbling involves the production of a variety of sounds. It begins at around two months but becomes more similar to the child’s native language by three to six months. The intonation, pitch and loudness of adult patterns of speech also become apparent in infant vocalisations. Passive understanding of language precedes active communication. From around nine months, children begin to communicate through gestures and their own idiosyncratic words. They can respond to the names of family members, simple commands and requests (such as ‘give me the block’), and understand cue words related to familiar games (‘peek-a-boo’, ‘this little piggy’), with routine activities (meal time, bed time), and with people or objects (‘daddy’, ‘bottle’) (Nelson, 1996; G. Wells, 2009). Children can distinguish various tones of voice and are sensitive to whether their caregivers are angry, soothing, or playful. Church describes the perspective of the prelinguistic infant: Like a traveller in a foreign land, or like someone listening to a radio through static, the baby begins to get the gist, the global sense first of what is said directly to him and then of what is said in his presence. (Church, 1961, p. 60)

First words

Typically, the first words are spoken at between 9 and 21 months (median 12 months), although there are tremendous individual differences. By 15 months children use an average of 15 words consistently, but some have 100 words or more and others have none, or only one or two (Nelson, 1996). It is often hard to say when first words exist since children may use a sound in association with several situations, for example, ‘Bah! Bah!’ for bath time, when the child is about

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to have a bottle, or for the cat. To be considered a word, the utterance needs to be restricted to a certain referent or a definite class of referents (such as round things). The first words are usually simple one- or two-syllable words and relate to something relevant in the child’s immediate environment, and are often only understandable to parents or caregivers. First words commonly are play words (‘peek-a-boo’); words related to food (‘bikkie’); toys (‘ball’); actions which the child would like repeated (‘up’, ‘more’); or important people in the environment (‘mummy’). Generally, early words are related to dynamic properties and are not descriptive. Single words (holophrases) function as sentences for the infant. The interpretation of holophrases is usually only possible within the particular context of the utterance, with knowledge of gesture, facial expression and action. For example, an infant may say ‘up’ with arms outstretched in front of his father, meaning ‘pick me up’, but say ‘up’ when pointing to a toy on a high shelf, meaning ‘get me the toy up there’. During the second year of life there is a rapid increase in the number of words learned and children begin to combine words into sentences (Rice, 1989; G.  Wells, 2009). Children acquire new words rapidly, at the rate of about nine a day. Children absorb or ‘map’ new meanings in conversational interactions. They form a quick partial understanding of words after only one or a few encounters with a new word in a meaningful context. This highly sophisticated ‘fast mapping’ is central to preschoolers’ rapid language development.

Early sentences and the development of syntax

Usually children begin to combine words into simple sentences when they acquire a vocabulary of at least 50 words, at around two years. There is a marked increase in talkativeness around the latter part of the second year and the first half of the third year (G. Wells, 1985, 2009). There are five stages in the development of syntax, according to psychologist Roger Brown (1973). Stage I, when the Mean Length of Utterance (MLU – average number of words in an utterance) is 1.75, marks the point when children begin to combine words. The sentences are usually of two words and have been described as telegraphic. A typical two-word telegraphic sentence could be ‘want car’. Instead of saying, ‘I want that car’, the child produces a truncated sentence which contains key words but omits redundant words such as pronouns, prepositions, articles, conjunctions and inflections such as tense. The onset of telegraphic speech allows a dramatic increase in the number of utterances possible and more possibilities for communication since children can now create new sentences. The child has acquired a simple system of organisation which allows words to be ordered according to rules. Word order typically follows that of adult speech.

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One method of representing child language is case grammar (Cruttenden, 1979). Case grammar is based on a deep structure or proposition which is semantic. Semantic (or case) relationships such as agent, action, goal, location and possession are relevant to child speech and can be used to describe early sentences. The development of syntax involves differentiation of the ability to represent these semantic relations in progressively more complex surface forms. At first, surface structures, as in the example ‘Mommy sock’, can express a number of different semantic relations. The vast majority of early sentences express agent– action–object functions which are basic to later developments. For example, a two-word sentence with an agent–action function is ‘baby walk’, while ‘play ball’ is an action–object function. As children become able to use three-word sentences, the simple agent–action or action–object constructions can be expanded to agent–action–object relations in the same sentence, for instance, ‘Mummy play ball’ or ‘boy eat biscuit’. Later, more complex linguistic structures are all acquired through the modification of the basic agent–action–object propositions or elements within those propositions. In the sentence, ‘Mummy play ball’, a modification to the object–noun can lead to ‘Mummy play yellow ball’ while a modification to the action–verb in ‘boy eat biscuit’ can lead to ‘boy eat biscuit fast’. Examples of modification to the whole proposition would be negation, ‘Mummy no play ball’ or questions, ‘Did boy eat biscuit?’ Ninety per cent of the utterances in everyday speech are simple, active, affirmative, declarative sentences. Children quickly acquire the ‘rules’ that enable them to generate an infinite number of novel sentences. The shift from two- to three-word sentences occurs at stage II when MLU is 2.25 (at about two-and-a-half years). During this stage, grammatical morphemes begin to appear. These include word endings like plurals of nouns and verbs, possessives for nouns, verb tense inflections like ‘-ing’ and ‘-ed’, a few uses of the article like ‘an’ and parts of the copula (verb ‘to be’) like ‘is’ or ‘are’. There is further development and refinement of grammatical morphemes during stages III, IV and V. Certain errors in syntax appear systematically in many children, such as ‘goed’ and ‘feets’, showing that children are overgeneralising rules. The more complex the syntactical form, the later they are learned. It is not until stage III that children totally master the possessive and the copula (the verb ‘to be’) (Brown, 1973). The use of articles does not occur consistently until stages IV and V. At stage V (at around three to three-and-a-half ), children begin to construct much more complicated sentences by combining simple sentences into complex ones, either by the addition of a conjunction or by embedding one sentence within another through noun phrases and verb phrases (for example, ‘I did this and I did that’ and, ‘Mary sang what I like to hear’). Most children have acquired all the transformations they will use as adults by the time they are six.

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Culture and language Language systems are tools of thinking that both channel and result from community-wide ways of thinking and acting. Concepts that are easily expressed in the language systems of a community provide a tool for thinking. At the same time community practices and traditions often find expression in words, to facilitate communication among people. That is, through participation in community practices as well as in communication about them, both thinking and language develop in ways that support each other. (Rogoff, 2003, pp. 268–269)

The right to language and culture is a social justice issue for children from all language backgrounds. Article 30 of the UNCRC says that children have the right to their own language and culture. Implementing this right is not a problem for children from the dominant culture, but within Aotearoa New Zealand, it is a challenge to ensure that this right to language and culture is realised for children of Māori, Pasifika or other language heritages. Language forms differ between people from different cultural and class groups in our society. Culture has been defined as ‘a shared system of relationships among persons from which they assign meaning to their actions’ (Youniss, 1992, p. 136). Language provides a feeling of identity and recognition among members of a cultural group, which allows them to collectively remember events that they have not personally experienced, and to have a feeling of solidarity and belonging to their culture (Rogoff, 2003). Language is inseparable from culture since it enables stories, traditions and practices to be transferred from generation to generation, ensuring the preservation of cultural heritage and the acquisition of cultural identity. Language is also an important mediating tool through which children learn about their cultural practices in collaborative contexts, with the guidance of skilled members of their culture. Participation in language routines embeds children within their cultural context and provides a means for further participation. Different discourse patterns are involved in building children’s cultural identity in contrasting ways. There are, for example, different discourse patterns in American and Samoan families. Children from white middle-class American families are embedded in a discourse in which mothers clarify children’s speech through prodding, guessing, simplifying and expanding. In contrast, Samoan mothers do not expand or simplify, but neither do they react, look puzzled or say, ‘I do not understand’. They place the burden of clarification on children, because within the Samoan culture people of higher rank (and age) are not expected to see things from the perspective of people of lower rank. By expecting the children to clarify for others, they are being taught to participate in a recurrent cultural

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Box 7.1 Culture embedded in play in a Māori immersion centre The Māori immersion whānaui [sic] described play in relation to the concept of whanaungatanga, thus making connections between the physical and spiritual aspect of the whole child. When a child entered the early childhood environment they brought with them their whakapapa, their history and the hopes their family had for them in the future. In this way child’s play was viewed as a ‘connecting link’ between the centre and other dimensions of the child. The whānau saw play as essential in nurturing the potential of each child for their shared future. This meant that play involved exploration in cultural rituals and events as well as immersion in the reo. Jovan’s father became quite emotional as he watched Jovan spontaneously demonstrating the haka, saying, ‘I felt like crying’. When Jovan completed the haka by holding a drum in a taiaha stance, his father said, ‘I’m so proud of my son’; whereupon Jovan’s mother leaned over and said, ‘... and of ourselves.’ For these parents, Jovan’s connection with the taiaha in play was associated with his developing sense of identity as Māori, and as a future leader. White, Ellis, O’Malley, Rockel, Stover, & Toso, 2009, p. 41.

routine. Acquiring discourse routines in interaction with their mothers, children come to partake in the shared structures of the adult members of the culture (Youniss, 1992). Participation structures involving the rules of speaking and turn-taking are part of the discourses of a culture, which help children to practise language skills and acquire cultural concepts. Box 7.1 gives an example from an immersion centre where children’s play reflected their culture. In a Māori kōhanga reo,1 cultural concepts of whanaungatanga, āwhina, and tuakana–teina relationships were found to be embedded in language routines and language-focusing activities, in a study by Margie Hohepa, Graham Hingangaroa Smith, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and Stuart McNaughton (1991). Whanaungatanga is language behaviour that expresses or reinforces identity as part of a whānau (extended family) and is concerned with belonging to a particular family and cultural group. Āwhina means warmth, 1

The first kōhanga reo (Māori immersion preschool) opened in 1982. This was a New Zealand initiative to halt the declining numbers of Māori speakers and the loss of traditions and cultural values.

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affection and nurturance, and tuakana–teina relationships are the reciprocal commitments of siblings – both of which are incorporated into adult–child interactions. During whanaungatanga routines, children became aware of their family, and later their hapū (sub-tribal) and iwi (tribal) links, through the practice of mihimihi, a formal mode of self-introduction and orating which is traditional in Māori culture. The strategies used of looking, listening and imitating are based on traditions of memorisation and rote learning where whakapapa (ancestry) and waiata (songs) are learnt by heart to be delivered at the appropriate occasion. The language (Māori) is learned in the context of adult responsive feedback where the adult shows that she understands what the child has said. The study showed how effective this was since the two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half-yearolds in the study spoke multi-morphemic utterances well advanced from simple holophrastic speech.

Language deficit approaches

Unfortunately schools and teachers in many countries have tended to interpret language and cultural differences (comparing them to those of the dominant culture) as a sign of cultural deprivation or disadvantage. Instead of celebrating and building on cultural diversity, concepts of cultural deprivation, language deficit, monoculturalism and monolingualism have permeated our educational system, and its treatment of Māori, Pasifika and other minority culture children in Aotearoa New Zealand, with disastrous consequences (Bishop & Glynn, 1999). A language deficit model has persisted in New Zealand, and is often used by teachers (and researchers) to explain why children are not succeeding at school. It is assumed that Māori families have inadequate access to language and literacy resources and that families are failing to prepare children for school properly. This explanation releases teachers from the responsibility of engaging children in learning activities because it blames Māori failures on families and their structural socioeconomic disadvantage (Bishop, Berryman, & Richardson, 2001). These theories collectively can be labelled ‘deficit theories’ in that they blame the victims and collectively see the locus of the problem as either lack of inherent ability, lack of cultural appropriateness or limited resources. In short, some deficiency at best; a ‘pathology’ at worst. The general pattern of the solutions they propose suggests that the victims need to change, usually to become more like the proponents of the theories. Further, these are cul-desac theories, in that they do not offer an alternative that is acceptable to Māori people. (Bishop et al., 2001, p. 4)

Language deficit theory originated in the 1960s from the work of British sociologist Basil Bernstein (1960). Children from lower-class and ethnic minority

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families were described as suffering from an impoverished language. A ‘restricted’ language code was thought to be characteristic of working-class families, while middle-class families were said to use ‘elaborated’ codes. Restricted codes involve stereotyped, limited and condensed language, lacking in specificity and exactness and without the ability to allow interpersonal-type communications. An elaborated code, on the other hand, is complex, individualistic, capable of expressing unique reactions and interpersonal states, and precise, particular and differentiated in meaning. For example, if the telephone is ringing in a noisy room a mother using a restricted code might say, ‘Be quiet’ or, ‘Shut up’, while the mother using an elaborated code would say something like, ‘Would you keep quiet a minute, I want to talk on the phone.’ The cultural deprivation hypothesis was that the inferior language of working-class or minority ethnic children was responsible for their failure in the education system. A great deal of effort in many compensatory programmes went into making up for the language deficit of the black or working-class child and teaching him to acquire middle-class language skills. Bernstein’s ideas were adopted in New Zealand in a 1971 Department of Education publication, Maori Children and the Teacher. In the booklet it was generally assumed that Māori English was a restricted code and that Māori children were therefore handicapped in forming concepts, recognising relationships and following logical processes. Since then the language deficit model has been thoroughly discredited both in New Zealand (Benton, 1965; Bishop & Glynn, 1999; Bishop & Berryman, 2006; Hawkins, 1972; McCallum, 1978) and overseas (Labov, 1973; Tizard & Hughes, 1984; Tulkin, 1974). In the United States, the verbal deprivation myth was criticised as diverting attention from real defects in the education system, which did not respect the language of minority-group children (Labov, 1973). Yet black children, according to William Labov, produced copious language when the social context was right, and they were able to share a language with others. Black dialects were just as rule-governed and logical as standard English dialect. The so-called deficits in black children’s language were mainly an artefact of the artificial and middleclass biased context for the measurement of language. The social situation is the most powerful determinant of verbal behaviour and an adult must enter into the right social relation with a child if he wants to find out what the child can do: this is just what many teachers cannot do. (Labov, 1973, p. 33)

Language-deficit models have also been criticised on the basis of their political and cultural bias, and the implicit judgements by researchers or teachers that different cultures are inferior to their own (Smith, 1991; Tulkin, 1974). Middle-

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class ‘missionary’ approaches to other groups are pernicious because they lead to attempts to remediate the language ‘deficits’ of other cultures by making them conform to a middle-class model. Attempts to ‘help’ the minority-group child can only too easily denigrate and devalue the child’s background and culture. Research on Māori children’s language in New Zealand still sometimes comes from the point of view that their language is deficient. Even though teachers may have good intentions, ‘their understanding of what is best for children is determined from within their own Eurocentric world view, which incorporates their own particular cultural perspectives on pedagogy and resources’ (Bishop et al., 2001, p. 3). Custom and values are inextricably related to language, and unfortunately early childhood services in New Zealand are based largely on the majority Pākehā culture (Macfarlane & Macfarlane, 2012; Metge & Kinloch, 1978; Ritchie, 2009). Staff are mainly Pākehā and their values and language presented derive from Pākehā culture. Minority groups often find such a service unattractive because it does not incorporate their own values. Recent Education Review Office reports (2008, 2010, cited by Macfarlane & Macfarlane, 2012, p. 24) suggest that many (around 59 per cent) early childhood centres in New Zealand do not incorporate Māori cultural values or language into their programmes. Many early childhood staff say that they treat all children in the same way, and fail to recognise the importance of catering for difference. Teachers do not focus on Māori children as learners or use effective processes to find out about the aspirations of their whānau. Although there are often statements expressing values, beliefs and intentions to respect Māori culture, these are rarely evident in practice. Tokenistic use of Māori language is relatively common, as was found in Jenny Ritchie’s research. I was concerned not only at the paucity of Māori language being utilised by the teachers, but also at the colonised/ing nature of the models of Māori language being employed ... . The main use of language was in simple command formats: ‘Haere mai ki te kai’ (‘Come and eat’); ‘E tu tamariki’ (Stand up, children); ‘E noho’ (‘Sit down’); ‘Haere mai ki te whariki’ (Come to the mat); ‘Horoi o ringaringa’ (‘Wash your hands’). (Ritchie, 2008a, p. 204)

New Zealand needs more teachers who are fluent in Māori who can use complex and complete phrases incorporated into the daily rituals and activities of early childhood centres, who can embed whanaungatanga throughout early childhood programmes, build relationships with Māori families and communities, and be inclusive for all children (Ritchie, 2008b). Awareness and understanding of cultural differences can prevent alienation from school, and enhance Māori children’s self-concept and motivation. Mere Skerrett thinks the goal of enabling Māori individual and collective identity requires regeneration of the language,

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but that, ‘It is not enough to simply learn about Māori – a bit of poi and haka here and there and to know that “mā” is white – but to live as Māori creating meaning out of life as Māori’ (2007, p. 8). Bishop and his colleagues (Bishop, Berryman, Cavanagh, & Teddy, 2009) show that monocultural and racist discourses are embedded within teacher explanations of Māori underachievement in secondary schools. Teachers in the Bishop study commonly explained Māori students’ lack of progress as due to family deficiencies and ‘pathological lifestyles’ that prevented children from benefiting from schooling. They had low expectations for Māori students, and felt that they had very little responsibility for their educational outcomes, because they blamed Māori students’ failure on something outside their sphere of influence. The majority of teachers identified factors that came to the school via the Māori students themselves or from their homes as having the major influence on Māori students’ educational achievements. These factors were all to do with the perceived deficits of Māori students and their homes, so their influence was mainly seen as negative. (Bishop & Berryman, 2006, p. 258)

It is not surprising, given the low expectations and negative image that teachers had of Māori students, that most of the Māori (Year 9 and 10) students in Bishop and Mere Berryman’s study did not enjoy school and found it a frustrating, uncaring and boring experience. Although the teachers perceived the students as unmotivated, uninterested in learning and disruptive, most of the young people had high aspirations for their achievement and wanted to go to school and have positive experiences in learning. In order to improve Māori students’ achievements, Russell Bishop and his colleagues (Bishop et al., 2009) argued that a first and fundamental step was for teachers to reject deficit explanations, and take an agentic position where they took responsibility for the learning of the students. The examples in Box 7.2 show the contrasting perspectives of the young people and their teachers, and the embeddedness of the deficit model in teacher thinking. Hegemonic dominance by Pākehā culture and language, and labelling of Pasifika children according to deficit models, are also major problems. People from Pacific nations have migrated to New Zealand since the 1850s, but there was major migration in the 1950s in response to demand for labour. In some cases (for example, Niue) the population of these cultures in New Zealand is greater than those in their home islands (Airini, Sauni, Tuafuti, & Amituanai-Toloa, 2009). The preservation of Pacific languages in New Zealand is therefore a priority as more and more Pasifika children are born here, and come to use English as their first language. The form of English used by Pasifika children is often distinctive. Tongans, for example, use a brand of English that is mixed with smatterings of their native tongue (Airini et al., 2009).

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Box 7.2 Deficit thinking within student and teacher discourses Student perspectives They don’t say it to us, but you can see it like how they talk to us, especially one of the teachers, they don’t even push us to the limits they don’t push us hard enough. I know that I could do way better work if I wanted to. Yeah, like when Miss gave us some work, and she said, ‘I don’t think you’ll finish that, but those of you that do, you’ve got this sheet afterwards.’ What made her think we’re not going to finish it? Little things like that make us mad, and then we just don’t work for the rest of the period. (Bishop & Berryman, 2006, p. 41) Student perspectives – unfair discipline, boredom When you play up you get withdrawn from class. Yeah. You get sent out. Sometimes it’s not your fault, but you don’t get a chance to tell your side until you get to the deputy principal. So you tell your story and are allowed back, but you’re shamed out. It’s stink. (p. 11) People think Māori don’t know how to behave. People think Māori are dumb. People think you’re like your brother or sister, so if they were bad you will be bad; if they were good, you should always do better than you do. (p. 11) I want to come to school to learn. I don’t want to be a ‘dole bludger’. But ... the problem is some classes are really boring, and some teachers give me such a hard time. So if it’s that class and a mate says let’s go, I’m outta here. (p. 44) Teacher perspectives Well they [Māori] lack good models at home – too much alcohol and weed, too many late nights – they lack the desire to come to school. You hear the parents talking about how much time and money is being wasted on their schooling. They talk about they should leave school and get a job ... . They are disorganised. So are their families. They lack acceptable social skills. (p. 218). I believe that it is the home background to a large extent; I believe that it is a parental expectation. They don’t turn up to school on a regular basis. They are more interested in things outside the classroom rather than achieving academically. (p. 218)

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Box 7.2 continued People are born with different sorts of intellectual capacities and the supports they are given. Some of them have got a computer at home to work with, others haven’t. Some have dirt floors. Others have got a benefitdependent mentality. (p. 209) Bishop & Berryman, 2006.

Teachers’ empathy for and understanding of Pasifika cultures are necessary for Pasifika children to learn effectively (Allen, Taleni, & Robertson, 2009). Unfortunately, despite Pasifika people coming to New Zealand to gain more educational opportunities for their children, Pasifika children are found disproportionately at the lower end of the achievement scale, and Pasifika people are more likely to work in poorly paid unskilled occupations (Dickie & McDonald, 2011). In 2004, 16 per cent of Pasifika students left school with few or no qualifications and 9 per cent were suspended from school (Allen et al., 2009). Pasifika underachievement in the system is all too often explained by a ‘cultural deprivation’ hypothesis, but according to the former Secretary of Education, Howard Fancy, Pasifika underachievement is: ... not because they are less able but rather because the system fails to do as well as it should with these students. Too often educators and others make judgements based more on the background of Pasifika students and their characteristics than they do on their learning potential. Too often policy makers and educators pay insufficient attention to home and cultural factors. It is obvious that change must happen in the classroom and at home. (Ministry of Education, 2003, cited by Airini et al., 2009, p. 91)

Alison Jones’s (1988, 1991) seminal ethnographic research in secondary schools gives some insight into why Pasifika girls struggle to achieve in New Zealand schools. The girls were keen to do well and worked hard, but they interacted with their teachers differently than the Pākehā girls. Pākehā girls spoke more in the classroom by asking and answering more questions. They had more chance to learn school knowledge because, through their confident classroom talk, they engaged with the curriculum material and practised the skills valued by the teacher. The Pasifika girls were much less comfortable in interacting with the teacher and preferred to be silent, to listen and to receive. They maintained a low profile in the classroom. They only rarely expressed their own ideas. In contrast, the Pākehā girls were much more assertive in demanding teachers’ attention,

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Box 7.3 Culture and language in Pasifika settings Tongan Language Nest The practice of respect, etiquettes and good manners and behaviours are ... carried out at Pasifika early childhood education centres in their daily routines. For example, when the children arrive at the centre each morning, they are greeted in their particular island language, and the same greeting is extended to the parents or the caregivers. Then when they have the morning devotion, they sing a hymn or a song, learn or recite the Bible verses, say the Lord’s Prayer in their particular island language and so on. The show and tell session is carried out in the same language. The routine is repeated before other meal times and at the end of the day. But during the day, they play, paint, do art and craft, and interact among themselves and with teachers and other adults in their island language. (p. 191) MacIntyre, 2011, p. 191.

expressing their own opinions, having their needs, concerns and interests talked about, and controlling the nature of the teaching. The Pasifika girls, on the other hand, felt that they were dumb, and were embarrassed and shy if called upon to answer a question. Jones’s study illustrates the hierarchy of gender and race that existed in those classrooms, reinforcing a feeling of powerlessness and penalising the traditional cultural patterns of communication within other cultures. The success of the Te Kōhanga Reo movement was instrumental in encouraging initiatives to develop Pacific Island early childhood language nests in New Zealand in the 1980s (May, 2009). These centres, often associated with Pacific Island churches, are intended to assist with the preservation of Pasifika languages, to strengthen Pasifika children’s confidence and cultural identity, and to provide a strong foundation for their transition to school. It is important that trained fluent speaking Pasifika teachers are available to staff these centres, since they need to incorporate cultural practice, home language and pedagogical knowledge into their early childhood programmes. Boxes 7.3 and 7.4 provide examples of preschool settings that really reflect Pasifika patterns of communication and languages in Tongan and Samoan centres.

Shifting discourses

Familiarity with and respect for the values, practices and traditions of other cultures is essential in order to shift away from the discourse of disadvantage, risk and deficit. When teachers from a dominant culture construct other cultures (and

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Box 7.4 Samoan Sunday school (year 7 and 8 children) Apekaila [aged 11 years] described herself as speaking Samoan at home ‘quite a lot’ and as ‘extremely good’ at reading Samoan. She has her own Samoan Bible, which she reads at home where she also reads prayers in Samoan. Asked what she most liked to read in her own time she wrote ‘The Bible’. At Sunday school she writes in both Samoan and English, being encouraged by the teacher to use English if she does not know a Samoan word. The Sunday school teacher will read a sentence from the Bible and then say ‘full stop’, ‘comma’ and the pupils will write this down. The teacher marks the work and gives the result to the pupils and their parents, strengthening the complementarity between church and family. Dickie & McDonald, 2011, p. 28.

children coming from them) as deficient in some way, this prevents them from building on the rich competence, knowledge and resources inherent in other cultures. ‘The very act of transcending the boundaries of the classroom in itself ruptures the flow of circulating discourse of deficiency and difference’ (González, 2005, p. 43). Knowledge is situated, and learning involves the collaborative co-construction of meaning rather than the transmission of abstract knowledge. Finding out about the meanings that students bring from their family ‘funds of knowledge’ is a first and important step in connecting schools to children’s lives and learning (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005). It is therefore necessary to actively seek knowledge from families, and respect the cultural expertise that children bring from their homes into school. In the research of Raquel Gonzáles and her colleagues, the teachers and researchers became learners themselves, listening to and observing the way Mexican and Latino immigrant families lived. One teacher who had been in contact with immigrant families said, ‘I came away from the household visits changed in the way that I viewed the children. I became aware of the whole child, who had a life outside the classroom, and that I had to be sensitive to that’ (Raquel Gonzáles in González, Moll, Tenery et al., 2005, p. 101). Similarly New Zealand teachers who participated in a Pasifika initiative to learn about Samoan culture by visiting Samoa and spending ten days living with local families, helped the teachers empathise with Samoan children and create better learning opportunities for them (Allen et al., 2009). The teachers observed the closeness of Samoan family life, the social structures underpinning family and village interactions, and the highly structured Samoan classrooms. When they

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returned to New Zealand they could move beyond a deficit model, acknowledge and draw on students’ prior knowledge, use their language in the classroom, implement a more structured approach for new students, make and use culturally appropriate resources, communicate more easily with parents and treat every child as an important individual. Teachers’ attitudes changed as illustrated by this quotation: I’m actively looking for ways that I can actually assist my students and, you know, how I can go about sharing that knowledge that my children have with the other class so that I can put them in the expert role rather than them trailing behind. (Allen et al., 2009, p. 58)

In a bicultural early childhood research initiative,2 Ritchie (2008a, 2008b) worked with teachers (in partnership with whānau) who were all committed to acknowledging and incorporating Māori ways of knowing, being and doing into their classrooms. Rather than concentrating only on using smatterings of Māori language in the programmes, concepts that were fundamental to Māori tikanga (culture), such as whanaungatanga and manaakitanga (caring), were emphasised. Māori language and culture were repositioned as central to daily interactions in the classroom. One Pākehā mother involved with one of the project centres commented on how warm, welcoming and inclusive the place was, and the teacher said, ‘there’s an openness there, and that openness people recognise as embracing, and that actually we want to know who you are, we want to share who you are and this is who we are’ (Ritchie, 2008a, p. 207). Participants in the study enacted daily welcoming and spiritual rituals in te reo, generating a climate of welcoming and safety for families that resulted in their increasing involvement in centres and engagement with their children’s learning (Ritchie, 2009). A comprehensive project led by Bishop in New Zealand secondary schools,3 involved professional development and on-site school facilitators working with teachers and engaging in sustained critical reflection with teachers to help them develop an Effective Teaching Profile (ETP). The reflections were based on the narratives of students, teachers and whānau and culturally sensitive pedagogies (Bishop et al., 2009; 2012). The project invited teachers to take part in ‘discursive repositioning’ within alternative discourses, sensitising them to the systematic marginalisation of Māori students, the problems of deficit thinking, the inappropriateness of transmission teaching and the importance of engaging children in dialogue within a caring climate. Student discourses of their experiences of being marginalised within the school helped teachers to understand how 2 3

The Te Puawaitanga, Teaching Learning Research Initiative study. Te Kotahitanga project.

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Box 7.5 Changing the discourse Students I used to wag a lot of classes and stuff like that, but [now] I found that you come to school, and be yourself but learn at the same time too, and like I have achieved heaps, like I got my first merit in maths and my first excellence in cooking and I achieved a merit in science. (p. 736) Teacher It has helped me to develop much better learning relationships with the kids as a result, which has got to be a huge and tremendous positive. Not just from their point of view but certainly from mine as a teacher. It has made my life a lot easier you know long-term, medium to long-term it should make my life a lot easier and gave me a better understanding of what I need to do and where I need to go and where my students need to be. (Teacher, p. 738) Bishop, 2009.

the students were disempowered by teacher attitudes. Māori concepts such as manaakitanga (reciprocal hospitality and respect) and kotahitanga (collaborative response to a community vision) were inherent in the ETP. The project resulted in marked changes in teacher practices, and improved Māori student outcomes, which were sustained over time. Interviews with teachers and students showed that when teachers had good relationships with students, the students were able to learn, as shown in Box 7.5.

Bilingualism

An important issue in New Zealand in the preservation of culture and language is bilingualism, not only in Māori and English but in other languages, because an increasingly large group of immigrant children are entering early childhood centres and schools. Many New Zealanders seem to have a strong preference for ‘English only’, and unlike many other countries we do not seem to value language diversity. The majority of the world’s people (around 70 per cent) are bilingual, yet in New Zealand around 80 per cent are monolingual (Peddie, 2003; SirajBlatchford & Clarke, 2000). Yet preservation of cultural identity depends on language, and there is evidence that bilingualism encourages greater academic success and cognitive flexibility (Cullen, Haworth, Simmons, Schimanski, McGarva, & Kennedy, 2009). Strengthening children’s confidence and fluency in their first language is an important prerequisite to success in English.

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It is important to ensure that there is sufficiently high-quality teaching and continuing exposure to children’s first language through the preschool years. In the United States, Lily Wong Fillmore (1991) found that many preschool children purportedly attending bilingual programmes were actually being taught mainly in English, which meant that they were losing their home language. Under-fiveyear-old children have not achieved a stable enough command of their mother tongue to be able to learn English without adversely affecting their retention of the mother tongue. Because English is the higher-status language and the language of ‘success’ in the society, children pick it up quickly. Bilingual programmes should be minority language-based, in order to resist the domination of English (Cullen et al., 2009). The consequences of losing the primary language are far-reaching within families, because communication in it is a crucial link between parents and children, as well as a mediating tool for parents to convey cultural values, beliefs, understanding and wisdom to their children. Fillmore does not suggest that English teaching should be abandoned but that the timing of teaching it is crucial. She advocates teaching English after the native language has become stable enough to withstand interference from learning English. She therefore recommends the provision of early childhood programmes in the home language, and support for parents to insist on the use of the mother tongue at home. Pasifika language nests therefore are a valuable tool for preserving cultural identity and language in New Zealand. In Aotearoa New Zealand, preservation of the Samoan language is important to the identity of Samoan people, who have been able to maintain a distinctive subculture and ethnic identity, partly because of briefer exposure to European traditions and because of their arrival in New Zealand at a time when the importance of cultural identity was recognised (Fairbairn-Dunlop, 1984). Researcher Peggy Fairbairn-Dunlop showed that 91 per cent of a sample of Samoan children spoke Samoan, 78 per cent fluently and 13 per cent reasonably competently. Parents encouraged children to speak Samoan because of a deep sense of identity and a love of Samoan customs and values. Because of the strong and cohesive Samoan community in New Zealand, this identity is being maintained. Samoan parents expect and encourage their children to learn English but to use it mainly at school. Parents fear that sending children to New Zealand preschools might erode their use of Samoan, so Pasifika language nests are an important resource for these families. A sociocultural approach to bilingual development is likely to be more effective than a transmission approach (Cullen et al., 2009). Learning and language maintenance is facilitated by an interactive approach drawing on home funds of knowledge, where teachers and children, as well as peers, collaboratively

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construct meaning, and use the home language for communicating and solving problems. Children and adults can take both novice and expert roles and exchange and share cultural knowledge and language. A thoughtful Centre of Innovation project at Wycliffe Nga Tamariki (WNT) kindergarten, involving teachers and Massey University researchers, demonstrates a successful approach to bilingual early childhood education (Cullen et al., 2009). Around 30 children attended morning and afternoon sessions at the WNT kindergarten, but Samoan children who attended a nearby Samoan language immersion centre in the morning joined the afternoon sessions in the kindergarten until they went to school. The afternoon sessions were rich in languages (Samoan, English and Māori), and a variety of literacy and cultural resources in different languages. Two teacher aides, one fluent in Samoan, participated in the afternoon settings, and the programme focused on the purposeful use of Samoan language in play, encouraging intercultural friendships, and children’s active engagement in complex and sustained learning. Video recordings and PowerPoint displays were used to help teachers, children and parents to reflect on and revisit earlier learning, as well as to make connections between the home culture and life at WNT kindergarten. The project was successful in promoting Samoan language and intercultural learning for all of the participants. The teacher-researchers’ 3-year research project has strengthened understanding of an additive bilingual education approach which works to enrich the total language resources of each learner. There is an emphasis on building familiarity with patterns, sounds and rhythms associated with the minority languages represented at the kindergarten. Enhancing first-language fluency through the dual settings of WNT and Upu Amata seems likely to support the development of more equally balanced bilingualism that will later accrue associated cognitive benefits. (Cullen et al., 2009, p. 54)

Despite fears that fluency in other languages may be an obstacle to children’s progress in English language and literacy, there is evidence that strong fluency in the home language helps minority children learn English when they enter school. The bilingual and biliteracy development of Samoan and Tongan children entering mainstream schools after attending Pasifika early childhood education centres was studied by Fa’asaulala Tagoilelagi-Leota, McNaughton, Shelley MacDonald and Sasha Farry (2005). Children came from 21 ECE centres whose teachers had been involved in a professional development focusing on promoting language and literacy. The centres were of high quality and involved near total immersion in the home language. About half of the children were completely bilingual on entry to school. Attendance at Pasifika ECE centres, rather than restricting the rates of acquiring English on entry to school, was associated with rapid gains in English

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language and literacy skills. The study had both positive and negative messages. The positive message is that a fluency in the heritage language enhances the rapid acquisition of English language skills. The negative message is that the gains in English were at the cost of the slowing of progress in the home language. The study raises important questions about helping communities to increase support for children’s home languages.

Encouraging young children’s language

It is questionable whether it is necessary to teach language, since most children acquire language in the context of their natural everyday experience. Language progress can be facilitated, however, in informal ways, through aspects of the language environments that children experience. If one assumes that most children, by the time they get to a preschool, have some language, it is important to ensure they have the opportunity to use it and are encouraged to extend their language. Although children are autonomous constructors of their own language, adults have an important role to play in their language learning, because they provide feedback to children on their language use (G. Wells, 2009). Wells believes that the responsibility for what is learned and the order in which it is learned rests with the child, but that the child needs to construct his language from the language environment (primarily through interactions with others). The speed of language acquisition is promoted by the support and encouragement received by the child from parents and/or caregivers and through opportunities for peer interactions. Collaborative conversations between adult and child in one-to-one situations about things that are of mutual interest and concern – such as what they are doing, their plans for the future, or past shared activities – help build and extend shared meanings. Negotiation of meaning takes place between conversational partners, and shared language emerges out of communicative talk in the zone of proximal development. The hearer assumes that the speaker is talking sense and tries to infer the sense of what is being said. The speaker monitors what she is saying to fit the listener’s outlook and existing knowledge (Rommetveit, 1985). In ‘motherese’ (or baby talk), the adult exaggerates and stresses words and sentences, uses simple vocabulary, emphasises the ‘here and now’, simplifies syntax and uses frequent repetitions. Adults and older children need to be skilled in tailoring their speech to fit the needs of the young child. The less skilled partner in the conversation gradually assumes more responsibility for what is being referred to. Language is learned in collaborative contexts. Parents treat their babies as if they have intentions and respond to them in terms of their intentions (G. Wells, 2009). Babies therefore develop intentions through adult expectations. Adults

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help children progressively construct the language of their communities. Within the context of joint attention and activity, adults provide feedback and one-toone talk about actions, events or objects that engage children, and adjust their utterances so that children can make sense of them. Although children have to work out for themselves the meaning of language, they cannot do it on their own. They need conversational partners before they can come to construct their own understanding. Adults have to listen carefully to children, be responsive to the cues that children give about what they understand, and adjust their talk to the child’s perspective. Wells argued that the most important factor driving children to talk is their wish to communicate their wishes to others. Almost all early utterances involve drawing attention to something, wanting something, showing interest in something or expressing feelings (such as pleasure or surprise). Wells uses the metaphor of throwing a ball to explain early language exchanges between young children and adults. Talking with young children is thus very much like playing ball with them. What the adult must do for this game to be successful is, first, to ensure the child is ready, with arms cupped to catch the ball. Then the ball must be thrown gently and accurately so that it lands squarely in the child’s arms. When it is the child’s turn to throw, the adult must be prepared to run where it goes and bring it back to where the child really intended it to go. Such is the collaboration required in conversation, the adult doing a great deal of work to enable the ball to be kept in play. (G. Wells, 2009, p. 56)

Individual differences There are striking individual differences in children’s rate of early acquisition of language (G. Wells, 2009). Some children at two-and-a-half talk a great deal, while others say very little. The extent to which children are verbal at two is not necessarily a good indication of how intelligent or verbal they will be later on. Individual differences in language, however, have considerable implications for what happens to a child who is in an early childhood centre for part or all of a day. The greatest danger is that the child who does not say much does not get talked to much. Children need language and communicative input in order to progress with language. It is important that early childhood teachers do not magnify natural differences by ignoring non-talkers and interacting more with talkers. There needs to be careful distribution of attention among different children so that all of them are getting access to language stimulation at an appropriate level. This is particularly important for infants and toddlers in early childhood programmes, since at this stage peers are less likely to provide effective reciprocal communication.

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One of the reasons that adequate staff–child ratios are so crucial in early childhood education is because sensitivity to individual differences in language is necessary, and teachers should have the opportunity for one-to-one engagement with young children. No teacher can be responsive to individuals unless she has time to engage with them, and this means not too many children. It is particularly important that infants, whose language is still emerging, get plenty of exposure to language; they can benefit enormously from an active and determined effort to encourage language. If children are treated in a way that assumes that they understand, then they are likely to begin to communicate. This involves guided participation and stimulation in the zone of proximal development. I have already talked about the importance of sensitivity to, and knowledge of, class and cultural differences.

Relationships

Particularly for young children, the growth of language is nourished in an atmosphere where the child knows and trusts his adult caregivers and has developed a relationship with them. Teachers should not see themselves in a distant role from the child, as they cannot do an effective job of encouraging children’s language without trust and mutuality. There needs to be a warm, affective relationship between adult and child if the adult is to be a good language partner. Children need to know that the adult is interested and responsive to what they want to talk about. The greater the shared experience and mutual sensitivity, the more likely it is that genuine conversations will occur. In the early stages of language development, young children’s language is often hard to interpret, especially by people other than parents. Having a close relationship with children increases the chances that adults will be able to interpret children’s utterances, respond to their requests and help them to produce more intelligible language. Language dialogues are not encouraged when children are in an unequal power relationship with adults. The roles of disciplinarian and communicator are hard to combine unless there is a warm bond between adult and child. Hence using language only for reprimands, imparting information or controlling child behaviour is not conducive to language growth. Instead, shared attention over joint activities, encouraging curiosity and mutual awareness, helps children develop new meanings and vocabulary, and to solve problems. Intimacy and self disclosure within close relationships not only helps children extend their language but gives them insights into other people’s feelings, intentions and worries (Dunn, 2004). Discourse about feelings, shared humour and connectedness (where individuals can sustain a connected thread of communication) are embedded in discourse between adults and children. Such close relationships are rich contexts, not only for developing language and

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thinking, but social competence and learning about the feelings of others, as well as feelings of self-worth.

The importance of context

The way that children’s experiences are organised has a considerable effect on the quality of the language exchanged. I have already mentioned the central importance in early childhood centres of favourable adult–child ratios so that there are sufficient known and trusted adults available to engage in conversations with children. Group size is also important, as large groups do not encourage a family-like atmosphere or facilitate the development of relationships. Instead, large groups are likely to lead to regimentation, and to controlling and directive rather than communicative adult language. With a larger number of children, adults are less available to listen to children, respond sensitively according to their current level of understanding, or help children with activities or access to resources. The availability of changing activities and experiences, both within and outside the centre (or home), helps provide shared experiences to talk about, and to encourage communication between adults and children. Books are an essential element in encouraging and extending language, and mutual involvement with adults in reading stories and talking supports language growth. Equipment or toys are not necessarily useful, however, unless there is an opportunity for adults to join in children’s play and talk to children about the activities. Everyday tasks and routines at home (or ECE centre) provide excellent opportunities to engage in conversation over joint activities. Talking about and participating in daily events such as cooking lunch, doing the supermarket shopping or cleaning the car provide opportunities in informal settings to broaden children’s understanding and to use language for communication. Participating in a common activity creates a stable bond of communication and shared concern. When teachers are very busy, playing a supervisory rather than a participatory role, they are less likely to engage informally with children. Hierarchical staff organisations, in which teachers do not have the chance to take initiatives (like deciding to take the children for a walk or working with a flexible schedule), also do not encourage staff–child communication. The ability to relax and enjoy engagement with children is more conducive to conversations, such as over mealtimes or engaging in a joint activity. When teachers have a greater knowledge of family life at home and of cultural funds of knowledge within families, it is easier for them to form relationships with children, develop intersubjectivity (understand the child’s perspective) and engage them in activities that interest them. Genuine conversations are more likely when children take the initiative, and the teacher knows the child and family well enough to engage responsively.

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Box 7.6 Visiting the farm This episode takes place in the morning session at an early childhood centre. The children are drawing and the teacher is sitting at their table, talking to children, and responding to their requests for help. Four-yearold Ron initiates a conversation with the teacher, who knows that he often visits his grandparents’ farm on the weekends. )(: And do you know, today I’m going to the farm and tomorrow I am going to the show? Teacher: Oh are you going to the farm today? )(: Tomorrow. Teacher: And tomorrow you are going to the show? )(: Yep. Teacher: Oh lovely. )(: And I’m gonna meet, I gonna meet Ethan there too. Teacher: Who’s Ethan? )(: He’s my cousin. Teacher: He’s your cousin. Is he bigger than you or? )(: Argh well I most probably be bigger than him. Teacher: You think you are older than him. Are you? )(: Yeah, because he’s three and I’m four aren’t I? Teacher: Yes, you are four. Yep. )(: He’s three. Teacher: So you are older than him aren’t you? Unpublished data from transcripts of children’s conversations, Anne Smith, 2005.

Both Box 7.6 and 7.7 are examples of successful reciprocal conversations between early childhood teachers and four-year-old children, in one case initiated by the child and in the other case by the teacher. Small group (or one-to-one) settings where children are involved in sustained shared thinking with others to solve a problem, clarify a concept, evaluate something or extend a narrative, and where both partners contribute to developing and extending the understanding, were characteristic of high-quality early childhood centres in a United Kingdom longitudinal study (Sylva, Taggart, Siraj-Blatchord et al., 2007). In early childhood centres that had good developmental outcomes for children, teachers ‘focus more on challenging activities, take an active role in teaching through pedagogical practices that include scaffolding children’s learn-

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Box 7.7 Revisiting building a tower with Lego blocks Samuel is a four-year-old whose first language is not English. The previous day he had built a tower with Lego blocks aided by a parent helper and another child. The teacher and Samuel are looking at photographs of Samuel building the tower. The teacher invites Samuel to chat about the photo. Teacher: Who was that by you? Samuel: Simon. Teacher: Oh that’s Simon by you. And what were you doing with Simon? Samuel: Building big tower. Teacher: Oh you were building the big tower. Oh. Look, yes, look I can see you working together there .... What were you talking about? Samuel: Blue, yellow, yellow and blue Teacher: (points to the structure) What structure have you made here? Samuel: A big tower. Ahh ... broken. Teacher: Ah. The big tower and it’s broken. Samuel: Yeah. Teacher: Oh. How did the tower get broken? Samuel: The tower, uh, broken. Teacher: The tower broken. Mmm. Samuel: Ah ... a train is did ... a ... well ... a lorry come get it. Teacher: A lorry? Samuel: Yeah a lorry come hit it. Teacher: And hit it. Samuel: Yeah. And b ... and the building ‘bomp’. Teacher: And the building went bomp down. Samuel: Yeah. Carr et al., 2010, p. 74.

ing through play, modelling activities/interactions, and questioning rather than monitoring children’s play or engaging in care activities’ (Sylva et al., 2007, p. 63).

Adult language interactions

When adults are sensitive to what the child already understands, and modify and simplify their own language to keep their utterances short and grammatically simple, this increases the chances that children will understand what they say

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and hold their attention, at the early stages of language development. Adults must also be sensitive listeners, make use of context to interpret children’s meanings and check with children that they have understood their intended meanings. An example of an adult and child negotiating over meaning is given in Box 7.8. When there is an adult agenda of transmitting knowledge or skills to the child, this can have a dampening effect on children’s communication attempts. I observed an example of this while I was at an early childhood centre working on our ethnographic observation study (Carr et al., 2010). The centre had a session called ‘school group’ for the over four-year-olds to prepare them for school (a common practice in New Zealand). The teacher took a lesson about writing numbers. The children had to copy numbers that the teacher had written in their books. The child I was observing, Jeff, managed to copy the numbers one, two and three but he could not do a four. He asked the teacher to show him again, and she did so, but he still could not do a four to his satisfaction and walked away in frustration saying, ‘I’m only four, I can’t do a four.’ This teaching approach was particularly ineffective as it focused on the physical act of producing the symbol for four without focusing on understanding, and left the child with a feeling of failure. Highly directive teacher talk was found in a Canadian study to be associated with more restricted and less complex language use by children, while teacher conversational engagement with children was associated with the greatest talkativeness, lexical diversity and complexity (Girolametto, Weitzman, van Lieshout, & Duff, 2000). The authors suggest that teachers would benefit from training to reduce some types of directiveness, such as behaviour control, turntaking control and topic control, and to increase their conversational control, through the use of Wh- questions and clarification questions. Another ineffective adult strategy is to correct children’s language errors. Rather than improving their syntax, this may have the opposite effect. If adults focus on the form of children’s message rather than what they are trying to say, children may well give up the attempt to communicate. Children have hypotheses about the principles for combining language units that they construct based on the regularities of language (G. Wells, 2009). Such errors as ‘goed’, ‘gived’, ‘runned’ are common. Children eventually modify their prevailing hypotheses when their ‘mistakes’ do not match the prevailing language they hear. It is not possible in the context of group settings for all or even most conversations to be one-to-one. Mat time can be an opportunity to have conversations in group settings, preferably when the discussion focuses on children’s interests and ideas rather than on a teacher-imposed topic. Group time can be used for sharing ideas and experience, planning activities, singing and playing games. A group or class identity is established and children learn the rules of appropriate ways of

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Box 7.8 Conversation about a fire (mother and toddler) Mark: A man’s fire, Mummy Mother: [requesting a repetition] Mm? Mark: A man’s fire. Mother: [checking] Mummy’s flower? Mark: No. Mother: What? Mark: Mummy. The man. Fire Mother: [checking] Oh, yes, the bonfire Mark: [imitating] Bonfire. Mother: Mm. Mark: Bonfire. Oh, bonfire. Bonfire. Bon- a fire. Bo. Bonfire Oh, hot, Mummy. Oh, hot. It hot. It hot. Mother: Mm, it will burn, won’t it? Mark: Yes, burn. It burn. G. Wells, 2009, p. 53.

interacting, such as how to get a turn at talking. Children, with the guidance of the teacher, can develop the skills of group discourse at mat time. Initially there may be teacher direction and rule establishment, but gradually conversation becomes more complex and collaborative, and children learn new strategies for getting a turn and initiating interactions. The teacher can withdraw her ‘scaffolding’ and children gradually learn to contribute spontaneously. In group time children learn to understand the shifting requirements for participation and how to adapt their performance to the demands of the situation. Children have to make a transition from the spontaneous conversational settings of homes and early childhood centres, where talk is focused on shared interests and activities, to a different style of talk and action at school. School settings are more often teacher-led, and require children’s sustained and deliberate attention to a topic or activity, often related to numeracy and literacy goals (G. Wells, 2009). With the larger ratio of children to adults in primary school classrooms there is less opportunity for the teacher to engage in one-to-one conversations, although children can be given tasks in small groups that the teacher can then work with. There is, however, usually a lot less opportunity for collaborative interaction at school, either between teacher and child or between children, according to our observations (Carr et al., 2010). Wells (2009) found that children spent most of their school day working

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individually or in small groups, on tasks assigned by the teacher, or in self-chosen activities with teacher approval. In Wells’ observations not only did children speak less to an adult, but they got fewer turns, expressed a narrower range of meanings and used less grammatically complex utterances. Teachers were less likely to take up children’s topics of conversation and extend them than parents were at home. Gordon Wells suggests that if teachers want to extend the fluency and coherence of children’s language they should avoid doing so in large groups, but instead plan small-group situations in which children can try out their ideas tentatively, free from the constraints of the large-group situation, and actively engage in meaning-making. Teaching is essentially a matter of facilitating learning, and where the learning depends on communication between the teacher and the learner, the same principles apply as in any successful conversation. The aim must be the collaborative construction of meaning, with negotiation to ensure that meanings are mutually understood. (G. Wells, 2009, p. 113)

There are some helpful strategies that teachers can use to create good conditions for language development (Parke & Drury, 2000). These include eliciting children’s knowledge and memories, creating a space for them to articulate what they know, scaffolding children’s mutual reconstruction of activities, leading them to the next stage, but letting them fill in the content. Unsuccessful strategies include forcing children to play the game of what is in the teacher’s mind, or using transmissional models of teaching. For children to understand and learn, it is essential that they are active participants in constructing their own understanding, not passive recipients of the teacher’s knowledge.

Language with peers

Peers can sometimes be more effective than adults in providing scaffolding in the zone of proximal development for children’s language acquisition. An important incentive for talking among preschool children is to communicate and play with peers. Children can learn a good deal by talking with each other, and use their fullest communication skills when talking to other children. They also show remarkable skill in adjusting their speech to the level of younger siblings and peers. Four-year-olds have been found to use shorter, simpler utterances, and more attention-getting devices in their conversations with two-year-olds than with older children. Peers have the capacity to stimulate each others’ language development through their engagement in sustained, multiple-turned conversations. A largescale United States study of four-year-olds (Mashburn et al., 2009) showed that peers’ expressive language skills made a small but significant contribution to

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language achievement, and that exposure to peers with strong language skills provided children with an important resource for language learning. Teachers played an important role in managing peer-to-peer interactions and encouraging positive practices, like children looking at books together or engaging in dramatic play. The authors found that well-managed classrooms, where children’s time was organised so that they had more time to engage both with their peers and teachers, were most supportive for language growth. Siblings are also valuable early language partners. Dunn (1996) found that between three and four years of age there was a marked drop in the time children spent talking to their mothers and an increase in the time they spent talking to their siblings. Conversational turns with mother dropped from 82 turns an hour to 52, while turns with siblings increased from 44 to 70. In sibling conversations children were more likely to refer to the thoughts and feelings of their sibling, and to share ideas, than they were with their mothers. Siblings have extensive shared experience as well as affectionate (as well as conflictual) relationships with each other. The difference in age can be an advantage, allowing the older sibling to provide guidance and modelling attuned to the younger sibling. Even very young siblings communicate in the context of shared humour and fantasy play. Siblings pick up sensitively on the play mood of the other, coordinate actions and share collective symbolism. Even conflict between siblings can be useful, because it provides an alternative viewpoint and can be a site for negotiation. Intimate friendships involve close relationships, reciprocity, mutual interest and shared activities, enabling intersubjectivity between friends to develop, providing a valuable framework for children’s developing language. There are similarities in the close dyadic relationships which occur in friendship and sibling relationships, but interactions between friends are more likely to involve mutual commitment of affection, support and trust than those between siblings (Dunn, 2004). Friendly and cooperative peer and sibling relationships, however, are likely to be associated with complex language and good communication. Dyads of equals or near equals (as in children’s friendships) have an important role in extending children’s ability to communicate. Dramatic play is a good context for developing and expressing complex meanings, syntax and utterances. Imaginative play involves collaborative actions and negotiations over characters, roles and storylines. Children work through and explore emotions safely in dramatic play, when these are too frightening to think about in the real world. They also use their creative powers to draw on funds of knowledge from home, communities, television and books, to connect to other worlds and possibilities, and to construct new understandings and ideas. Children also construct and reconstruct their identities through playful treatment of social relationships and roles. In our ethnographic study of four- and five-year-

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Box 7.9 Flowers, trees, monsters and treasure maps Henry: We’re looking for treasure. We are looking for everything that’s on this map. Henry starts bending over and looking in the sand, moving it with his hand, Peter and Ben do the same. Ben picks up a small flower that has probably blown off a nearby blossom tree. Ben: Flowers, flowers. It’s a flower. Ben shows Henry, Henry stands up, looks at it and then looks at his piece of paper. Henry: Yep, flowers on this map. Well we’re looking for everything that is on this map. They move to an area of the playground under some trees. Henry: Yep, there’s trees on here, and we have monsters on this map. Yep we have tree monsters on this map. (Calls out to Peter) Peter, watch out – that’s a bush monster, that’s a bush monster. Henry finds a stick and uses it like a gun. Ben annoys him and breaks his stick. Henry: That’s not funny (to Peter). Peter, he’s trying to shoot me. Ben, you ruined my map. Ben: Well, I ... You’re not allowed guns. Henry: Well, it’s just a pretend gun. It’s okay if you pretend. Peter suggests that he and Henry return to the swings, and they do. Carr et al., 2010, p. 57.

olds, there were many examples of the rich narratives and language involved in children’s dramatic play (Carr et al., 2010). One participant in the study, Henry, had a great interest in stories involving treasure maps, which appeared in many episodes of his play (see Box 7.9). Another participant in the study, Buzz, was involved in repeated variations of the theme of Harry Potter involving wands, flying cars and a great deal of magic. Yet another participant, Aralynn, with her friends, played out the theme of Princess Aurora, the Sleeping Beauty, which then became interwoven with a Spiderman theme, in negotiation with the other children. Providing opportunities and support for children’s imaginative play is advocated by Vivian Paley (2004), who is concerned about early childhood

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programmes devaluing and discouraging imaginative play in pursuit of more academic learning. In dramatic play, language becomes more vivid and spontaneous, enabling young children to connect, with greater fluency and curiosity, the words and phrases they know to new ideas. The process involves not only the flow of words and imagery but of shared myth and metaphor, of knowing where the lost babies are and whether a dad can have sharp teeth like a wolf. ‘B is for bear’ will teach the letter B, a good thing to know, but one must also know who likes to be the father bear and how bears and kittens might get across a poison river. (Paley, 2004, p. 73)

Summary

Language opens up many new cognitive and social opportunities for children, and is a mediating tool for them to understand the people, places, things and events in their lives. The chapter looked at a variety of theoretical perspectives. Behavioural theory suggests that reinforcement and imitation of early vocalisations shape speech. As children’s language becomes more articulate and comprehensible, children are more likely to have their needs met by adult compliance with their demands. The focus on external aspects of language rather than internal meanings, however, limits the usefulness of behavioural explanations. Chomsky argued that in order to explain the creation of new sentences an innate transformational grammar is needed to account for the rapidity of language learning. Other language theorists such as Wells argue, however, that grammar merely mirrors the functions of language. Cognitive theory emphasises the relationship between language, early experiences and underlying cognitive structure. Children can talk best about what they comprehend. Sociocultural theory suggests that language is first used for communication in contexts where children learn through the negotiation of meaning with a more skilled language user. The social use of language precedes its internalisation as a means of solving problems. The child’s construction and memories of the events she experiences occur prior to entry into shared language and the use of mediated language. Children’s language development is characterised by a pre-linguistic period during which the prerequisite skills such as speech perception, communication patterns, babbling and passive understanding of speech are acquired. At around one, children begin to produce their first words. These are holophrases or oneword sentences that can best be interpreted in the context in which they occur. Children move from single-word sentences to combining words into simple telegraphic sentences. They then become capable of producing a large number of new utterances. Most early sentences express agent–action–object functions.

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The development of syntax involves increasing length of utterance, and gradual incorporation of grammatical morphemes such as verb endings, conjunctions, articles and possessives. Most children have acquired all the transformations used by adults by the time they are six. Language forms differ between people from different class and cultural groups, with different rules for speaking and turn-taking incorporated into cultural discourses. Cultural practices and traditions are embedded in these language forms which are a means through which children learn about their culture and acquire cultural identity. Children have a right to their language and culture. Indigenous or minority languages and cultures have, however, been interpreted by dominant cultures according to a language deficit interpretation, and these have permeated our educational system. Minority cultures tend to be seen as deficient, and as needing to change to be more like the majority culture. Such attitudes may lead to a feeling of powerlessness and disengagement from the education system. Recent culturally sensitive and responsive initiatives have shown encouraging progress in incorporating Māori language and values into education, and addressing issues of monoculturalism and monolingualism. Respecting and promoting cultural values such as whanaungatanga have helped to build relationships with Māori children and whānau, prevent alienation from school and encourage success, and are allowing the regeneration of Māori identity. Pasifika children have benefited from the provision of language immersion preschools which have preserved children’s competence in home languages and strengthened traditional cultural values. New Zealand could be doing more to promote bilingualism, since few people are bilingual in this country, despite a diverse immigrant community from the Pacific Islands and elsewhere. Strengthening children’s competence and fluency in their mother tongue is a prerequisite for success in English, as well as being essential for the maintenance of cultural identity and communication within families. Several projects have been successful in promoting Pasifika languages in New Zealand, through the provision of additional cultural resources, and through helping teachers learn more about children’s home cultures. In order to promote children’s language acquisition the chapter emphasised that: 1. Individual differences need to be recognised and catered for, with particular attention being given to ensuring that children who talk least do not get the least verbal stimulation. 2. Warm and trusting relationship between adults and children in early childhood services and schools promote conversations and increase shared meaning, language fluency and complexity.

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3. Contextual features of early childhood settings which encourage language include adequate staff–child ratios, sufficient books and equipment, a shared concern or activity, staff stability and autonomy, and small size of class or centre. 4. Adults working with children should avoid excessive use of speech for control of behaviour, correcting children’s speech and talking too much themselves. They should try to listen to children’s speech and engage children in reciprocal conversations, attempting to extend children’s language based on their experience. 5. Small-group (or one-to-one) settings where children have the opportunity to be involved in sustained shared thinking with others (teacher or peers) in meaningful tasks are supportive of language development. 6. Children tend to use their best language in interaction with peers. Hence there should be plenty of opportunities for collaborative activities (including socio-dramatic play). .

8

Thinking in Context

Education is not, at root, about the transmission of knowledge and skills. Rather, it is about the development of understanding and the formation of minds and identities: minds that are robust enough and smart enough to engage with the uncertain demands of the future, whatever they may be, and identities that are attuned to the changing communities of which they are members, and able and willing to participate effectively and responsibly in their activities and thus to contribute to, and benefit from, their transformation. (Wells & Claxton, 2002, pp. 1–2)

Thinking involves representation, acquisition of knowledge, understanding, interpreting experience, making predictions and solving problems. It introduces the cognitive domain of development, but as with so many aspects of children’s lives, it is hard to separate out from other aspects of their learning, or from the social worlds they participate in. I have called the chapter thinking in context, because a sociocultural perspective on thinking is always situated, relational and inseparable from the world of action (Pitri, 2004). I argue that thinking emerges from the goals and tools of the culture rather than from within the child. Children have to adapt to uncertain futures and situations, so their educational contexts should nurture learning dispositions which will help them cope with the new. The UNCRC asserts that the child should have the right to an education that allows the fullest development of ‘personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential’ (Article 29). Enabling children to become successful lifelong learners supports their human rights, and allows them to be responsible citizens who can both benefit from, and contribute to, the knowledge and resources inherent in their cultural contexts. This chapter presents a sociocultural perspective on children’s thinking. From a sociocultural perspective, habits of thinking are not acquired through didactic teaching transmitting knowledge from teacher to learner, but through children’s active

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participation with others, utilising cultural meanings and tools, and making sense of the world in collaborative contexts. The chapter also explores how children develop flexible knowledge, expertise and dispositions that are transferable to new tasks and settings, and help prepare them to adapt to an unknown future. It is impossible to study thinking without considering the contexts of thinking, and these are imbued with values, practices and relationships within formal (e.g. school) and informal (family) situations. Contexts ‘influence and shape the nature of human agency and activity’ (Percy-Smith, 2012, p. 15). Particular ways of being, roles, expectations and opportunities for participation are inherent within different social contexts. ‘Affordance’ is a concept used to describe the relationship between the properties of the environment and the learner. Agency is not just a matter of the individual learner, but the opportunities and encouragement that the learner receives from the affordances in the environment. Both physical and social contexts generate some types of learning and not others. For example, a classroom with desks all in rows does not encourage (indeed prevents) collaborative work, whereas where tables are placed together in small groups, children can work collaboratively. Similarly the social environment (other people) can ‘call forth’ different types of behaviour from children (McDermott, 1993, cited by Gaffney, 2012). If a teacher expects Māori children to take twice as long to do a task, she may not provide them with challenging tasks. If a teacher, on the other hand, knows what it is that a child does not understand, she is able to provide the necessary scaffolding to help him understand. Vygotsky, whose theory I introduced in chapter 1, believed that education and language are central to cognitive development. Knowledge and cultural understanding, he believed, are transferred from the adult (or more skilled peer) to the child through language and communication. The child gains in competence through being taken in tow by others (Moll, 1990). Thinking develops in a social context, and a ‘unique form of cooperation between the child and the adult ... is the central element of the educational process’ (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 169). Vygotsky saw thinking as emerging out of interpersonal processes in situations where the child is involved in joint actions, which then become transformed into intrapersonal skills, culminating in more abstract thinking. Vygotsky, however, did not believe that children passively absorbed their experiences in the course of socialisation. Although knowledge is always socially mediated, children actively construct their own understandings and appropriate (make their own) the knowledge they are exposed to (Carr & Lee, 2012). Vygotsky emphasised the transformatory role of sign systems, such as language and symbols, on thinking. He thought that children could perform at a much more advanced level in the zone of proximal development – when they are at the edge of their competence

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and can benefit from guidance. Solitary learning where children are left to figure things out on their own (as they often have to do in classrooms) is not an effective way to promote learning.

Tools for thinking

New sociocultural ideas, inspired by Vygotsky, have emerged from the closer collaboration of anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists. One area where more work has been carried out is on the importance of tools for thinking – including physical objects like computers, books or interactive whiteboards, but also diagrams or visual representations, writing systems, mathematical algorithms or computer software. Tools or mediational means are referred to as ‘the culture’s way of making sense of experience’ (Wells & Claxton, 2002). Action and thinking are mediated by tools, and we can therefore think of ‘individualsacting-with-mediational-means’ rather than as isolated individuals (Wertsch, 1991). Cultural traditions and tools are inherited and transformed over time by successive users in a process of cultural evolution, which has been called the ‘ratchet effect’ (Tomasello, 1999). Humans can pool their cognitive resources, because they can put themselves in the mental shoes of others and understand others as intentional beings like the self. They can understand the role that tools have in achieving an aim (pencils for writing with, spoons for eating with) by observing or collaborating with others using these tools. Tools are another way of supporting or scaffolding thinking, and often this is combined with collaboration with more skilled users. Children learn from others how to use tools and what they are for (as in Box 8.1 of a four-year-old and her teacher doing marble painting). Children come to understand the affordances inherent in tools for thinking and problem-solving. When an engineer uses computer imaging to formulate options in designing a new car, it is impossible to separate the individual actions of the engineer from the mediational means or tools (the computer imaging) that he uses in his work (Wertsch, 1991). When I was first studying science I used a slide rule to help me solve problems, and when a graduate student I fed punch cards into a primitive computer to do statistics, and a manual typewriter to produce my essays. When I use the word processing programme of my computer now to write this chapter, it is impossible to separate out my thinking and writing from the tool I am using, just as it was in the days of typewriters, punch cards and slide rules. The university library at this time of year (exam time) is crowded with myriads of students poring over their laptops and smart phones, and the sight of them makes me reflect on how both social and intellectual life has changed since I was a student, because our tools for thinking and communicating have undergone such radical cultural evolution.

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Box 8.1 Collaborative tool use during marble painting Alison (teacher): See all of the lines, the patterns that the marble’s making? Molly: You can um get the ball going that way and then put it in there. Alison: Yeah. It’s like lots of roads isn’t it? Molly: Um they fell down there but Myra couldn’t find the lellow [yellow] one. Alison: Marble? Molly: Yes. Alison: Did it pop out did it? Let’s see if we can see if it’s rolled under the furniture. Molly: But I didn’t see it when it was. Alison: Look there it is. The teacher alternated between expressing interest in the specifics of the enterprise (‘It’s like a lot of roads, isn’t it?’), clarification of the children’s meaning, and new follow-up suggestions (‘Let’s see if we can’). Molly contributed a commentary about the process and an explanation of the difficulty (the yellow marble is lost). It was a collaborative process. Carr, 2002, pp. 105–106.

The interaction between tools and mind are so intricate that many people – such as the Scottish philosopher Andy Clark ... are now arguing that it is not actually possible to separate them. Clark suggests ... that there is no meaningful difference, now, between breaking your BlackBerry and having a mini-stroke. Both events create the same kind of palpable sense of disability and disorientation. (Lucas & Claxton, 2010, p. 93)

Thinking is culturally embedded

Language carries the concepts and values of a culture, so it is an important cultural artefact that shapes the ways of thinking that cultures use. Since languages and associated cultures differ widely and change with changing contexts, this ensures that there is no one universal path for development. From a sociocultural perspective, development is multidirectional rather than aimed at specific endpoints, and inseparable from the cultural practices and circumstances of communities (Rogoff, 1990, 2003). Development is influenced by what is valued as important within the cultural group at any historical point in time (Rogoff, 1990). As a species there are some commonalities across cultures, to the extent that we share physical and biological features, but child development involves

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appropriation of the intellectual tools and skills of the surrounding cultural community. Rogoff sees development as transformation in thinking which comes about as a response to participation in the problems of everyday life. The richer, more meaningful and more active children’s participation is in diverse activities, the greater the repertoire of social and cognitive skills children will acquire. To understand development it is essential to understand cultures. Traditionally in Western cultures, skills in academic activities involving scientific, literate and numerate activities are those that are valued. These skills are valued within particular cultural frameworks rather than being a necessary endpoint to be aspired to by all cultures. Cultures vary in their institutions, their technologies and their other cultural tools. Although language is an important tool, there are many other non-verbal forms of communication (Rogoff, 1990, 2003). Bakhtin’s theory (Wertsch, 1991) suggests that children learn cultural concepts, values and ideas as they learn language, but they do have an individual input or interpretation. He described words as being ‘half ours and half someone else’s’. Vygotsky said, ‘Just as the mold gives shape to a substance, words can shape an activity into a structure’ (1978, p. 28). Different cultural values and styles of using language are illustrated in the different communication styles of Japanese and Americans, Americans being uncomfortable with silence, and Japanese valuing succinctness and frowning on verbosity (Rogoff, 2003). Speaking too much is associated in Japan with immaturity or a kind of emptyheadedness ... . Silence is not simply the absence of sound or speech, a void to be filled, as Americans tend to regard it. Not speaking can sometimes convey respect for the person who has spoken or the ideas expressed. Silence can be a medium that the parties share, a means of unifying, in contrast to words, which separate. (Condon, 1984, cited by Rogoff, 2003, p. 312)

Claxton (2002) points out that we all belong to a variety of cultural clubs that involve shared habits, attitudes and beliefs about what learning is important. Different ways of acting, speaking and relating to others are considered normal within these ‘clubs’. Some cultures, for instance, focus on intellectual skills, others on empathy and still others on solidarity with a group. Didactic teaching, rote learning or informal modelling are all possible modes of teaching and learning that characterise various cultures. Even children’s play differs according to culture, for example, Mayan toddlers tend to interact with adults as they work rather than play with them (Rogoff et al., 1993). Mayan mothers see play as something for children to do with other children, but American mothers engage in play with their children. In New Zealand, Māori language nests or kōhanga reo are more focused on preserving cultural values and knowledge (such as

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whanaungatanga) and language (reo) than on play (Hohepa et al., 1991; Royal Tangaere & McNaughton, 1993; White et al., 2009). Children learn about their culture and language in the context of negotiation of shared meanings.

The roles of teachers and learners The teacher has a special role, as leader of the classroom community, in selecting activities that are appropriately connected to the students’ interests, and in advance of their current level of independent performance. (Wells & Claxton, 2002, p. 7)

From a sociocultural perspective, the teacher is involved in a close relationship and joint frame of reference with the learner, provides practice in a meaningful context, regulates actions by performance, and provides scaffolding, which diminishes as the child’s competence increases, to direct and maintain student performance. A sociocultural perspective contrasts with a Piagetian developmental perspective that learning comes about through children discovering the world spontaneously through their own self-directed play within a resource-rich environment, with as little intervention as possible from the teacher. The implications of such a developmental approach are that the teacher takes a passive role, standing back from children’s activities. A sociocultural perspective suggests instead that teachers should be much more actively involved with children, guiding and stimulating their thinking and problem-solving. Teachers have responsibility for helping achieve the goals of education, and set about implementing them through a planned curriculum. This is different from the kind of learning that goes on in informal settings (Mercer & Littleton, 2007). Teachers have an important role as partners in children’s activities, and as participants in classroom dialogues. They are involved in planning the learning environment and orchestrating classroom activities, through choosing and employing tools such as books, art materials, play resources, computers and mathematical games, as well as organising the dynamics of group activities (Bodrova & Leong, 2007). A sociocultural approach involves classrooms attending to the social and cultural context of development rather than to the emergence of development from within the individual child without adult participation. The extent to which children actively explore and find meaning in their learning environments will depend on the extent to which adults and peers are available to share experiences with them, and provide opportunities to extend their understanding. Individual differences between children are not the result just of variations in the rate of biologically determined development for which one must wait, but rather of the sensitivity of the social partners and richness of the scripts and events that children have experienced.

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Box 8.2 Teachers as partners By asking questions, the teacher models the logic of learning, or the strategies that children can use to reach a solution next time. Put another way, the teacher constructs a template for learning that can be used in other situations. Ms Osborne is looking at a new science book with her children. Winona asks, ‘Does it talk about bears?’ Ms. Osborne says, ‘Let’s see. Where can we look?’ Sam says, ‘Let’s look at the pictures.’ Ms Osborne says, ‘We could look at pictures – that would tell us if it has bears in it – but I know a quicker way. We can look for bears in the index in the back of the book.’ Pointing to the columns she says, ‘The index tells you all of the topics covered. See how it is alphabetized? Where could we find bears?’ ‘Under B,’ several children say. ‘Right. Where is the B section?’ she asks as she turns the book so that one child can turn the page. ‘Yes, I see B’s now,’ she says as the child successfully finds the B section. Ms Osborne turns the book toward another child and says, ‘Can you find bears?’ The child points to the correct line. Bodrova & Leong, 2007, p. 85.

The Vygotskian teacher initially provides considerable support and engagement with the learner, especially in the zone of proximal development, when competencies are just in the process of changing. There is a transfer in initiative from the teacher to the learner as the child constructs and internalises her thinking as a result of the social processes between teacher and learner. The child does not passively soak up lessons or environmental influences or act like a little scientist discovering principles through independent exploration. The Vygotskian approach focuses on how social interaction initiates children into ways of thinking that have emerged in the history of society. Children do not simply absorb the sociocultural context, but have a role themselves in transforming cultural forms to their own developing understanding. Children’s active inventive role in reconstructing their own understanding has been called ‘guided reinvention’ (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). Teaching is not the transmission of knowledge but a process of sharing meanings and understandings, as is shown in Box 8.2. Teachers are expected to help their students develop ways of thinking that will enable them to travel on intellectual journeys, so that they understand and are understood in wider communities of discourse. However, teachers have to start

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from where the students are, to use what the students already know and help them to go back and forth across the bridge between everyday and educated ways of thinking. (Mercer & Littleton, 2007, pp. 19–20)

Teachers are responsible for ensuring that the classroom contexts they control contain affordances that engage children in learning, and that they themselves provide affordances by noticing, recognising and responding to children’s interests and strengths, and supporting their ongoing identities as learners. This role is described in our New Zealand national early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki: ‘The curriculum emphasises the critical role of socially and culturally mediated learning and of reciprocal and responsive relationships with people, places and things’ (Ministry of Education, 1996b, p. 9). (See chapter 5 for more on Te Whāriki.)

Scaffolding

Scaffolding is a concept developed from Vygotsky’s ideas (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976) to explain the graduated assistance provided by a teacher, for example, through a conversation during a joint activity. Scaffolding involves the teacher making a task simpler through drawing attention to key features of the task, reducing the number of steps required to carry out the task, motivating children to stay engaged in the task or even doing part of the task themselves. The tutor guides children’s activities until they reach a particular level of proficiency where they can carry on independently (Mercer & Littleton, 2007; Tomasello, 1999). If it is used effectively, scaffolding reduces the risk of failure and encourages children to stay engaged in learning. Individual skills originate in cooperative activity through a scaffolding process. Initially in the learning of language or other skills, the teacher carries the greatest responsibility in the activity, erecting a scaffold for the child’s limited skills. As the child’s learning and development progresses in a given domain, the scaffold gradually diminishes, the roles of learner and teacher become increasingly equal, and the point is finally reached where the child or learner is able to do alone what formerly could be done only in collaboration with the teacher. (Greenfield, 1984, p. 117)

In one study mothers used different levels of scaffolding when working with their three-year-olds on jigsaw puzzles at three levels of difficulty (McNaughton & Leyland, 1990). Mothers worked in children’s zones of proximal development in this problem-solving task, enabling children to do harder puzzles with guidance from their mothers than they could do independently. The amount of maternal scaffolding increased and the component functions changed as the task increased

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in difficulty. Maternal tutoring changed from planning and regulating the task to support, encouragement and feedback. Mothers simply supported children’s involvement with the easier puzzles; in the middle difficulty level they helped the children but expected the children to solve the puzzle themselves; and in the hard puzzles they made sure the puzzle was completed even if it meant direct manual help. McNaughton and Jane Leyland’s study confirmed that the most help was given when the tasks were only just within the child’s range of independent ability. The task of supporting children’s emergent writing is used by Elena Bodrova and Deborah Leong (2007) to illustrate scaffolding. Understanding the concept of a word was a key first step in learning to write, and one that many children had difficulty with. In order to assist children with understanding what words were, they used the technique of underlining each separate word in a written message to help focus the child’s attention on features of words. This task did not demand so much orthographic knowledge or fine motor abilities as writing the word did, and helped lay the foundation for children planning the sentence on their own and representing the sounds of the word with letters. The lines separated by spaces represent the existence of individual words and their sequence in a sentence. To scaffold the emerging concept of a word, an external mediator created to teach it has to be different from a written word and still retain some of the attributes of a written word. We found that a line drawn to represent each word in an oral message serves as such a mediator. The lines separated by spaces represent the existence of individual words and their sequence in a sentence. (Bodrova & Leong, 2007, p. 190)

The use of teacher questioning is a useful strategy for scaffolding children’s understanding in classroom settings. Some kinds of teacher questioning have been criticised, however (typically where the teacher is getting the child to guess at an answer that is in her mind). It is helpful for teachers to use questions to encourage children to explain what they understand and are thinking about an issue, to model ways of using language (such as asking ‘why’ questions), and to provide opportunities for children to make extended contributions that reveal problems that they are encountering or to help them articulate ideas (Mercer & Littleton, 2007). Such questioning strategies help children to use language as a tool for thinking and reasoning.

The zone of proximal development

The ZPD is the difference between what children can do independently and what they can do with assistance. (See chapter 1.) Children’s achievements when they are given guidance and support are described as in the child’s ZPD (Mercer & Littleton, 2007). The starting point of teaching is the upper end of the ZPD where

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Box 8.3 Maths work in children’s ZPDs Jeff (five-and-a-half years of age) is working along with five other children with the teacher, Celia, on maths problems. This group works on problems set by the teacher, with sets of beads, and then with money ($10 and $1 notes). Jeff succeeds with quite difficult problems like $20+$3=$23 using beads, though he has difficulty writing the digits in his answer; for example, he reverses his 3s. The next series of problems Celia uses is a hen sitting on eggs, the hen goes to sleep, and snakes or hawks take eggs away. There are two rows of five eggs: 5+5=10 (Jeff gets this wrong and says 12 – his first error). Celia then says the rat takes four eggs away and gets the children to write the equation 10–4=6. Jeff gets it very quickly. Celia asks him how he knew it was 6. He says ‘I counted 5 and I knew one more made 6’. Jeff gets all of the answers correct, except he gets his 9 back to front for 10–1=9. Jeff watches intently as Celia does more story problems about hens and eggs: 10–3=7. Jeff gets this one but has his 3 around the wrong way. Celia asks each time how they worked it out and gets them to verbalise the answer. For example, counting backwards from 10 for the previous problem. Jeff got it because he knew that 5 eggs plus 2 made 7. Celia says, ‘That was a good way to work it out’. (He has written his 7 the wrong way – but she ignores that.) Talia noticed that it was 4 and 3 and she knows 4+3=7. Celia praises all of their different solutions. Jeff is deeply engaged right through. He succeeds with the problem 10–2=8. Celia asks all of the children to verbalise their answers again. Holly saw the 2 go away and noticed that there were two 4s. Ethan counted by 2s. Craig counted backwards from 10 to get to 8. The teacher periodically praises the children for paying attention and for listening to the other children’s solutions. Unpublished observations from new entrant classroom, Marsden study, 2005.

the child can reach goals in close collaboration with others. At this stage the child needs a lot of guidance and practice until her performance becomes more and more independent. The responsibility for performance gradually transfers from teacher to child. The ZPD is not the same as ‘readiness’ (Belmont, 1989). Readiness is a passive individualistic concept that may be used as an excuse to wait until children are ‘ready’ before doing any teaching. In contrast, the concept of ZPD involves the teacher actively seeking a match between the task requirements and the skill of the learner (Greenfield, 1984). The teacher builds on what she knows the learner is just starting to be able to do, which means careful observation

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of children’s behaviour. Psychologist Patricia Greenfield talks about a ‘region of sensitivity’ to instruction where there is a gap between comprehension and production. Scaffolding simplifies the learner’s role through graduated support from a teacher. One of the skills of the sensitive teacher is to identify children’s ZPD for different tasks. Observing children carefully in action on a particular task helps the teacher to determine where their ZPD is. The ZPD is not a single growing point, but rather a multitude of growing points in different domains of learning (Mercer & Littleton, 2007). The ZPD is not just a characteristic of the child or of teaching, but of the child engaging in collaborative activity within specific social contexts (Mahn & John-Steiner, 2002). Children’s contexts for thinking should therefore contain sufficient challenges to engage them in their ZPDs. This means that teachers have to listen, watch and be aware of what children can and cannot do, so that they can work in children’s ZPD to move them forward in a supportive context. It is pointless to give children a lot of practice with problems that they can already perform independently, or to expect children to engage with material that it much too difficult for them. Box 8.3 contains an example of a maths lesson, and shows the teacher working with a group of six children and engaging with them in their ZPDs. The children are all attentive and engaged in this challenging task, but the teacher supports them with praise, focusing their attention and putting the problems into a meaningful context for them. She also finds out how they are working out the answers to the problems by getting them to explain their solutions out loud. The teacher knows the level of difficulty that is right for them as she is working with them so closely in their ZPDs.

Intersubjectivity and joint attention

One of the secrets to being able to work in children’s ZPD is intersubjectivity. This refers to a shared focus of understanding and purpose that is embedded in close relationships, and the ability to see something from the perspective of another. Researcher Colwyn Trevarthen (1979) discussed the idea of intersubjectivity in the context of early communication patterns between mothers and babies. He uses intersubjectivity to: ... specify the linking of subjects who are active in transmitting their understanding to each other. The relating is ‘interpersonal’ but we need to penetrate the psychological process by which intending subjects relate their mental and emotional processes together. I feel that ‘intersubjective’ emphasises this. (Trevarthen, 1979, p. 347)

Vygotsky believed that emotion was central to thinking and that there was a dialectical relationship between thought, affect, language and consciousness

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(Mahn & John-Steiner, 2002). The earliest attachments between mother and child illustrate the inseparability of emotion and learning, where children’s feelings of confidence in the presence of their mothers help them to explore and master their learning environments. Human beings come to be conscious beings through their interactions and relationships with other people, and the caring support they receive. Thought is not born of other thoughts. Thought has its origins in the motivating sphere of consciousness, a sphere that includes our inclinations and needs, our interests and impulses, and our affect and emotion. The affective and volitional tendency stands behind thought. (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 282)

Promoting learning involves a balance between ability to act, available opportunities to act, and enjoyment or affective engagement in activities (Carr et al., 2010). Affective rapport and connections with teachers also bring deep attention to and lasting involvement in learning (Mahn & John-Steiner, 2002; Mercer, 2007). Sharing of ideas and exchanging points of view is much easier when there is relational closeness. Intersubjectivity is important to allow adults to judge how much the child already knows and understands, so that she can provide appropriate scaffolding to extend development. In order to achieve intersubjectivity, adults need to establish a shared context of meaning and experience with children, and this is most likely to happen where there is a close relationship. It is particularly crucial in infancy and toddlerhood because children’s ability to communicate both verbally and non-verbally is at an early stage and needs to be interpreted and extended by sensitive adults. Language brings with it the opportunity for sharing the meanings or signs and symbols within the context of joint activity. Through communication within a shared frame of reference, children internalise and construct their own understandings. Intersubjectivity can involve the child redefining a problem from an adult perspective, but this is a top-down interpretation. Trevarthen saw the child as an equal partner in an intersubjective relationship, with the infant being the initiator of the communication. The infant recognises the mother and invites her to share a dance of expressions and excitements. The infant needs a partner but knows the principle of the dance well enough, and is not just a puppet to be animated by a miming mother. (Trevarthen, 1979, p. 347)

Intersubjectivity plays a major role in joint attention, which is ‘an encounter between two individuals in which the participants pay joint attention to, and jointly act upon, some external topic’ (Schaffer, 1992, p. 101). Joint attention episodes between infants and caregivers are enriching exchanges that often arise from a

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child’s interest in or attention to something, or may be provoked by the adult or more skilled partner. A child may turn to an adult if she strikes a difficulty, wants a resource or encounters an interesting situation; the adult responds quickly and provides what is needed, such as support, information, a label, an extended idea or shared enthusiasm. Many of these episodes occurred each day. Schaffer describes them as ‘the core teaching situations involved in promoting development’ (1992, p. 102). Joint attention episodes involve the caregiver working in the child’s ZPD by pitching suggestions and demonstrations just above her level of spontaneous achievement. There are three participating elements in joint attention – the entity of joint attention (a book, a toy, a caring routine), the adult (or peer) and the child, according to Tomasello (1999). As the child begins to monitor adults’ attention to outside entities, that outside entity sometimes turns out to be the child herself – and so she begins to monitor adults’ attention to her and thus to see herself from the outside, as it were. She also comprehends the role of the adult from this same outside vantage point, and so overall, it is as if she were viewing the whole scene from above, with herself as just one player in it. (Tomasello, 1999, pp. 99–100)

The quotation above shows how important it is for children to be able to step into the mental shoes of another person in order to achieve joint attention. This ‘knowing other minds’ is the first time that children realise that other people too are agents with their own perspectives and goals (Bruner, 1995). This realisation is the beginning of identity, communication and language. Joint attention allows basic information to be conveyed and affective understanding to be apprehended, and provides the basis of shared experience needed for the acquisition of language. My study of joint attention episodes in New Zealand early childhood centres showed that these episodes provided a rich context for the development of thinking (Smith, 1999). In one example a caregiver and a toddler are gazing out of the window together. The baby vocalises and the carer says, ‘What are you looking for? The hedgehog? He’s gone away now.’ The child makes another long vocalisation. This sort of episode of joint attention is built out of shared assumptions arising out of common experience and understandings between the adult and the child, and sensitively attuned to the child’s understanding. It was disturbing, however, to find that about a third of 200 under-two-year-olds were never observed in any joint attention episodes with adults, so early childhood centres do not necessarily provide enough opportunities for joint attention to promote learning. Intersubjectivity and joint attention, however, are important for older as well as younger children. Children, whatever their age, need to feel comfortable and

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accepted and tuned in to the teachers or other learning partners (and vice versa). Situations where the teacher has no real knowledge or understanding of children do not provide fertile ground for learning. Some children receive very little teacher attention. These are the so-called ‘invisible children’ with whom there has been no intersubjectivity established at all. Researcher Stephen Waterhouse (1995) looked at how teachers construct their knowledge of children’s identity in the beginning years of school. Teachers’ knowledge of children’s identity was shown through a series of interviews and videos done over four years. Waterhouse showed that many children came into the category of ‘average’ children who conformed to classroom activity to such a degree that they became invisible to the teacher. Despite a child-centred commitment to individualism, the reality was that there were many children who were on the margins of teacher attention. These children were not really perceived as a problem or as special – they probably survived in the classroom, but how much did they learn? If we acknowledge the importance of adult–child intersubjectivity it is important for teachers to get to know every child. Developing intersubjectivity in a teacher-led group requires an active attempt by teachers to diagnose and observe what children understand and do not understand in order to bridge the gap between the known and the unknown. This was illustrated in the maths teaching in Box 8.3. Teachers are usually better able to sensitively observe and interpret children’s behaviour when they know them well and are engaged in reciprocal activities with them, rather than in a distant, controlling, formal and hierarchical relationship. The best contexts are those where children reveal understandings so that teachers can develop, extend, correct or improve these. Intersubjectivity and joint attention occur in other situations besides oneto-one adult–child interactions, even though this is the most likely scenario for very young children. As children move toward being three- and four-year-old preschoolers, they are likely to be involved in joint attention with one or more peers, sharing scripts, stories and activities. Children at this age spend a lot of time in pairs and small groups, sometimes with an adult, but often without. Collaborative learning within group classroom settings is also a type of joint attention. Collaboration involves more than working together amicably, but instead engaging in coordinated, reciprocal and ongoing attempts to solve a problem or construct a common understanding (Mercer & Littleton, 2007). Collaboration requires a sense of shared endeavour and goals (and therefore intersubjectivity). ... the kind of learning that leads development takes place through active participation in purposeful, collaborative activity. In the course of working

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Box 8.4 Shopping – a group joint attention episode Jeff takes a cardboard box from the shelf, and packs it into his backpack. He has a discussion with Charles and Theresa, both of whom are now participating in the shopping game. Jeff explains to Theresa that some are plastic containers for butter. Jeff says to Charles, ‘Could I put the mayonnaise in your bag?’ Jeff puts the backpack on. He is carrying a plastic container. He goes to the playhouse with Charles and Theresa. Jeff is organising everyone, making suggestions about making the beds. They discuss someone who is coming to stay. Jeff goes back to the shopping shelf. They get eggs and biscuits. Now they are going to get a dog so they need dog food. Jeff is making a little kennel with the plastic puzzle pieces (large flat pieces) for the dog, outside the playhouse. Brian arrives and is excluded from the play by all three children; he absconds with all the groceries! and Jeff screams and yells until he gets them back. He returns to making the kennel for the dog. Jeff says to Richard that he can’t be the dog because they already have one: ‘You be the grandad’. Theresa says she is the grandma. Jeff directs the making of a dog kennel. There are now four of them – Charles, Theresa, Jeff and Richard; they need a roof and they pretend to saw and hammer the dog kennel. Carr et al., 2010, p. 109.

together towards shared goals and of finding solutions to the problems encountered in the process, participants contribute differentially from their existing expertise and take over and transform for their own use the skills, values and dispositions that they find effective in the contribution of others. (Wells & Claxton, 2002, p. 7)

Children may engage more in genuine extended open discussion and argument when the teacher is absent, so creating opportunities for collaborative learning often involves the teacher stepping back and allowing the children to take responsibility. Having time and space (affordance) for imaginative play is one way of enabling collaboration, but tasks can be structured to promote collaboration. Our research on four- and five-year-olds showed that peer collaborative play was a rich opportunity for learning, as in the Box 8.4 with an example of play from our Marsden study (Carr et al., 2010). In this example Jeff takes a leadership role and orchestrates the activities of the other four-year-old children, Charles, Theresa and Richard, in organising a shopping expedition. The observation shows the way that collaborative play involves negotiation and resolution of conflict.

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Box 8.5 Collaborative inquiry in a primary classroom Some years ago, as a participant-researcher in a multicultural innercity class of eight- and nine-year-olds, I undertook to contribute to the exploration of the theme of time in which they were engaged by making a functioning water-clock out of ‘found’ materials: pieces of wood left over from renovation, a plastic spoon, a yogurt carton, and bits and pieces of wire and string. When I had succeeded in getting the ‘clock’ to work at home, I set it up in the classroom. The teacher then asked some of the children who had been watching me to demonstrate how it worked to the rest of the class. Unfortunately it failed to operate as they expected. However, suggestions for fixing it were not slow in coming and soon an animated discussion was in full swing, as competing proposals were put forward, justified and evaluated. By the end of the day with the help of various ‘others’, some of the most enthusiastic engineers had succeeded in making it work. Over the following days, working in groups, the children in the class constructed a variety of other ways of measuring time, using simple materials such as sand, marbles, metal washers and string. Wells, 2012, p. 197.

Mainstream classrooms may provide little opportunity for working together – and this has been observed in the United Kingdom (Mercer & Littleton, 2007) and New Zealand (Carr et al., 2010; Bishop et al., 2009, 2012). The prevalent transmission model of teaching construes talk between children as disruptive and subversive, and so it is when teachers are engaged in transmitting information to learners. But children’s talk about their learning is an essential attribute to facilitating their understanding. School activities can be structured in such a way that children need to engage with each other to complete tasks. Mercer argues that children may have to be taught how to use exploratory talk to solve problems, and that a relational approach works to enable this and to motivate students to engage with learning. Box 8.5 shows how children were able to work with each other collaboratively to solve problems. Such a collaborative approach fits well with the whanaungatanga framework used by the Te Kotahitanga research of Bishop and his colleagues that I discussed in the previous chapter. The project aimed to change teacher practice towards Māori students focusing on developing caring and learning classroom relationships and more dialogic interactions within classrooms (Bishop et al., 2012). Teachers engaged in a range of discursive learning interactions with students and facilitated higher quality interactions between students themselves.

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These are the ‘tikanga’ (cultural customs) of the whānau: warm interpersonal interactions; group solidarity; shared responsibility for one another; collaboration towards group ends; co-operative responsibility for group property, material or nonmaterial (e.g. knowledge) items and issues. (Bishop et al., 2012, p. 697)

The role of dialogue and sustained shared thinking

Language is the most universal of all cultural tools, and once children learn language, they can engage in more complex thinking and problem-solving. Vygotsky viewed thinking as activity depending on speech, which is developed initially through interpersonal activity. Thinking is an activity that depends on both internal and overt speech. Vygotsky used the Russian word slovo to mean both a concept and discourse (Gallimore & Tharp, 1990). It is out of the process of discourse that thinking is born. Children first learn to control their actions in social context, then internalise meanings and concepts and use them to help solve problems on their own. Thinking then is not completely an individual process and it is promoted by ongoing social interaction. Currently there is a great deal of interest in dialogic approaches to teaching and learning. Dialogic teaching is distinguished from monologism, where someone who knows the truth instructs someone who is ignorant of it (Bakhtin, 1981, cited by Reznitskaya, Kuo, Clark, Miller et al., 2009, p. 31). In contrast dialogue involves the collective and egalitarian search for new meanings and understandings. The teacher, however, still retains her authority and helps to scaffold and enhance the quality of classroom dialogue. According to Rupert Wegerif, dialogue is not only a means to increasing individual understanding, but an educational aim in itself, because being educated requires a shift from a monologic to a dialogic way of thinking (2007, cited by Mercer, Warwick, Kershner, & Staarman, 2010, p. 368). Dialogic teaching helps students to develop argumentative reasoning, to acquire a disposition to reflect and question, and to transfer these skills to new contexts, tasks and communicative modes (Reznitskaya et al., 2009). Dialogue between social partners emerges out of a common language and focus of interest. It opens up many opportunities for learning and is not just about individual learning, but a process that emerges from mutual interdependence, recognition and respect (Fitzgerald, Graham, Smith, & Taylor, 2010). Children and young people themselves play an important role in initiating dialogue, as explained by this teenager: As teenagers get older we want to discuss things ... the sooner that’s introduced to youth it means they mature ... they learn how to interpret their thoughts better ... so discussion is a really good thing. When students start to talk more they mature ... gain confidence ... that’s why I like participating in as many

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Box 8.6 Dialogue and sustained shared thinking in the herb garden of an early childhood centre James (teacher): That one’s called sage. Harun (4 years) follows J’s actions closely with his eyes, J holds the sage out to H, H rubs the leaf, puts his thumb and forefinger to his nose and sniffs. He smiles broadly. Harun: (pointing to spiked plant) Yes, but why is it spiky? James: This is rosemary. I don’t know why it’s spiky. It’s just some leaves are spiky and some leaves are broad, aren’t they, like the leaves of the trees. Harun: But I think, I, I, I know. I know why they’re spiky. They’re spiky because they don’t want the animals to eat their leaves (looking at J). James: Oh, they don’t want ... you mean like this one here? Look, this is really spiky, that’d hurt if you try and touch it. That’s called holly. So I think you’re right (H nods), maybe some leaves are spiky because they don’t want the animals to eat them. Robson, 2010, p. 236.

things as possible. There’s too much for kids to live up to, but not enough discussion about what matters to kids. (Young person from New South Wales, Fitzgerald et al., 2010, p. 300)

Box 8.6 shows how even very young children can engage in dialogue with a teacher and how this enhances their learning. An invitation to participate in dialogue is a recognition of children’s participation rights, though imbued with power relations that constrain or enable possibilities for learning. In this example, although the teacher initiates the exchange, power is equally balanced between him and the child. Inviting children to participate in dialogue means that adults commit themselves to a perspective that strives to understand how children make sense of the world, and recognises and respects their agency. Dialogue is a social mode of thinking and a tool for the joint construction of knowledge in the classroom. It enables information to be shared, explanations offered, ideas to be modified and alternative perspectives to be offered. Dialogue, however, teaches students ‘not what to think, but how to think’ (Reznitskaya et al., 2009, p. 35). A British study (Siraj-Blatchford & Manni, 2008) showed that a general pattern of better cognitive outcomes in early childhood centres was associated with intensive dialogue between teachers and children. The authors referred to such dialogues as ‘sustained shared thinking’, which are ‘effective pedagogic interaction, where two or more individuals “work together” in an intellectual way

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to solve a problem, clarify a concept, evaluate activities, or extend a narrative’ (p. 7). Sustained shared thinking (as demonstrated in Box 8.6) involves: ƀLJ /&.-LJ%()1#(!LJ"#&,(Ɖ-LJ#(.,-.-LJ(LJ/(,-.(#(!LJ(LJ1),%#(!LJ1#."LJ them to develop an idea or skill ƀLJ /&.-LJ "&&(!#(!LJ "#&,(Ɖ-LJ ."#(%#(!LJ (LJ !..#(!LJ ."'LJ (!!LJ #(LJ ."LJ thinking process ƀLJ 1,'LJ*)-#.#0LJ,&.#)(-"#*-LJ.1(LJ/&.-LJ(LJ"#&,(LJ ƀLJ /&.-LJ-")1#(!LJ,&LJ#(.,-.LJ(LJ()/,!'(.LJ ),LJ"#&,(Ɖ-LJ."#(%#(!LJ(LJ learning. Researchers Iram Siraj-Blatchford and Laura Manni (2008) reported that only 5.5 per cent of questions out of a sample of 5,808 questions (taken from 400 hours of observations of 28 early childhood teachers) were open-ended questions with a potential for inviting sustained shared thinking. Meade (Meade et al., 2012; Meade, 2013) has reported similarly low levels of extended conversations between teachers and staff in New Zealand early childhood settings, suggesting that there may be insufficient intellectual challenge for children. Meade (2013) found that of the 101 episodes of sustained shared thinking observed, 73 were initiated by a qualified staff member, 9 by an unqualified staff member and 19 were initiated by children (mostly towards qualified teachers). Her study confirmed that levels of sustained shared thinking are low, and that having qualified teachers in early childhood centres is more likely to stimulate it and produce better cognitive outcomes. Classroom talk is not always useful as a medium for sharing knowledge, as a great deal of classroom talk is not focused on the task. Psychologist Neil Mercer advocates teaching children to use ‘exploratory talk’ in collaborative group tasks, which involves engaging in productive discourse, asking each other questions, suggesting options and reminding each other of relevant information (Mercer, 1994, 1996; Mercer & Littleton, 2007). Children share and plan together, challenge and counterchallenge each other during exploratory talk. In the process knowledge is made more accountable and reasoning more visible in the talk. Children may need some help from teachers, though, in fostering exploratory discourse. They have to learn to apply some educational ground rules in the group, such as sharing relevant suggestions, providing reasons to back up assertions and opinions, asking for reasons, reaching agreement if possible about what action to take, accepting group decisions, and taking responsibility for subsequent successes and failures. Mercer uses the concept of ‘appropriation’ to explain how children extract meaning from concepts and ideas in the classroom in collaborative group talk. He shows that, through discourse, children share and compare differing interpretations. One person takes up another’s ideas, and

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Box 8.7 Dialogue of 7- to 11-year-olds using an IWB May: What, what could it eat? Leonie: We don’t know what it eats. [Leonie reads the questions which the teacher had pinned to the wall]. ),)(: It’s got a black tongue, so it would be something black probably. May: Or something sticky? Leonie: Flies, flies. ),)(: Yes, probably flies and wasps or something. Leonie: No, not wasps; they’ll sting him. ),)(: So what? Leonie: Big black tongue, sticky tongue; write sticky tongue. Big black sticky tongue to, eat flies to catch flies on its tongue. Mercer, Warwick, Kershner, & Staarman, 2010, p. 374.

offers them back modified into the discourse. Children working together do this; teachers also do this, when they paraphrase what children say, and relate and reconstruct the children’s ideas to fit into the classroom activity. When teachers and students both make substantial and significant contributions to a task, this constitutes dialogic teaching (Mercer & Littleton, 2007). Teachers can use the following strategies to scaffold exploratory dialogue in the classroom: ƀLJ %#(!LJ-/,LJ.".LJ0,3)(LJ#-LJ&,LJ)/.LJ."LJ(./,LJ(LJ*/,*)-LJ) LJ."LJ.-%LJ and designing the task carefully ƀLJ (-/,#(!LJ.".LJ"#&,(LJ%()1LJ(LJ*.LJ!,)/(LJ,/&-LJ ),LJ#-/--#)( ƀLJ &)'#(!LJ(LJ-)&##.#(!LJ"#&,(Ɖ-LJ#ƀLJ ,)'*.#(!LJ-./(.-LJ.)LJ*,)0#LJ,-)(-LJ ),LJ."#,LJ*)#(.-LJ) LJ0#1 ƀLJ #-.(#(!LJ .)LJ "#&,(Ɖ-LJ ,-*)(--LJ (LJ )&&)1#(!LJ /*LJ )(LJ ."'LJ #(LJ &.,LJ discussion ƀLJ
-%#(!LJ+/-.#)(-LJ1",LJ.",LJ,LJ().LJ*,.,'#(LJ(-1,ƀLJ (-/,#(!LJ.".LJ"#&,(LJ%()1LJ.".LJ#.LJ#-LJ&,#!".LJ.)LJLJ/(,.#(LJ),LJ.)LJ'%LJ mistakes ƀLJ )&&#(!LJ,-)(#(!LJ*,)---LJ.",)/!"LJ."#(%#(!LJ&)/ ƀLJ /**),.#(!LJ&&LJ-./(.-LJ.)LJ*,.##*.LJ#(LJ."LJ#-/--#)( ƀLJ  ,#(#(!LJ ,)'LJ 0&/.#0LJ %LJ  .,LJ LJ -./(.LJ )(.,#/.#)(ŻLJ ),LJ inviting another student to evaluate the contribution (Mercer & Littleton, 2007; Reznitskaya et al., 2009).

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Modern technology can be helpful in providing affordances for dialogic teaching. Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) allow small groups of students to interact with a large touch-sensitive screen and present, manipulate images, text and video. IWBs provide a valuable dialogic space for children to collaborate on problem-solving, as is shown in a study by Mercer, Paul Warwick, Ruth Kershner, and Judith Kleine Staarman (2010). In this project, science tasks were designed by teachers to help small groups of three or four children to use IWBs to access information, consider and plan options, and make joint decisions. The tasks were designed to be suitably demanding, not requiring constant supervision or intervention, and to give children sufficient time and opportunity to engage with the tasks. Children were found to stay well focused on their task using IWBs, and did not become diverted by social talk or by other distractions. They stayed longer on tasks than others working with conventional resources, accessing relevant information, annotating the material, drawing on their discussions and offering advice to each other about their ideas. The IWB helped children engage in dialogue and was valuable in heightening their motivation and avoiding distractions. Box 8.7 illustrates the dialogues of children in a small group engaged in a science discussion.

Metacognition

Engaging in teacher-facilitated reflection (or dialogue) about their learning helps children to develop self-regulatory and metacognitive skills and acts as a stimulus and support for children’s ongoing learning, according to Susan Robson (2010). Vygotsky saw self-regulation as emerging out of social interaction with others, with the internalisation of social processes facilitating later self monitoring, regulation and control of cognition, motivation and behaviour. Self-regulation is related to metacognition, and involves thinking about thinking, and ‘the self and others as a learner, and skills, or the procedural knowledge needed for regulating problem-solving’ (Robson, 2010, p. 228). In the preschool years, talking about shared experiences of the past and the future with parents (or teachers) helps the development of children’s autobiographical memory which is related to language skills, social attachments and the construction of identity (Nelson & Fivush, 2004). Even young children are capable of self-regulation and metacognition, as has been demonstrated in the work of Robson (2010) and Carr (2011). Robson used videotapes of episodes of children’s play to enable Reflective Dialogues (RDs) between teachers and individual children to assess children’s perceptions of how they regulated their learning. She describes the video data as ‘a “tool of the mind”, allowing children to “download” details of their actions to the video itself as part of replaying, freeing their minds to think about what the actions themselves mean’ (Robson, 2010, pp. 230–231). Dialogue with teachers about learning helps to build metacognitive awareness (children’s thinking about

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their own learning). Engagement in RD helped adults to become aware of the full extent of the children’s competence, which might otherwise have been hidden to them, and also extended children’s meanings about their activities. Most of the children’s reflections were about planning and monitoring as they negotiated with each other in play. RDs between a child and a teacher were carried out soon after the videos were made, and started with questions from the teacher about the child’s intentions, and ideas, and the source of their ideas. Robson found that three- and four-year-old children in her study showed extensive evidence of self-regulation and metacognition. For example, in one shared episode of pretend play between three children lasting about eight minutes, the children produced 49 (11, 15 and 23) instances of self-regulatory and metacognitive behaviour. One example was of a child, Tom, watching a video of himself riding a bike, and reflecting on it with the teacher Jenny. Jenny asks Tom what has happened to the bike and whether it has got stuck. Tom asks her to guess what he is doing. Jenny says that she doesn’t know and asks him what he is doing. Tom replies that he (in the video) is going to need some help. Jenny verbalises that he got the wheel over the edge of some bricks, and Tom says that he can ride it faster (presumably after he got it unstuck). We used photographs of children’s play to stimulate discussion with children about their learning, and tried out different discussion and reflection formats to see which was most effective in eliciting children’s participation (Smith, Duncan, & Marshall, 2005). The example in Box 8.8 is the transcript of a preschool group discussion about a photograph, involving six children and the teacher. Two of the four-year-old children in the group were portrayed in the photograph in a pretend episode, jumping up and down on the lawn, but the adults did not at first understand the theme of their play. It only became clear after the group discussion that the children were jumping up and down because they were pretending to be on a bouncy castle. This pretending was invisible to us without the children’s help in interpreting the episode. Lisa was aware of what was in her head when she was jumping but it took quite a long discussion, prompts from the teacher and other children, before the reason emerged. Photographs were a very effective stimulus for children to recall their learning with the help of a familiar adult, and videos, photographs and narrative accounts have all been found to be useful tools to invite reflection. Another study used documented stories of preschool children’s learning to stimulate their discussion and recall of the events, in order to help them articulate their understanding of what they had learned and how they had learned (Carr, 2011). A narrative approach to assessment that I will discuss in the next chapter, Learning Stories, was used as a tool to stimulate reflection. The stories were documented by teachers (with pictures and text), but contributed to by children,

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Box 8.8 Reflections about bouncy castle play Lisa (four-year-old): The grass is shaking. Jane (teacher): The grass is? What is happening with the grass Lisa? Lisa: Shaking. Jane: The grass is shaking. Why do you think that the grass might be shaking? Lisa: ’Cos its raining Jane: Because it’s raining. Do you think it might be raining? Oh, do you think it might be raining Mary? Discussion about who was participating Anne (researcher): Do you remember what you were playing? That you were going to that place? What was the name of that place? Lisa: Chipmunks.1 Jane: Oh, is that where you were going to? Anne: And you had been in the boat. And that’s when (points to picture) you were jumping up and down ... . Why were you jumping? Melissa: (Lisa’s friend also in photo): Because I was. Jane: Laughs. Because you was! Typical. Why do you think you might have been jumping Lisa? Lisa: Because we were in the boat. Jane: Because you were in the boat. And that made you jump? Why do you think they were jumping Nick? Do you know why they would have been jumping? PAUSE Something at Chipmunks that makes you jump? Is there somewhere to jump at Chipmunks? Lisa: Yes there is. The bouncy castle. Jane: Oh, the bouncy castle. That might have been why you were jumping. Extract from transcript – example 2, Smith, Duncan, & Marshall, 2005, p. 477.

1 Chipmunks is an entertainment centre for children, which is popular for birthday parties.

who described the context and nature of a learning episode. The aim was to strengthen children’s identities as learners and make them more aware of their (and others’) learning journeys, and in the process developing metacognitive strategies. Carr (2011) cites the work of Dweck (Dweck, 2006) to argue that conversations with sympathetic others about their learning can help children

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become aware that their learning is malleable. For example, that sticking with an activity even when there are problems is a good way to attack a problem. Carr describes four strategies for revisiting learning that worked well: firstly authenticity, where adults had the sort of conversations with children they might have had with other adults; secondly, co-authoring so that the power and initiative was shared between the adult and child; thirdly, personalised connections were used to draw on children’s interests, expertise and family funds of knowledge; and fourthly, group discussions were used to engage other children in the discussion of their (and others’) portfolios. In one example, Jane (the teacher) and Danielle discussed a learning story about how Danielle learned to swing. Jane asked Danielle when she learned to swing, and Danielle replied that Jane had taught her. Jane asked what she had taught her, and Danielle replied to put her legs back and out. Jane asked if it worked and Danielle said that it did and that it made her go high. The examples in the study showed that children were well able to share a conversation about the past with a teacher, remember the sequence of events, evaluate the achievement and look forward to the future.

Cultural contexts for thinking

One of the great attractions of Vygotsky’s theory is that it makes sense of learning in different cultural contexts, since cultures hold such different beliefs about the nature of learning. Children acquire their thinking skills through the discourse of interaction within different social and cultural groups. Ethnocentrism comes from looking at thinking in school from the perspective of white, middle-class culture, where control and boundaries are established from a monocultural perspective. Classrooms are also social and cultural settings and often differ greatly from the local community in areas like styles of narrative and rules about when, how and where to use different types of language. Difficulties may arise in establishing intersubjectivity when there is a cultural clash of communication and learning styles. It is therefore important to modify classroom practices so that they are more coherently related to the ways in which learning occurs in the varying cultures of New Zealand. Since culture is such an integral part of thinking, it is essential that early childhood centres and schools are able to make connections between what is happening in centres and classrooms for children, and their interests and activities at home. A Vygotskian perspective provided the framework for the Kamehameha Early Education Project (KEEP), which was designed to be compatible with a Polynesian cultural perspective (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). KEEP was an early childhood programme in Hawaii that built on family cultural practices. During group time, children worked in groups of three to seven with the teacher providing only distant supervision. Children rotated between activities at intervals of 20 minutes

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for younger children and 40 minutes for older children. Various activities from creative writing, art work, paper and pencil to listening activities were available in the classroom. Hawaiian children were comfortable with a cooperative learning format since they were accustomed at home to role flexibility and joint responsibility; for example, they shared caretaking of toddlers and infants and were intensely involved with sibling groups. Hawaiian children had in the past experienced problems moving from self-managed activities in peer groups at home to whole-group class activities where they had to orient to a single adult at school. A cooperative context for learning allowed the productive and cooperative modes of learning acquired at home to transfer to school. Children in the KEEP project had flexible access to peers of equal, greater or lesser skill, they were in control over daily routines, they had opportunities to actively explore a range of activities, and they had low levels of adult direction and monitoring. Margaret Carr and Wendy Lee (2012, pp. 74–76) recount the story of a threeyear-old boy whose family came from a refugee camp in Sudan to settle in New Zealand. He was born in New Zealand and came to the Family Centre while his parents were attending language classes. Robyn (a teacher) noticed his mother giving him a little animal and saying something in his own language when she left him. Emmanuel had initially been very distressed at the centre and did not let the staff get close to him. However, they were gradually able to build a relationship with him, and entice him to become engaged in learning through his interest in animals. Emmanuel became the ‘animal expert’ at the centre, keeping a collection of animals in a little kete (basket), putting animals to sleep, washing them, taking them out and taking them home every day. The teachers kept in contact with his mother, who was able to explain Emmanuel’s interest. At three-and-a-half he was still interested in animals but engaged with teachers and other children in a much wider range of activities, such as story reading and painting. A Sudanese woman volunteer at the centre was an important support in giving Emmanuel confidence and helping him understand the activities at the centre. Stuart McNaughton (2006) has shown how important it is to take into account the varied language and literacy practices that children from different cultural backgrounds bring to school in order to maximise their success at school. Family activities, such as reading stories with a child, reading the bible to children, singing an alphabet song, providing materials with which children draw and write, or story telling, take three forms. They occur as joint activities, as personal activities and as ambient activities. The latter are those in which the child is more peripherally involved as an observer. Each of these activities provides vehicles for learning and development systems to take place. (Phillips, McNaughton, & McDonald, 2001, p. 40)

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Children from Māori and Pasifika families in New Zealand have not been well served by mainstream schools, since they often have slower progress in literacy when they start school, according to McNaughton. His work with colleagues shows that parents from different cultural groups vary in the ways that they use texts, depending on their ideas about the purposes of reading within family and community life. Children actively engage within family settings and coconstruct their expertise and understanding about literacy and its purposes, and they bring these diverse practices to school. Some family literacy practices are more compatible with predominant school practices than others. McNaughton gives evidence that schools are much more successful with diverse students, if they understand children’s family literacy practices and work to make stronger developmental links with families. A narrative style that links well with school literacy practices and progress in literacy, involves adults and children focusing on book narratives, emphasising the relationships between life and text, providing scaffolding for promoting children’s understanding, and clarifying, elaborating and negotiating meanings from the text. In contrast, a recitative style involves modelling and imitation of sentence test segments. Māori and Pasifika families were more likely to employ a recitative style, usually within groups, with readers often being older siblings or other extended family members. Ideas about group cohesion, group responsibilities and the authoritativeness of text are inherent in this style. Analysing typical family literacy practices, ideas of child development and activity structures in indigenous and minority culture families helped McNaughton and others to design interventions in family literacy practices to support children from low-decile schools over their transition to school. The interventions aimed to modify family practices by increasing their use of narrative style in reading, for example, in studies that supported Pacific mothers to increase the frequency of elaborative and extending language and to focus on text meaning. In addition, classroom discourse patterns were modified to be more culturally compatible with the children’s family practices (as the Hawaiian project described above did) through professional development programmes for teachers. Teachers learned to make more connections with children’s own world knowledge and to be more aware of the diversity of children’s cultural expertise, so that they could recognise and build on their strengths and increase their expectations of indigenous and Pasifika children. Reviewing research on interventions based on the above principles, McNaughton (2006) showed that it was possible to change the ideas and practices of teachers about Māori and Pasifika children and families through professional development programmes for teachers, and through parent support programmes in early childhood language nests. These programmes were shown to be associated

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with marked improvement in children’s storytelling, receptive language and literacy skills after six months at school. Rather than devaluing existing practices, the interventions of McNaughton and his colleagues are aimed at adding value to existing practices and ‘increasing potential textual dexterity’ (p. 238), as well as helping teachers and families to achieve shared understanding of literacy learning.

Dispositional thinking Cognitive skills are important, but noncognitive skills such as motivation, perseverance, and tenacity are also important for success in life. Much public policy ... focuses on cognitive test score outcomes to measure the success of interventions in spite of the evidence on the importance of noncognitive skills in social success. (Heckman, 2006, p. 1900)

Education has frequently been focused on teaching particular knowledge and skills, but in this section I want to introduce the idea that education should be more focused on strengthening learning dispositions, as these are transferrable habitual (but modifiable) strategies for learning that help us to cope with new and unknown problems in our rapidly changing world. They involve competencies that have previously been described in terms of ‘socio-emotional’ tendencies, such as social skills, the ability to work with others, and perseverance and self-control (Mitchell et al., 2008). Supporting children’s learning dispositions is an important goal for our early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki, as well as for the New Zealand School Curriculum, though in the latter they are known as ‘key competencies’. Learning dispositions are: ... situated learning strategies plus motivation-participation repertoires from which a learner recognises, selects, edits, responds to, resists, searches for and constructs learning opportunities ... [and]... being ready, willing and able to participate in various ways: a combination of inclination, sensitivity to occasion and the relevant skill and knowledge. (Carr, 2001, p. 21)

Carr drew on the work of David Perkins and colleagues (Perkins, Jay, & Tishman, 1993) to suggest that skill (or knowing how), inclination (knowing why) and sensitivity to occasion (knowing when and where) are key components of learning dispositions. The concept of learning dispositions can be related to Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’ (see chapter 6), ‘embodied history, internalised as a second nature and so forgotten as history ... the active presence of the whole past of which it is the product’ (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 56). Learning dispositions facilitate the transfer of expertise and strategies across different tasks and settings. Learning dispositions do not just reside in the learner but can be ‘called forth’ by different learning contexts. For example, I may know how to introduce myself

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(mihi) in Māori, but I will not be inclined to do so unless I am in a situation (such as introducing myself at a conference) that demands it. I would be unlikely to mihi in an ordinary dinner table conversation, for instance. Learning dispositions are participation repertoires that shape and are shaped by our social contexts, so it is possible to design educational contexts to call forth particular learning dispositions. Drawing on a learning dispositional interpretation of thinking emphasises children’s acquisition of identities as learners: for example, whether they accept risk and challenge or give up when they strike a difficulty; see themselves as smart or dumb; whether they are curious and want to try alternatives or stick to familiar methods; whether they are communicators who like to work with other people or prefer to work alone. Learning dispositions are determined in the context of dynamic interaction, and are not separable from the world of action. They are manifested in complex social environments including other people, activities and problems to solve. Dispositions are not taught but are acquired from being around people who demonstrate them and by being positioned and given feedback that you have a particular disposition (Katz, 1999, cited by Claxton, 2002, p. 32). Everyday interactions like going to the supermarket, helping dad do carpentry in the shed or sharing a story are the sorts of situations where children are inducted into ways of thinking that support their learning dispositions. Children acquire positive learning dispositions, in other words, by being ‘apprenticed’ to a community within which such dispositions are naturally manifested, modelled, recognised and acknowledged and valued by the ‘elders’ by whom they are surrounded. The tools and attitudes of learning have to be nurtured within an educational milieu that affords, supports and encourages their expression and their development. (Claxton, 2002, p. 32)

In our book Learning in the Making (Carr et al., 2010), we chose to focus on three learning dispositions – reciprocity, imagination and resilience – that we thought were particularly important in supporting ongoing learning identities, although other authors have listed many more or used other labels. We provided a deeper understanding of these learning dispositions in our longitudinal ethnographic study of four- and five-year-old children, by describing how the children we observed displayed them in their activities and interaction in their early childhood centre and school settings. We also looked at how the participation in particular contexts strengthened dispositions. Reciprocity involves being disposed to engage with others, negotiate mutual sense and interest, take into account others’ perspectives, and value and enjoy being part of a group. Imagination involves being able to see connections with other times and places, to connect with other worlds, to create new images and ideas, and to imagine a variety of possible selves.

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Box 8.9 Discussion between two students after a history test Alysha: That was impossible. I wasn’t prepared. Kerri: Me either, I’ve got to work harder and be better organised. Alysha: Fine to say but how much work is enough? I shouldn’t have taken this class, I’m not smart enough in History. Kerri: I’m going to stick with it. I can do okay in here but tonight I’m going to figure out a better study schedule for these tests. Alysha: Good luck! Shunk, 2008, p. 245.

I have talked about reciprocity and imagination in other chapters so I will focus here on the third learning disposition in our study, resilience, a key concept in explaining children’s motivation to engage in learning activities. Resilience is the tendency to engage with challenges, to persist with activities despite adversity or difficulties, and to be willing to make mistakes and recover from them. The concept of resilience emerges from the early work of Dweck on attributions for learning, where she found that children explained their success (or lack of it) as due to ability or to effort – either internal or external. If they did well and attributed their success to ability they stayed engaged, but if they failed and attributed this to lack of ability they stopped trying. If they did well or not so well and attributed their degree of success to lack of effort, they tended to be willing to engage with similar tasks. Box 8.9 contrasts Alysha and Kerri’s approach to a difficult learning task. Kerri has a resilient approach as, although the task was difficult, she was prepared to put more effort in and try again, but Alysha thought that she was not smart enough and was going to give up. Dweck (1999) distinguishes learning goals and performance goals. Performance goals are all about not making mistakes and looking good, but learning or mastery goals are associated with the idea that learning can be achieved with persistence and effort. Ideas or ‘self-theories’ about whether intelligence is fixed or malleable are also related to children’s likelihood of orienting towards mastery. If they think that performance is due to a fixed and limited amount of ability, they are less likely to engage with challenge, but if they think that intelligence is malleable, they are more likely to persist (Dweck & Master, 2008). There is considerable research (Schunk & Zimmerman, 2008) to show that children’s belief about their own capabilities is modifiable. In the example in Box 8.10 from Carr et al. (2010), David showed resilience by persisting with a carpentry activity, and David and Jason persisted for 40 minutes with unscrewing a carpentry construction in preparation for a later project.

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Box 8.10 Using the screwdriver at carpentry David: These are pretty hard to screw, have you ever tried screwing one in – you try and screw it in Jason, you try and screw it. Jason: Hard. David: Good, Jason. If you turn it that way, that means open. Shall I do it? ... . Watch out Jason because it might fall on your toes ... . Teacher: Did you take the screws out again – oh David. David: Good that’s better, I took them all out again. Teacher: You did too. So you figured out which way to go to take them out and which way to turn to put them in David: This way – that way’s out. Teacher: That’s right, that’s anti-clockwise and clockwise to put them in. Carr et al., 2010, p. 89.

David showed considerable focus and determination in this and other tasks. He took responsibility for his own learning in many different settings and over the time that we observed him (18 months). He liked and stuck with difficulty. When he got to school, despite a very different setting, he continued to orchestrate the resources available to him and seize opportunities. We found that social settings with close affective engagement and opportunities for peer groups to collaborate space and time to engage with material until a satisfactory resolution was achieved, availability of resources, as well as teacher support and expectation were all important aspects of children’s learning contexts that supported their resilience, and helped to make it possible for them to invest effort in tasks. Teacher expectations and intimate knowledge of children’s interests, capabilities and understanding also provided affordance for resilient approaches to learning. In a review of literature on early childhood education, Mitchell et al. (2008) found that learning dispositions combining cognitive and non-cognitive skills were associated with success in schooling, and that in many studies around the world associations were found between ECE participation and learning dispositions. Positive effects of ECE participation were found in settings described as good quality in terms of adult-child interactions that are responsive, cognitively challenging, and encourage joint attention and negotiation or ‘sustained shared thinking’. (Mitchell et al., 2008, p. 58)

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Examples of collaborative classroom problem-solving

The group contexts that children engage in, including activities, relationships and tasks undertaken, make a big difference to their ongoing skills for solving problems and strengthening their learning dispositions. When members of a community join together with a common interest and help each other, they learn a great deal from each other. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) called such groups ‘communities of practice’, and in this section I have chosen some examples of classroom problem-solving that seem to me to illustrate well this concept. Learning here is much more in the relationship between people than in any one individual’s head. Learning is to be found in the conversations and interactions of a community rather than something belonging to an individual. (Lucas & Claxton, 2010, p. 117)

A problem-solving approach to teaching about ‘the shop’ to five- and six-yearolds was used to help children understand concepts of trade and advertising (Pramling, 1991). The children worked for two to three weeks on the theme of the shop. The procedure in the problem-solving groups was to get children to think and reflect on problems arising out of everyday situations suggested by the teacher. For example, when they were building a play shop, the teacher told the children to throw away all the articles from the shop into the wastepaper basket when they had finished playing with them. When the shop became empty the children complained that there was nothing left to buy. They then discussed together what happened in a real shop and how a truck delivered new material, where the truck came from and how the goods were paid for. They made up new dramatic play themes, drew pictures and had further discussions about how the farmer grew his goods, sold them, sent them to the factory, how the product was sold and how families bought it at a much higher price. The contrasting and less successful strategy was for the teacher to deliver small lectures containing information and examples of trade and advertising. One day two children were alone in the play shop in the role of shop assistants. The teachers asked the children how they could attract customers. After rejecting the unsuccessful strategy of shouting ‘Come and buy’, the teacher talked about advertising. She suggested that they tell the other children that the shop was offering special surprises that day. The special surprise was cake and juice. In group discussion there was a lot of talk about how advertising worked and what its effect was. Later the teacher took the children to a real shop and looked at which boxes of cereal the children preferred and why. Many initially chose the boxes with the brightest coloured pictures, but they took the cereals back to preschool and tasted them without knowing which box they came from. The teachers created many similar situations, sometimes in response to a child initiation, sometimes on their

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Box 8.11 The first Te Reo workshop Today we had our first Te Reo workshop. We began by singing a waiata. I had written the words on a chart for the tamariki and we practised singing the different vowel sounds. When we came to the verse, I drew a little picture of a cloud to remind us of the meaning of Aotearoa. After a few times though, Diana said, ‘We could make up books with paper and staples and write our song in them. We could put pictures in and write what the words mean. We could all sing it together from our own books’. Phoenix adds, ‘Then we could practice at home.’ I quickly grabbed a piece of paper and started to record their ideas. The ideas kept on flowing ... it was decided by the group that we would go to the beach to collect shells and other things to decorate our books. At one point somebody said that we should write a list of things to take to the beach. Diana said we might need to take warm clothes and that if we watched Prime News at 5.30 we can find out what the weather would be like ... Carr & Lee, 2012, pp. 33–34.

own initiative. The theme was explored in a continuing dialogue of collaboration between children and the teacher. The teachers focused on real experiences to develop different concepts about principles of trade and advertising. The strategy was designed to develop ideas through children’s understanding of the world around them. The teacher deliberately set out to create opportunities for children to act and reflect by giving them problems. The teaching begins with a concrete situation but children’s ideas and interpretation of the situation are extended to a more advanced level by encouraging them to plan and solve problems related to certain goals. The teacher actively provides input to the children’s learning in a context that is meaningful to them. Young children may have the opportunity to be involved in planning and carrying out a collaborative learning activity, as is shown by the story of Diana ‘doing something she had never done before’ at her early childhood centre (Carr & Lee, 2012, pp. 33–34). During a discussion about what workshops children would like to be involved with, Diana suggested she would like to participate in a workshop on Te Reo, because it was something she had never done before. The Te Reo workshop involving four children is described by their teacher in Box 8.11. Four-year-olds were successfully taught scientific concepts about electricity in a project designed by Marilyn Fleer (1991) (see Box 8.12). Despite the many ways in which it is used in our everyday lives, electricity and scientific notions

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Box 8.12 How does a battery work? In a group of four-year-olds the teacher brought a battery and worked with the children to show how the torch worked. Here is part of an initial dialogue.  Teacher: I’ve got something to show you today. Child: Is that a battery? Teacher: Yes, it’s a battery. Child: Could we crack it open with an axe one day? Teacher: Well, actually I did crack a battery open for you if you’d like to have a look at it. Here’s the top of the battery. And here’s the casing of the battery. It’s very messy. See what’s inside it? What do you think might be inside it? Child: I think the power’s going straight out of it. Teacher: You think the power’s coming straight out of it when I open it, do you? Child: Yes. Teacher: Can we have a look? Fleer, 1991, p. 20.

about it (e.g. that a current travels in one direction in a circuit and is conserved) are difficult for children to acquire. In the project, teachers provided scaffolding, at first by showing them how to ask questions and later by giving them access to field knowledge. Initially field knowledge was explicitly taught by the teacher, but then children shared and consolidated their learning. When the children told the teacher what they understood, she was able to evaluate how much they had understood and provide the necessary re-teaching. The final phase involved reporting, where children reflected on the answers they had come up with and thought about the process. The children’s questions were the starting point for moving towards scientific understandings in a project involving 12 sessions over six days. They learned to connect up the circuit, initially with the teacher’s help, and later extended their own experiences. They used the concrete material of the torch in a meaningful context, and were taught some abstract principles that moved them from the concrete to the abstract, using diagrams and board props to explain ideas. Three months later all the children could connect up a circuit, draw a circuit and explain the scientific idea of a current flow. Fleer showed that even very young children can be taught these advanced concepts if there are deliberate teacher goals and strategies.

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Box 8.13 Designing a new community The children were given a design challenge to create a new community because a factory had polluted the town making it unliveable. They formed teams to discuss how to establish a new community a safe distance from the old one, to map out the new town and write a proposal supporting their decisions. They were given space outside the classroom and access to a computer, three databases, a printer, an internet connection, an electronic white board, a digital camera, pens and pencils, digital recorders, an iPod, notebooks and a mobile phone for messaging. The children were encouraged to search the Web and find out about different types of communities and their climate, waterways, population, geography, and transport systems. They were provided with exploratory questions including: What type of community were they designing? What businesses would they have? What laws/rules would be established? Where would the businesses be located? What type of jobs would people do? Where would the people live? After a period of research the children began to design their new communities, including energy-efficient infrastructure and buildings, community recreational space, cost-benefit analyses, signs and maps for the communities, transport systems, marketing plans, and ensuring respect for the view of local indigenous groups. An Open Day was held for children to share their work, interview members of the community and seek out further ideas before they voted on a final design for the community. Summary of case example of Year 6 children, Fleer & Jane, 2011, pp. 62–65.

Encouraging children to use technology to think seriously about the future and to practise the skills of citizenship is described in a case study (Box 8.13) involving technological learning for Year 6 (11-year-old) Australian children. Children were invited to think seriously about the future and issues of democracy and social structures, and to develop a relationship with their technological and technical environment in this project (Fleer & Jane, 2011, p. 62). The children participating in these units (Box 8.13 and Box 8.14) were encouraged to take an active, agentive role. In the Australian project the children had to think about shaping the future and avoiding the mistakes of the past, with the help of a range of technological tools. In the New Zealand project the children used their imagination and ingenuity to come up with an exciting creative project for which technological skills were necessary. There was no one correct solution to the problems these children were working on and the problems were challenging,

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Box 8.14 Wearable Art project The children involved in this project worked in small (two to six children) mixed-age and gender groups of Year 5 (ten-year-old) to Year 8 (13-yearold) students in a New Zealand primary school. The children were asked to design a piece of Wearable Art2 in their groups and met three afternoons a week for a whole school term to complete the project. The project involved brainstorming, choosing a theme, researching, experimenting, modifying the design, and then presenting their designs to the school and community. The children took some time to choose a theme (drawing on the WOW show involving such themes as surrealism, under the sea, travel and colour). They then did extensive research on their chosen topic in their small groups. Having chosen the theme, they used the internet, library books and DVDs (including a video of the national WOW show) to carry out extensive research into their topic and develop plans for their designs. They chose an interesting variety of projects to design, for example, a Chinese water dragon and the London Eye at night. They drew diagrams and made lists, and brought resources from home (like waste materials – wood, wire, fabric). The school helped provide materials or access to materials, and the teacher was ready to give advice and support. One of the Chinese water dragon group said, ‘We got inspired by the Chinese fire dragon but we wanted to make it with water so we thought we would do a water dragon.’ The children built the water dragon using chicken wire and papier maché. They had originally started with the idea of using styrofoam as they needed sufficient but not too much weight in the head, and a flexible structure. Several modifications had to be made to make the final product, and the whole process involved extensive dialogue, compromise and negotiation over common goals. The children stayed engaged and motivated throughout the project, and their families and other school students were hugely impressed with the outcomes when they saw the children’s final presentations. Interview with Sandra Williamson-Leadley, Lecturer at the University of Otago College of Education, 23 November 2012. 2 The World of Wearable Art Show (known as WOW) is held annually in Wellington, and is a prestigious fashion and art event and a major item on New Zealand’s cultural calendar.

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calling forth the exercise of their learning dispositions towards reciprocity, imagination and resilience. They worked collaboratively and dialogically within their groups, and exercised critical thinking skills. The teachers provided a supportive and scaffolding role, and the classrooms became communities of practice, with everyone engaged in solving meaningful and relevant problems. Children developed a future-oriented and innovative perspective on technological projects, and most importantly they were given the chance to ‘engage in active and responsible citizenship, both in the local, national and global community, and on behalf of the present and future generations’ (Fleer & Jane, 2011).

Summary

A Vygotskian approach to thinking in context is proactive and involves promoting children’s development in the ZPD, using cultural tools and skilful tuning of teaching strategies to match children’s skills. Children, however, do not passively absorb information from others, but are active in co-constructing their own meanings. When teachers share a joint frame of reference with learners, it helps them to scaffold children’s learning, initially with major scaffolding, but lessening over time as children become increasingly capable of independent exploration. Teachers who come from a sociocultural perspective are not satisfied with a laissez-faire free play environment, since they realise that children’s development emerges not just from children’s own activities but from their interactions with others and challenging tasks in meaningful contexts. Teachers can design educational environments for children that help children to make sense of their world and introduce them to complex ideas that are relevant to children’s own worlds. The directions of development, however, are largely dependent on the goals and tools of the culture. Concepts do not emerge from within the child, although children have an active role in interpreting what they learn from the discourses of home, the classroom and the wider world. Intersubjectivity between learners and teachers is a prerequisite for children’s learning. Young infants need opportunities to engage in joint attention with caregivers, a process which requires intersubjectivity, and helps to extend their understanding. Joint attention allows information to be shared from common experience, and enables children to purposefully collaborate with teachers and peers, construct their own knowledge and extend their thinking. Dialogic teaching provides many opportunities for joint attention and involves collective approaches to finding new meanings and understandings. In contrast, monologic teaching transmits truths from an authority to learners. Teachers can scaffold dialogue in the classroom by supporting children to use exploratory talk through the use of ground rules and a variety of other strategies.

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Rather than focusing on teaching specific knowledge and skills, a more fruitful educational strategy is to focus on strengthening children’s learning dispositions. Learning dispositions, such as reciprocity, imagination and resilience, are not just characteristics of learners, but are called forth by the provocations and opportunities in different learning contexts. They are important because they transfer to new and different situations and help prepare children to cope with uncertain futures. Promoting resilience involves showing children that it makes a difference if they persist with tasks and that ability is not fixed but malleable.

9

Assessment for Learning

An assessment activity can help learning if it provides information to be used as feedback by teachers, and by their students in assessing themselves and each other, to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged. Such assessment becomes ‘formative assessment’ when the evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching work to meet learning needs. (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, & Wiliam, 2003, p. 2)

The previous three chapters in this section have examined social, language and cognitive domains of learning and development. This chapter addresses the way we make judgements of children’s learning (and ability to learn) through assessment practices. The chapter is called ‘Assessment for Learning’ because the way children are assessed has a profound effect on their ongoing learning. Assessment practices can constrain and restrict children’s learning, as well as support it. I am critical of some types of assessment, notably some standardised and high-stakes accountability testing. Other types of assessment that focus on deeper levels of learning (such as dispositions) and on providing feedback to the learner can be formative and support future learning. Assessment is about making judgements, and in this chapter I am concerned with how these judgements are made, and whether they are used to enhance the well-being and learning of children. The UNCRC states that children have a right to access an education that enables them to reach their fullest potential. Assessment therefore should promote children’s learning and well-being rather than limit it. Assessment is one of the most demanding tasks faced by a teacher at any level of the education system. It requires skill, knowledge, sensitivity, understanding, willingness to consult colleagues and community, commitment to spending time on assessment within programmes, and awareness of the uses and consequences of assessment. It requires a thoroughly professional attitude and knowledge that

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is unlikely to be acquired casually. The use of appropriate assessment procedures is the linchpin of good quality educational environments. Teachers cannot provide an appropriate learning context for children unless they know children, their families and their cultural context well. How teachers assess their students’ work has a major impact on how and what they learn. For example, if teachers focus in their assessment procedures on surface learning such as memorisation of unrelated facts and topics, rather than deep learning that involves an active search for meaning and principles and the integration and application of different ideas, then students’ learning will come to be primarily of the surface type. How teachers assess children’s learning tells children what teachers value, and this is likely to influence how they strive to demonstrate the skills sought in the assessment procedures. Assessment is one of the most powerful processes in education because it can be used to identify strengths and weaknesses of individuals, institutions and education systems and because it is a powerful lever for change (Broadfoot, 1996). Assessment policy has an enormous power to influence the curriculum and the shape of educational experience within the classroom. ‘It is both the vehicle and the engine which drives the delivery of education’ (Broadfoot, 1996, p. 22). Hence the models of educational assessment we adopt must be impeccable. The key findings of seminal work by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam (1998a, 1998b) suggest that good assessment improves learning, provides feedback to students, actively involves students in their own learning, adjusts teaching according to the assessment results, recognises the influence of assessment on the motivation and self-esteem of pupils, helps students to assess themselves and shows them how to improve. Unfortunately there are many examples of assessment practices that do not incorporate these approaches. Most classroom time is spent on informal evaluation practices rather than standardised testing, yet this chapter devotes considerable attention to normative testing because it has such an enormous potential impact on children’s, families’ and teachers’ lives. Even though the use of formative assessment is now more popular within education systems, normative testing is still an important issue as there are many misuses and abuses of intelligence and achievement tests. There is a huge powerful testing industry, accompanying armies of psychologists and psychometricians engaged in testing, and there are still textbooks advocating the value of such an approach. Schools and teachers are pressured to find simple, easy, quick, ‘scientific’ ways of assessing children’s capabilities, and are still vulnerable to the seduction of using such tests. In the United States and an increasing number of other countries, attempts to measure the success of schools through monitoring by regular standardised testing have had disastrous and unintended consequences. Stephen Jay Gould in his introduction to the second edition of The

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Mismeasure of Man suggested that IQ testing will always be with us and that it periodically re-emerges within particular sociopolitical contexts: The theory of a unitary, rankable, innate, unalterable intelligence acts like a fungal spore, a dinoflagellate cyst or a tardigrade tun – always present in abundance, but in an inactive, dormant or resting stage, waiting to sprout, engorge, or awake when fluctuating external conditions terminate slumber. (Gould, 1996, p. 31)

Standardised tests are usually administered by trained personnel under controlled conditions. Teachers do, however, use some standardised tests such as the Progressive Achievement Tests, to assist in diagnosing children’s achievement levels. It is important for teachers to understand normative testing principles, since they may be expected to interpret the results of standardised tests. If teachers do not understand these principles, there is a danger that other ‘experts’ such as psychologists, health professionals or government officials will take over this function entirely, and I believe that this will continue to have harmful effects – not only on individual children but on educational practices.

The intelligence quotient

Many years of effort have gone into devising measures of children’s intelligence that will be helpful in predicting how well they will do at school. The term IQ originally referred to a quotient calculated by dividing mental age by chronological age and multiplying by 100. IQ tests today are converted to a scale where there is a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, with 95 per cent of the population scoring between 70 and 130. The IQ score reflects an individual’s performance compared to others in his or her age group cohort (Neisser et al., 1996). There has been little change in the technology of procedures for measuring intelligence, and the psychometric devices used do not reflect developments in cognitive psychology. One of the major problems is ‘the complete lack of an adequate, agreed-upon conceptual definition of intelligence apart from the standard operational definition that intelligence is “what the tests measure”’ (Pellegrino, 1992, p. 279). Other authors would disagree and claim that at a very general level experts agree on common features of intelligence, including ‘proficiency in abstract thinking, capacity to learn from experience and an ability to learn from and adapt to one’s environment, new situations and society’ (Fletcher & Hattie, 2011, p. 8). Researcher James Flynn (2007, p. 54) describes intelligence as ‘all of the cognitive traits, habits of mind, contents of mind, and attitudes that direct the investment of mental energy and make us good solvers of cognitively demanding problems’. Psychologist David Wechsler (1958, p. 7) described intelligence as ‘the

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aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, think rationally and to deal effectively with his environment’. IQ testing proponents believe that these mental qualities of reasoning, judgement and comprehension are revealed by children’s performance on mental tests. Alfred Binet developed his first test in 1905 in response to a government request for a procedure to identify children who were unlikely to profit from instruction (Brody & Brody, 1976). He therefore sought measures of intelligent behaviour that were relatively independent of teaching and yet correlated with success in school. The tests included such items as identifying parts of the body, digit span, memory for sentences and finding similarities between different things. Present forms of the Stanford-Binet test still retain many of the original items, and other well-known IQ tests, such as the Wechsler scales, have been validated by comparison with the Stanford-Binet. Items that differentiate between children of different ages were chosen deliberately. Thus, on the Binet, the items are grouped according to age level so that most children in a six-month age span can successfully complete the items at that level. The child’s final score is derived from a comparison of his score with a large normative sample of similarly aged children. The actual skills tested are a rather narrow and select band of the wide range of human learning. While the technology for measuring intelligence has changed little, actual IQ scores have increased markedly over generations (Flynn, 2007, 2012). Between 1947 and 2002, for example, Flynn has shown huge gains on the Raven Progressive Matrices (a reasoning test designed to be free of cultural influences) of 24 to 27 points. Scores on some subtests of the WISC1 have also increased markedly – while others (such as Arithmetic) have only increased minimally (by about three points). Increases in scores on both verbal tests such as the WISC, and non-verbal reasoning tests, such as the Raven, have been similar. The average Dutch IQ in 1982 was equivalent to the 90th percentile in 1952. Flynn (2007, p. 19) concludes that ‘today’s children are far better at solving problems on the spot without a previously learned method for doing so’. It is not, says Flynn, that our ancestors were less intelligent, but their everyday worlds were very different and did not require abstract reasoning, or logical and hypothetical thinking to deal with concrete reality. Contemporary contexts are more supportive of thinking hypothetically and freeing logic from concrete referents. ‘The life experiences 1 2

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. Geraldine McDonald (2010), however, suggests that the Flynn effect is an artefact of the age-based scoring systems of IQ tests, and generational changes in the age composition of grades. Because there are more younger children in equivalent grades than earlier times, this means that younger children score higher than older children on the same items.

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that surround us pose problems largely absent in our ancestors’ day’ (Flynn, 2007, p. 29).2 People are shifting from a more utilitarian approach to reality to a more scientific way of thinking, according to Flynn – testing hypotheses, manipulating symbols and using classification. These changes suggest that learning is situated in contemporary contexts that demand more scientific modes of thinking and more abstract cognitive skills. While IQ tests measure a rather narrow range of intellectual skills, these skills are clearly sensitive to the environment. These changes over time show a move in the direction of adaptive thinking and ‘new kinds of smart’, such as developing dispositions to resourcefulness, and ability to transfer habits of mind to deal with new situations (Lucas & Claxton, 2010). On the other hand, from a sociocultural perspective, IQ testing makes little sense, as it uses unassisted individual performance, and ignores how intelligence is distributed (and shared) among people and the tools of our cultures. While the above research provides an interesting picture of how our thinking is influenced by changing sociocultural contexts, my main concern in this chapter is about the misconceptions about intelligence held by many teachers and parents, and the harm that comes for individual children from intelligence testing. I believe that the idea of an underlying entity called intelligence that can be measured by IQ scores is of little practical value for parents or teachers, and makes no contribution to the task of catering for children’s individual differences. The traditional view is that intelligence is a global, relatively fixed and unmodifiable capacity to learn, which can be measured by performance on an IQ test and which provides a useful basis for making educational decisions. I would argue with the above analysis and make a case that: 1. There is no evidence that intelligence, as measured by tests, is a global ability. 2. There is no evidence that IQ is fixed or unmodifiable. 3. There is no evidence that IQ tests measure underlying capacity or potential. 4. There is no evidence that IQ scores provide a useful basis for making educational decisions. 5. There is no evidence that IQ test use is independent of social and political ideas.

Global ability

There has been considerable research and debate, starting with Charles Spearman in the early 1900s and on through other writers such as Louis Thurstone, Raymond Cattell and Joy Guilford, over whether or not intelligence is a unitary, generalised function (‘g’) or is composed of relatively separate abilities. Most

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of the argument centres around interpretations of factor-analytical studies of intelligence test performance. The finding that there are a large number of high correlations between performance on very different IQ items and tests has been taken as evidence for a common factor, or a single pervasive underlying ability. According to some critics, ‘g’ is a statistical abstraction telling us little about how people go about solving problems (Brody & Brody, 1976). Gould (1996) argues that every matrix subject to factor analysis can be represented differently depending on the type of factor analysis applied. There is no empirical reality in principal components, he says. It is therefore possible to arrive at either unitary or pluralistic views of intelligence depending on the factor-analytical procedures used. Gould (1996) points out that the idea of a general unitary factor underlying intelligence was still very much alive in the work by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (1994), The Bell Curve, and the arguments have changed very little from Spearman’s day: g cannot have inherent reality, for g emerges in one form of mathematical representation for correlations among tests and disappears (or at least greatly attenuates) in other forms that are entirely equivalent in amounts of information explained. (Gould, 1996, p. 373)

Although there may be interrelationships among learning tasks, this does not mean that there is evidence for a single learning ability. Only a small portion of the variability on one task is related to variability on another. Instead of being dependent upon a single ability, performance on IQ tests depends on many different factors, including those related to attention, perception, memory and motivation. The reason that it is so difficult to improve IQ test results by training children on particular items is that the underlying skills (like the child’s attention to the examiner’s instructions, or language confidence and skill) are not easily changed by training. Children’s present learning level will be related to future learning only because learning is cumulative. Last year’s marks would be as useful for predicting future learning, and they are less likely to be interpreted as measuring some inherent notion of ability. The IQ test is a very unhelpful assessment instrument, either using the global score, or as a diagnostic instrument for particular learning difficulties. For most purposes assessment tools specifically designed for a purpose (such as selection for a particular training course like medicine) will be more useful than a general IQ test. The reason that there is such a high correlation between IQ and educational performance is that they both measure overlapping skills and knowledge, rather than one being the determinant of the other. The idea that intelligence is fixed and unitary won out, according to Gordon Stobart, because:

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It fitted the mood of the time and offered an easy-to-grasp justification of social conditions and policies which was favourable to those with power. This zeitgeist also included both notions of scientific positivism, with its appeal to efficient scientific selection, and of meritocracy, with its concern for the selection of the most able. (1998, p. 45)

Stability

I will not deal in detail with the relative contribution of nature and nurture to intelligence here, as it is a complex issue that is of fading relevance. There is evidence that intelligence is influenced by both heredity and environment. Flynn’s research (2007, 2011) clearly shows that IQ scores change over generations. There are many recent books that address this issue and the reader should seek out Flynn’s work as well as others (such as Bartholomew, 2004; Fletcher & Hattie, 2011) if interested. To sum up: Although the largest contributor to intelligence may be heredity, the effects of environment have been greatly underestimated – particularly how environment leads to opportunities, encouragement, and basic living quality. It is, however, the interaction of the effects of genetics and environment that is most powerful. (Fletcher & Hattie, 2011, p. 89)

The question of whether IQ is a stable measure is, though, a crucial one, especially where educational decisions are made or expectations set on the basis of a single IQ score. The belief that a person’s IQ is a relatively fixed and unchanging quantity, like eye colour or height, is demonstrably false. An early study (Honzik, Macfarlane, & Allen, 1948) showed that IQ scores on the Wechsler scale had an average range, between 2 and 17 years, of 28.5 IQ points. One in every three children displayed a progressive change of more than 30 points, one in seven shifted more than 40 points and rare individuals shifted as much as 75 points. The IQ scores of more than half the children changed 15 points between 6 and 18 years. Individual children showed marked changes in IQ scores, usually after they had experienced marked changes in health or life experiences. Girls are more likely than boys to show a decline in IQ scores with age. C.)B. Hindley and C.)F. Owen’s (1978) British study confirmed Marjorie Honzik et al.’s American findings. They looked at changes in the IQ of London children between six months and 17 years. Between six months and five years, half the subjects changed IQ by 19 points or more and a quarter by 30 points or more. In the primary school period (5 to 11 years), a quarter of the children changed by at least 15 points and between 11 and 17 years a quarter of the sample changed 19 or more points. The two largest progressive changes were 78 IQ points for a boy and 76 points for a girl. This study also found a tendency for boys’ IQ scores to increase in a positive direction and

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for girls to change in a negative direction. Both studies showed that IQ scores are generally very unstable. Even where correlations for a sample are substantial and significant, there are large changes in the scores of many individuals. The predictive validity of assessment instruments (how well the test tells us how children will achieve in the future) for young children is especially low (Colarusso, Plankenhorn, & Brooks, 1980; Smith & Brun, 2006; Ulvund, 1984). Correlations between standardised measures during infancy and early childhood and adult IQ are so low as to be almost meaningless. There is not even an established relationship between scores in the first and second years of life. Stein Ulvund (1984) reports a median correlation of 0.31 between test scores at 7 to 12 months and at 19 to 24 months. Standardised assessment measures in infancy are of little practical use. Ulvund argues that this is because of the discontinuity of development and its constant change with experience. Also, young children are not very amenable to controlled assessment procedures and soon become fatigued, bored or unhappy at being separated from their caregiver, so their performance is erratic and dependent on their current state (Martin, 1986). Test scores vary over the life span because people’s environments change, for example, in the degree of risk or advantage. When children face multiple risks, such as poverty, unemployment or parental mental health problems, their IQ scores are likely to decline (Sameroff, Seifer, Baldwin, & Baldwin, 1993). The greater the number of risk factors the greater the decline in IQ scores. But scores can increase as well as decline. It is not true that a young person’s intelligence cannot be changed. There is abundant evidence that the intelligence levels of children increase substantially when circumstances are favourable. There are no solid reasons for believing that the skills that are assessed in an IQ test are harder to change than other abilities children acquire. (Bartholomew, 2004, p. 148)

Although it is not particularly easy to change IQ by experimental or clinical interventions, this is not surprising as test items are chosen to be relatively impervious to experience. There is a great deal of evidence to show that IQ is not fixed. Other more relevant measures of achievement are a great deal more susceptible to change. A worrying use of standardised developmental testing is in the surveillance of young children’s developmental progress through the use of screening tests such as the Denver Developmental Screening Test. There is widespread use of this instrument in New Zealand, and as far as I can determine, no New Zealand norms. While the test is seen to be quick and cheap to apply, it has limited predictive validity. While the test correctly identifies some children who go on to have problems, more than half of children identified as ‘at risk’ develop normally,

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resulting in a high over-referral rate (Smith & Brun, 2006). A large number (80 per cent) who later go on to have school problems are not identified by the Denver. There is also a danger of self-fulfilling prophecy with identifying children as ‘at risk’, leading to assumptions that such children have less potential for success, and providing them with less challenging environments. B4 School Checks were introduced by the Ministries of Health and Education in 2008 as part of an attempt to identify four-year-old children at risk of social and behavioural problems within the Well Child Tamariki Ora Schedule of service.3 The purpose of the B4 School Checks is to identify any health or behavioural concerns and to address them early so that intervention can be implemented to facilitate children’s early progress in school (Wills, Morris Matthews, Hedley, Freer, & Morris, 2010). The assessments (by registered nurses) include a child health questionnaire, hearing and vision screening, measurement of height and weight, oral health assessment, and behavioural and developmental screening. The instrument used to measure behavioural and emotional difficulties is called the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) (developed in the United Kingdom). It involves five-point Likert rating scales of anxiety, aggression, impulsive-hyperactive behaviour, and language and literacy problems using items like ‘generally obedient’ or ‘solitary, plays alone’ and ‘thinks things out before acting’ (Hawes & Dadds, 2004). Evaluation of the psychometric properties of the test by David Hawes and Mark Dadds in Australia supports its reliability. Predictive validity (whether there is any external validity to the scale) was checked against clinical diagnoses and positive associations with these were reported. For example, of the children identified as hyperactive, around 21 per cent of them went on to be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) – this implies that 79 per cent of them did not go on to develop ADHD! Fortunately, Russell Wills et al. (2010), in an evaluation of the implementation of B4 School Checks in Hawke’s Bay found that only 3 per cent of children (5 per cent of referrals) were referred because of behavioural issues, while 7 per cent of children and 13 per cent of referrals (the most) were for glue ear. Sally’s story (Box 9.1) illustrates the value of identifying vision and hearing problems at an early age, provided that this results in timely referral to services. It is not surprising, however, that Wills et al. (2010) found that there was scepticism about the SDQ in early childhood centres and kōhanga reo, since this medical approach to assessment conflicts with ECE’s more contextualised approach. The dangers of attaching a label, such as ADHD, to a four-year-old, may also be concerning for early childhood teachers. Sally’s story shows how a five-year-old reacted to a stranger carrying out a psychological test on her, and the completely 3

http://www.minedu.govt.nz/Parents/EarlyYears/SupportForYourChild.aspx.

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false predictions made by the psychologist after the testing. Using strangers to deliver standardised tests to even younger children, even though the intentions are good, is therefore something I believe is fraught with potential problems, such as over referral and self-fulfilling prophecy.

Underlying capacity or potential

One of the most pervasive and dangerous misperceptions is that intelligence, or lack of it, is something which determines a child’s performance on intellectual tasks. Teachers, parents and psychologists look to the child’s intelligence test scores to give them an indicator of a child’s potential for future learning. Intelligence is seen as some fixed, intangible quality or personal attribute that everyone possesses to varying degrees. It must be stated most vehemently that an IQ score shows only how well a person performs on a particular test but does not explain why that person performs well or badly. Even Philip Vernon, who was a traditional intelligence theorist, agreed with the environmentally determined argument: We must give up the notion of intelligence as some mysterious power or faculty of mind which everyone, regardless of race or culture, possesses in varying amounts and which determines his potential for achievement ... the idea of aptitude (mechanical, artistic, musical etc.) as powers which exist before learning takes place, and which can be tapped by suitable tests, must be banished. (Vernon, 1968, p. 213)

The problem with viewing IQ as a measure of inner processes and forces is basically a logical one. We observe a child’s performance on a test and infer that this performance is due to some inner quality of intelligence that cannot be observed. True explanation involves observing a functional relationship between antecedent and consequent conditions. If a child solves a problem well and we argue that this is because of his intelligence, we are using a tautological explanation. Gould (1996) described this as ‘the reification fallacy’, being the conversion of an abstract concept like intelligence into a hard entity located physically in the brain. He said that cultural and political systems dictate the categorisation of people according to their mental capacities, and we give the name intelligence to a complex and multifaceted set of human skills, thus reifying its status as a unitary thing. Because something is measured it is assumed that it must exist independently. Our understanding of intelligence is the product of this kind of process [reification]. This is not to say that there is no such thing as intelligence – it is about whether some dominant English-speaking beliefs about it have been reified in this way. These beliefs transformed intelligence into a biological entity – a cause of behavior – with which we are born and which does not

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change. Michael Howe, who rejects this biological interpretation, points out that intelligence, like success or happiness, is an outcome. Just as success is not the reason for someone being successful, so ‘intelligence is the abstract noun that denotes the state of being intelligent but it is not the explanation of it’. (p. ix) (Stobart, 2008, p. 43)

One of the reasons why our society seems to have so readily accepted that IQ tests measure underlying capacity is that such tests have a pseudo-scientific aura of scientific accuracy and objectivity. IQ tests are not more or less equivalent in meaning to the construct they set out to measure. They do not have the same kind of scientific status as other measures, such as that of height. There is only a very tenuous relationship between IQ and the theoretical notion of intelligence. An elaborate and unjustified inference is needed to assert that tests measure the construct. IQ tests are much more likely to be seen as measures of fixed endowment than aptitude or achievement tests, but they are all measures of the same thing (Stobart, 2008). Box 9.1 is a case study showing the harm that may be done through the uncritical use of IQ test performance as an explanation for behaviour, and how such test use could create false beliefs about a child’s abilities. This same study illustrates another potentially harmful effect of IQ testing. If teachers believe that tests measure underlying capacity, they may attribute poor achievement to an internal cause rather than attending to the quality of the teaching environment. Children who do not do well in school, if found to have a low IQ score, may be considered to be low in potential and teachers make less effort to overcome the educational problem. They assume that the children’s difficulties are due to factors outside the control of the school, hence absolving the teachers of responsibility for the poor achievement. Instead of being regarded as an indicator of an adequate educational experience that can be remedied, the IQ serves the very conservative purpose of promoting inaction. This has an especially negative impact on social and cultural groups who have less access to schoolbased knowledge. (Sally in Box 9.1 had the advantage of parents who had cultural capital and knowledge about education.) If children (frequently from lower socioeconomic status families) are classified as intellectually deficient, they may be judged as undeserving of access to educational or employment opportunities. These virulently conservative views appear and reappear in different historical times. In the early part of the twentieth century, American psychologist Lewis Terman was in favour of selective breeding and the restriction of immigration of ‘inferior’ groups (Stobart, 2008). Terman also wanted to set up colonies for ‘morons’ where their breeding was prevented. He argued that people with IQs below 70 were only suited to unskilled labour. These views, however, reappeared

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Box 9.1 Sally’s story: misplaced belief in the predictive power of an IQ test This is a true story about the misuse of IQ testing which caused considerable suffering for the family involved, and years of effort to undo the harm done. Sally was five years old and was a new entrant at her local school. After a few months at school the teacher rang her mother, Maria, and asked if Sally could talk. This surprised Maria, who knew that Sally was shy with strangers and reluctant to go to school, but hadn’t realised that Sally did not talk to the teacher. A few weeks later a typewritten sheet came home in Sally’s school bag, requesting parental consent for her to be referred to a psychologist for assessment because of concerns about her behaviour, including (according to the teacher) that Sally couldn’t bounce a ball, that her language was limited (she could only speak in one-word sentences), that she hurt other children, that she sat under tables, that she scrunched up her work when she was upset, and she could not hold a pencil correctly. When Sally was naughty, the teacher sent her to the Assistant Principal’s office, which Sally liked because she wasn’t happy in the classroom. Sally had friends at school and met with them after school, and her mother perceived her as a normal bright five-year-old, who had walked and talked at the right age, loved stories and imaginative play, and other creative activities. Sally’s father, Jack, gave verbal consent on the day of the assessment, something that both parents later regretted. The psychologist, Phyllis, spent an hour with Sally and administered the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, without discussion with the teacher or parents, or observing Sally. Maria and Jack were called in at lunchtime to get the results of Phyllis’s assessment of Sally. At the meeting Phyllis went over the test results, pointing out where Sally was on the bell curve – falling into the bottom sixth percentile, the ‘extremely low’ range of ability, just above the level where she would qualify for a teacher aide. Phyllis said that Sally would have difficulty with learning, and would probably never learn to read or write. Maria and Jack were very upset, and did not accept the psychologist’s view, because they knew a lot more about Sally’s capabilities, her shyness with strangers and her discomfort with the testing context. When Maria pointed out that Sally was quite capable at home, Phyllis assured her that the test results were completely accurate.

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Box 9.1 continued The teacher never saw the test results and they were locked away in a cabinet at the school, at Maria’s insistence. Other than a photocopied sheet with a list of vague suggestions about how they could help Sally, such as repeating instructions and doing more puzzles, no support was offered. When Sally went through routine vision and hearing testing at school that year, she was picked out as having both vision and hearing difficulties. Subsequently she had grommets inserted in her ears, and was prescribed glasses to correct her vision. By the end of the year Sally met the benchmarks for Year 1 children. In Maria’s view, the assessment did not provide any further information that would have helped the teacher or the parents to support Sally’s learning. Even if Sally actually had been of ‘extremely low’ ability, there were no practical strategies to help Sally learn, which made the testing a pointless, negative, unhelpful exercise. The teacher, in Maria’s view, could not manage Sally’s inappropriate classroom behaviour, and to avoid getting to know her, identify what was upsetting her and modify her practice accordingly, she labelled her as ‘slow’. The teacher and the psychologist focused on ‘deficits’ and used an IQ score to mistakenly label Sally as of ‘extremely low’ ability. Fortunately the story has a happy sequel. Sally’s Year 2 teacher had a totally different approach. She was positive towards Sally, talked to her frequently, developed a close relationship with her, praised her good work and talked regularly to Maria. Academically Sally achieved well, though she still occasionally misbehaved in class. If she was naughty, the teacher dealt with her calmly but firmly in the classroom (not sending her out) and her behaviour ceased to be a problem. By Year 3 Sally was a fluent reader, reading Harry Potter novels independently, and being judged as ‘well above average’ for literacy on her school report. Sally is now very happy at school, engages with school work, has good friends, and participates in an athletic team and piano lessons. In short she is a normal child, who has survived being incorrectly labelled by shoddy teaching and testing in her first year of school, as a result of her mother’s and subsequent good teachers’ efforts. Narrative of Sally written from author’s interview with Maria, November 2012. (Pseudonyms used to protect anonymity.)

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in the 1990s with the publication of Herrnstein and Murray’s infamous book The Bell Curve (1994, cited by Fletcher & Hattie, 2011). They argued that low IQ was the cause of illegitimacy, claiming that the more intelligent a woman was, the more likely she was to make a deliberate decision to have a child. Less intelligent women were, they argued, less likely to think from sex to procreation, to use birth control, or to make careful decisions about when to have a child. Less intelligent women were also thought to be more impulsive and less inclined to exert selfdiscipline and restrain their partners. The nature of the process of IQ testing means that children from some cultures will be disadvantaged and less likely to do well. For example, it is unknown in some cultures for adults to ask children known-answer questions or for children to engage in one-to-one dialogue with a strange adult. Also, although European and American cultures tend to give systematic practice in thinking, outside the context of one’s daily experience, this is not true for all cultures. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to provide equivalent tasks for different cultures and to provide task contexts that have the same meaning for different cultures. Constraints in administering tests do not allow testers to probe children’s understanding or scaffold the production of a correct answer, so there is no opportunity to assess children’s capacity or get to their ZPD (Miller-Jones, 1989). The child’s first answer may simply be her first approximation, but because no feedback is permitted the child must guess what the tester wants and assume that her first answer is acceptable. Hence ‘incorrect’ performance depends on the interpersonal aspects of the testing situation rather than lack of capacity. Children may not share the same understanding of the social context or the nature of the format and this puts children from some cultures at a particular disadvantage. Children’s understanding of the meaning of the task is closely related to their experience in a particular cultural context. There have been a number of efforts to produce culture-fair or culture-blind tests, but it has not proved possible to translate test material designed for one culture directly into another culture and these efforts have been largely unsuccessful (Gardner, 1992). Flynn’s work seems to suggest that IQ tests largely measure decontextualised scientific thinking, and societies differ in the extent to which they call forth this type of thinking. There are also huge differences in access to schooling and health services according to the wealth of nations. Flynn (2011) shows that countries in the developing world, such as Kenya, are also showing marked gains in IQ (by 13.85 points in 14 years between 1984 and 1998 in Kenya) that can be attributed to improvements in literacy, health and nutrition. It seems that the gap in IQ scores between the developed and the developing world is closing, but there are still enormous steps to be taken to equalise the access of countries in the developing world to food, water, education and other resources.

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A sociocultural view of intelligence

Vygotsky (1978) was highly critical of using measures of unassisted performance through standardised tests to measure children’s development. He argued strongly that children’s performance in the ‘zone of proximal development’ is a much better measure of their capacity to learn. He viewed learning that had been completed (or ‘actual developmental level’) as static and measuring a very narrow product of certain experiences. He referred to completed learning as ‘fossilised’ learning and felt that much more could be learned by looking at cognitive processes which were dynamically assessed in the process of development, that is, while the child is interacting with a more skilled person in the ZPD. He criticised psychologists for studying past events, and viewed studying something historically as studying it in the process of change. Vygotsky thought that it was in movement that a body showed what it was and that there should be much more emphasis on process and dynamic relationships in assessing behaviour. A sociocultural approach to language and intelligence is discussed in chapters 7 and 8, and provides a framework for the work of Bill Lucas and Claxton (2010) who argue for ‘new kinds of smart’ and an expanding idea of what it means to be intelligent. Being smart does not just mean being able to solve abstract mathematical and verbal puzzles against the clock. The research tells us that this ability has little to do with how people go about dealing with tricky stuff in their everyday work, family and leisure lives ... . Real-world intelligence has to do with how people respond to challenges that matter to them. As Jean Piaget said, being smart is not ‘knowing lots’; it is how you think, feel and behave at the moments when your accumulated store of knowledge and skill doesn’t give you a ready answer, and you have to ‘think on your feet’. (Lucas & Claxton, 2010, p. 175)

Lucas and Claxton (2010) dispute the myths that intelligence is a onedimensional commodity measured by IQ tests, that it is relatively fixed, rational and conscious, and that an individual possesses it divorced from emotional, social and moral functions. They argue instead that intelligence is malleable, and a composite of dispositions, such as resourcefulness, reflectiveness and resilience. Based on Dweck’s research, they suggest that a mindset towards believing that thinking can be stretched by persistence and effort is helpful, while a mindset based on the belief that there is no point in trying because of one’s mental limitations is harmful. If children are encouraged to persist, enjoy difficulty and look for new challenges, then their minds are ‘stretched’ to meet new demands, and they are more likely to adapt to new challenges in the future. ‘Students who, over an extended period of time are treated as if they are more intelligent, actually become more so’ (Resnick, 1999, cited by Lucas & Claxton, 2010, p. 39).

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The suggestion that the way we construct children’s intelligence influences the way we treat children, resonates with childhood studies theory, highlighting the importance of our constructions of childhood, and their impact on children’s beliefs about themselves. If we believe that children have a fixed quantity of intelligence, and that they are smart, average or dumb, these labels can turn into ‘fatalistic predictions about what can be expected of them’ (Lucas & Claxton, 2010, p. 37). If we are to help young people to expand their intelligence, then our focus should be to cultivate their learning dispositions and learning identities so that they are comfortable working with others, have a broad repertoire of strategies for problem-solving, and are willing to approach difficult tasks with confidence.

Formative assessment Assessment of students can be seen as having two main functions: assessment of learning and assessment for learning. Assessment of learning (often described as summative assessment) aims to provide a well-founded, clear and up-to-date picture of a student’s current capabilities or attitudes, progress over time or further growth needs and potential. Assessment for learning (often described as formative assessment) is focused on enhancing student development, and often involves relatively unstructured interaction between student and student or teacher and student rather than a planned formal assessment event. A few well-timed words, a sudden insight shared or a quiet celebration of notable achievement may have a lasting beneficial impact. Assessment for learning is an integral part of classroom life and appears to have more affinity to good teaching practice than to good summative assessment. (Crooks, 2002, p. 21)

Formative assessment was shown in an extensive review of the literature to produce significant and substantive learning gains, with effect sizes between .4 and .7 among the largest ever reported for sustained educational interventions (Black et al., 2003). The improvements brought about by formative assessment are greater for lower achieving children, showing that the ‘tail’ of educational underachievement can be reduced markedly by the wise use of assessment. In New Zealand the educational gap between Māori, Pasifika, low socioeconomic status and Pākehā children is a huge problem, which potentially could be largely solved if we implemented effective formative assessment policies. Terry Crooks sees this as largely a motivational problem and this is very much affected by assessment policies: It is interesting to note that in year 11, which for most students is when they first attempt level 1 NCEA, Asian students are only a little more successful than Pakeha students at achieving a full Level 1 pass, and Pasifika students are a little less successful than Maori students. However, when we look at the

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Box 9.2 Feedback in science – Justin’s written work Learning intention: To find out how electricity is conducted Justin: We did the experiment and found out that the electricity flowed through the metal wire but not the plastic one. We know because the light lit up. Teacher Comment: Justin – You have told me what you observed. Why do you think this happened? Do you remember how electricity is transferred? Justin: The metal bar had electrons that can move and the plastic one didn’t. The moving electrons carry the electricity. Clarke, Timperley, & Hattie, 2001, p. 71.

qualifications students hold when they leave secondary school, Asian students are well ahead of Pakeha students, and Pasifika students are comfortably ahead of Maori students. The reason is persistence: almost all Asian students stay five full years in secondary school, and on average Pasifika students stay distinctly longer than Maori students. By staying longer, they gain higher qualifications, even if they require more than one attempt. This extra persistence probably owes much to parental expectations and encouragement. (Crooks, 2010, p. 14)

One of the most common problems with assessment is that teachers focus on rote or superficial learning, and there is a tendency to focus on the quantity and presentation of work, rather than its quality. Successful formative assessment procedures use enhanced feedback (see Box 9.2), encourage students to be actively involved in learning, use assessment results to enhance learning and teaching, and support students towards self-assessment (see Box 9.3) (Black et al., 2003). The most important purpose for assessment is to actually help children to learn and to support their ongoing identities as learners and their enthusiasm for learning. Assessment is an integral part of learning/teaching contexts, which involves interactions between learners and other people and cultural tools. While assessment has been used for many other purposes, such as accountability (highstakes testing), grouping, selection, diagnosis of problems and certification, it is essential that these other purposes do not conflict with the most important goal of assessment, of strengthening children’s learning identities and their motivation for ongoing learning. The sensitive and informed use of assessment is an important aspect of effective classroom and early childhood practice, because it influences what students think is important to learn, their motivation and their self-belief. If there is an emphasis on feedback that helps students improve, this has a positive effect on learning. An overemphasis on grading or the possibility

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Box 9.3 Case study: self-assessment One teacher kept track of certain children’s self-evaluation comments for the course she was attending. These children were deliberately chosen because they had low self-esteem, generally underachieved and found it difficult to articulate. Tuesday Learning intention (L.I.) To evaluate texts for effective and interesting descriptions. Daniel said, ‘I found this difficult but people reading out their ideas helped me move on.’ Wednesday L.I. To identify linking connectives. In answer to, ‘What helped you get out of a difficulty?’ Shane said, ‘I was stuck and James helped me on the end bit.’ L.I. To add and subtract pairs of two-digit numbers mentally. Shane said, ‘I found it difficult to break the numbers down [partitioning] and Mrs Wright helped me understand.’ The teacher did more of this in the next mental session. James said, ‘What I found helpful was when Daniel did his method on the board – it showed me what to do.’ Katy said, ‘What I realised was that I do that method in my head.’ Thursday L.I. To identify features of persuasive texts. Nicola said, ‘They made it easy [in the text] by numbering the points of view.’ L.I. To add and subtract using a calculator. Daniel said, ‘What I found difficult was the standard method and when I realised I could using jottings with the calculator – it helped me more.’ The teacher describes all these comments as ‘a breakthrough for the children’. Clarke et al., 2001, p. 53.

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of failure can reduce motivation, increase anxiety and turn students away from engagement in learning (Clarke et al., 2001). Assessment is needed to plan programmes that are appropriate to learners, to monitor how well the educational environment caters for them and to communicate teacher intentions to students. Teaching should be based on what students already know, and what needs to happen next if they are to move forward (Clarke et al., 2001). Part of teachers’ professional role is to know how to select, gather and interpret information about children’s learning and their family context. Teachers also need time, support and an appropriate working context, as well as skills and knowledge, to carry out their important assessment role. For assessment to be valuable it has to be linked to the social contexts in which learning takes place. Assessment in itself does not improve learning and quite often can do the reverse. Assessment should be based on what happens in the classroom: ‘the small and constant details of achievement – demanding assignments, provocative questions, thoughtful responses, stiff demands and high expectations’ (Wolf & Reardon, 1996, p. 3). Assessment tasks have to be embedded in the curriculum and what is being taught in the classroom, if they are to make a difference to student learning. Rather than comparing individuals with a group, the focus should be on change over time. A dynamic approach to assessment is helpful, where children revise their work and improve it as their knowledge of a topic progresses or changes, and according to the feedback they receive. Students and teachers need to work closely together and mutually reflect on progress towards these goals. Where skills are missing and more help is needed, it can then be provided so that the student can move forward. Formative assessment is focused on evoking information about learning and using that information to improve learning (Black et al., 2003, p. 122). Teachers can work together in order to build each other’s capacity to make professional assessment judgements. Individual judgements may be idiosyncratic, so assessment decisions need to have the light and air of public discussion. Teachers can bring samples of students’ work to discuss with colleagues, who work together identifying strengths and weaknesses, and to develop common sets of dimensions for diagnosing and responding to student work – in other words, teachers can work jointly on the systematisation of their professional judgement. Common languages are established among professionals for describing student performance, which are then applied in instructionally relevant settings, in such a way as to acknowledge the complexity and changing nature of students’ capabilities and the importance of relevant assessment embedded in the curriculum, with the aim of improving learning (Wolf & Reardon, 1996). It is not just individual learners who are assessed, but it is equally important to assess the quality of the educational environment; indeed, one cannot do one

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without the other. Learning and development are not primarily about individual achievement but are distributed over people, places and things (Cowie & Carr, 2009). From a sociocultural perspective, attention has shifted from isolated individuals to individuals within the contexts of their experienced worlds and cultures. The traditional separation of the individual from the environment, with its focus on portable ‘in-the-head’ skills and knowledge as outcome, has been replaced by attaching social and cultural purposes to skills and knowledge, thereby blurring the division between the individual and the learning environment. (Carr et al., 2010, p. 5)

Assessment can be used to evaluate whether programmes meet their objectives. Equal weighting should be given to the assessment of the educational environment and to the assessment of individuals. An ecologically and socioculturally based assessment approach looks at the child in interaction with learning materials and other people in different contexts. It is difficult to separate the progress of the child from the way that the environment positions children as learners, and provides the necessary guidance and support to encourage progress. Sociocultural assessment approaches establish communities of learners and teachers (children, teachers, family) who share ideas about what is important, support continuity in children’s learning and construct children as competent learners (Cowie & Carr, 2009). Self-review is a type of formative evaluation focused at the institutional level rather than the individual level. It is a process of evaluation that takes place inside a particular educational service (such as early childhood centre or school), based on the particular objectives and conditions of the service. It is designed both to improve practice and demonstrate accountability (see the later section in this chapter on accountability). Self-review in early childhood education is supported by the New Zealand Ministry of Education’s document Ngā Arohaehae Whai Hua: & Ě0#1ő /#&#(-ő ),ő ,&3ő "#&"))ő /.#)(ő (Ministry of Education, 2006). Self-review provides an ongoing record of progress, reminds services of their goals and intentions and if they are being met, and allows achievements or problems to be shared. It is also a very useful process to undertake ahead of an impending external review, so that the service is in a position to provide appropriate information to reviewers. The process of self-review involves systematic and careful gathering of information from a number of sources. Ngā Arohaehae Whai Hua suggests focusing on three areas of practice for selfreview purposes: learning and teaching, collaborative practice, and governance and management (Ministry of Education, 2006). The principles of Te Whāriki provide a useful framework for self-review in ECE. Centres can ask how their

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practice empowers children to learn and grow, whether it reflects the holistic nature of learning, how integral it is to the wider community, and whether children have the opportunity to learn through responsive, reciprocal relationships. Selfreview involves a joint planning process involving selection of: a focus for the review, indicators of success, who will be consulted, staff responsibilities in the review, resources to use and documentation. New Zealand early childhood centres are fortunate to have a useful resource to help them undertake selfreviews. An Education Review Office (ERO) (2009) national evaluation of the implementation of ECE self-review in 2008, however, showed that only 14 per cent (of 397 services) demonstrated a good understanding and implementation of self-review, while 42 per cent had some understanding, but just over a third had limited or no understanding of self-review. There is clearly a need for further assistance for ECE services to carry out self-review, which would be a fruitful area for professional development.

Assessment approaches Observation One assessment procedure, especially valuable in the early years, is through observation of children’s behaviour in natural contexts. Observation is a deliberate, active process, carried out with care and forethought, of noting events as they occur and describing contexts. Systematic observation can be distinguished from casual observation, where striking events are remembered, without specifics. Observation is a way of gathering evidence over time to reveal patterns of children’s interests and behaviour, and is characteristic of highquality early childhood education. It helps build knowledge about children so that teachers can provide effective scaffolding, plan future learning steps, build on children’s interests, and provide relevant information to discuss and reflect on with colleagues (Bradford, 2012). There is no such thing as a pure, value-free, objective approach to observing human behaviour, and it is impossible to be an invisible, distant observer, particularly in classroom settings. Interested participants such as parents and teachers, and the child herself, should be able to participate with the observer in the interpretation of what is observed from their own unique perspectives. The more people who can offer information, the better the picture that can be drawn of the child. Children often show capabilities in one setting that they do not in others, so parent input is valuable (see Box 9.1). Sharing assessment information with parents means that they can also make a contribution to helping children learn. Objectivity should not be totally rejected, however. While there is no single correct description of reality, we can assume that there is an objective reality, though it is not easy to describe because of its complexity and richness (Scriven, 1983). This is

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another reason why it is valuable to have more than one perspective on describing children’s activities, as different individuals may notice different things. Teachers are increasingly expected to base their teaching activities on observations. Observing children can help teachers and parents decide on what will be an appropriate task or activity for a child, and the most likely method or material to interest them. From a sociocultural perspective, parents and teachers are constantly making judgements of what children are capable of understanding and doing, and challenging them just enough to take them a further step forward in their learning; that is, working in the child’s zone of proximal development. This does not mean providing children only with activities that they have enough knowledge about or understanding of to be successful at. Rather, it means finding out possible next steps for their learning, and providing the help and guidance to move them forward. Children can usually, after a phase of scaffolding, carry out the task independently. In order to work in this way with children, it is important to use all sorts of information to determine the child’s current level of understanding and skill. The task of making decisions about children’s future directions for learning should be based on careful detective work and thoughtful planning, rather than hastily made and ill-thought-out assumptions. The decisions can also be evaluated using diverse sources of information. This constant process of looking, listening, weighing up information, and thinking about what you want children to learn is a necessary component of assessment by all professionals who work with children. Parents do it too without even noticing. As well as skills in observation, teachers need a good knowledge of theories of learning and development, so that they can make appropriate inferences and interpretations about children’s progress. This does not mean the narrow application of fixed norms, but understanding about children’s progress, and if the learning environment is challenging the child in the directions suggested by educational goals and curriculum. A student research project (Fisher, 1989) looking at primary school children’s mathematics learning showed that four children quickly progressed through games and activities designed to teach addition and subtraction. One child, however, did not make progress and it soon became apparent that this was because the child could not enumerate beyond six. The student’s observations enabled her to modify the goals and teach the child the necessary prior learning. Having goals and assessing them did not mean narrow rigid programmes but rather an awareness of the desired directions of learning. I have chosen not to present a detailed account of different types of observational methods in this chapter, as I did in the fourth edition of this book. Instead I would encourage readers to use Val Podmore and Paulette Luff’s (2012) book -,0.#)(Ćő ,#!#(-ő (ő
**,)"-ő #(ő ,&3ő "#&")) for an upto-date coverage of both qualitative and quantitative approaches to observation.

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Quantitative approaches involving numerical data include: time sampling; event, frequency and duration recordings; interval recordings; checklists; and rating scales. Qualitative approaches involve rich descriptions usually in words, of events, activities and contexts, and they include diary or anecdotal records, running or continuous records, ethnographic methods and narratives. With the availability of relatively cheap and unobtrusive methods of photographing and videoing children’s learning in natural contexts, it is very easy to incorporate visual material to illustrate narrative accounts in children’s portfolios, and to use this material for reflection by teachers, parents and children, for acknowledging past progress, as well as planning future goals. I will discuss in more depth one kind of narrative qualitative approach that is now extensively used in early childhood education in New Zealand, known locally as Learning Stories.

Narrative assessment [Learning Stories are] structured narratives that track children’s strengths and interests: they emphasise the aim of early childhood as the development of children’s identities as competent learners in a range of different arenas. They include an analysis of the learning (a ‘short-term review’) and a ‘what next?’ section. The narratives include the interactions between teacher and learner, or between peers; often the episode is dictated by the learner as a ‘child’s voice’. The portfolios or folders in which they are housed invite families to contribute their own stories and comments. (Cowie & Carr, 2009, p. 107)

The Learning Stories approach is a good example of an assessment method that was deliberately created to provide an appropriate tool to measure specific curriculum goals in early childhood and primary education. The New Zealand early childhood curriculum guidelines, Te Whāriki, focuses on protecting diversity, involving families, connecting with people of different cultures, play, and the natural environment. It is also committed to a bicultural society and the language, culture and values of Māori and Pākehā are incorporated into the principles. Instead of assessing from within the usual domains of physical, intellectual, social and emotional development, it focuses on a holistic approach of providing a safe and trustworthy environment, meaningful and interesting problems, avoidance of competition and risk of failure, opportunities for collaborative problemsolving and the availability of assistance from teachers. The five strands and associated curriculum goals of Te Whāriki are belonging, well-being, exploration, contribution and communication. A new National Curriculum for schools was introduced in 2007, and for the first time it included key competencies, which are dispositional outcomes, consisting of thinking, making meaning, participating and contributing, managing self and

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relating to others. Key competencies are integrated and holistic and consist of the skills, values, attitudes and knowledge required to complete a task. They are performance-based and inferred from actions in context (Rutherford, 2004) and have been aligned with the curriculum strands in Te Whāriki. Learning Stories are increasingly used imaginatively in school classrooms by teachers and principals (Carr & Lee, 2012). Given the holistic goals of Te Whāriki and the key competencies in the National Curriculum, it was a challenge to develop formative assessment procedures suitable for assessing those goals. Learning Stories are narratives describing and illustrating (often with photographs or videos) significant learning moments in children’s day-to-day experiences (Carr, Hatherley, Lee, & Ramsey, 2004). The stories do not focus on specific skills or isolated observations, but on learning dispositions – finding something of interest, being involved, engaging with challenge, persisting with difficult problems, expressing a point of view and taking responsibility (which align with the strands and goals of the curriculum). Children’s learning is documented using a variety of methods, ranging from handwritten or word-processed stories, digital photos or videos of children’s work or activities in context. Learning Stories include short-term reviews, describing and interpreting children’s learning in relation to the curriculum goals, and longerterm thinking about what learning comes next. Parents and other family members are invited to contribute their voices to Learning Stories, and children’s voices too are often incorporated. Portfolios of Learning Stories are collected for each child, and the children have a sense of pride of ownership in these stories, which they can share with family, teachers and other children. The children are positioned as participants with agency, who can take on authorship and engage in dialogue (Carr & Lee, 2012). Box 9.4 gives an example of how Leilani was engaged in being a scientist, an ‘aspirational identity’ that was confirmed by her teacher, her family and herself. Four assessment design principles are suggested by Carr and Lee (2012, p. 137) to be incorporated into Learning Stories: ƀLJ )-#.#)(LJ &,(,-LJ 1#."LJ !(3LJ (LJ ()/,!LJ ."'LJ .)LJ 0&)*LJ -& Ɛ assessment and dispositions ƀLJ (&/LJ'/&.#*&LJ0)#-LJ(LJ)((.LJ1#."LJ '#&#-LJ(LJ)''/(#.#ƀLJ ,)0#LJ (0#!.#)(LJ ',%,-LJ ),LJ -./(.-LJ .)LJ -")1LJ ."LJ $)/,(3LJ -)LJ ,LJ (LJ possible pathways forward ƀLJ (.!,.LJ #-*)-#.#)(&LJ %()1&!LJ 1#."LJ -/$.LJ %()1&!LJ (LJ *,.#LJ and provide a repertoire of meaning-making and adaptive expertise. Such a sociocultural approach, where there is an integral link between curriculum and assessment, is negotiated, emergent, situated and child-referenced,

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Box 9.4 A Learning Story of Little Miss Scientist What a great day we all had at Science Alive. Firstly, we had a chance to do some experiments in the classroom and then we went through to the interactive area. Leilani, I noticed that you were keen to take part in all the experiments and that you were able to answer some tricky questions about floating and sinking, solids and liquids, gases and dissolving. You followed the instructions carefully when you were asked to do something by the parent helpers and thought about what you had observed before sharing it with others. What does this tell me? This tells me that you are actively involved in your learning and that you are motivated to participate in all activities. You worked really well with the other children. I was impressed with the great thinking skills you used and how you used your ‘Stop and Think’ Habit of Mind to answer questions confidently. Well done Leilani! Where to next? I can tell that you are curious about the world around you and that you are keen to learn more. You might be able to find some interesting books in the library to look at. We will be doing some more science topics and experiments during the year, so I look forward to hearing you share your great ideas again. Leilani’s voice I had fun at Science Live. Parents’ voice Did Leilani tell you about our visit to Science Alive? Yes, Leilani did tell us about the Science Alive trip in great detail and she told everybody who came to visit our home about the trip too. Leilani loves Science Alive and always asks to visit if we are driving past or wanting to have a day trip out. Leilani is very curious about the world and the way things work. Carr & Lee, 2012, p. 27.

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according to Bronwen Cowie and Carr (2009). It gives a sense of ownership to participants, and reflects a balance ‘between discussion and documentation, between participation and reification, in providing feedback to learners and their families, and in suggesting what the next step might look like’ (p. 106). Learning Stories provide narrative descriptions of children’s learning within specific contexts, so this situated method of assessment is valuable for assessing children’s learning journeys within their unique cultural contexts. A kaupapa Māori approach to assessment has at its heart the idea of empowering Māori children, and ensuring that their culture and voices are central to the assessment processes (Ministry of Education, 2009). ő "./ő ¨%% is a Ministry of Education resource authored by Māori writers, which gives exemplars of assessment suitable for use in Māori early childhood services (those with a high proportion of Māori children). The document helps teachers to draw on children’s whakapapa, Māori history and cultural heritage, and use a te ao Māori (Māori world view) philosophy of teaching and learning (Ministry of Education, 2013). The uniqueness of the Māori child is illustrated by these words of a kaumātua working on the development of ő"./ő¨%%: I am Māori, a descendant of people who came to Aotearoa from Rangiātea, a place located in the spiritual world of Hawaiiki. I am a unique person with my own mana, mauri, and wairua4 inherited through my ancestors from our supreme creator, Io-Matua-Kore. Therefore my very being is treasured. My life journey begins in the womb of my mother, a place of warmth, security, love, nourishment and contentment, a place that met all my needs – the perfect environment for my growth and development. Observe me as a child of my own indigenous culture. Provide me with an environment that accepts, values, and sustains my individuality so that I can feel truly safe as well as nurtured. Allow me to explore and interact with this environment so that I may reach my full potential. (Ministry of Education, 2009, p. 51)

The policy context of assessment in New Zealand

There has been considerable progress in the last 15 years in the way that teachers and schools have been helped by the Ministry of Education with their task of assessing students’ learning and implementing the curriculum. Crooks (2002) explains that the New Zealand approach has predominantly viewed assessment as the task of the teacher, with the exception of state examinations at the end of secondary education. We have a history of primarily ‘low stakes’ testing (at least 4 The meanings of these Māori words is as follows: mana – power; mauri – life force; wairua – spirit.

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in the primary system), but have moved from a predominantly norm-referenced system which compares the performance of different students (for example, IQ or achievement tests) to a criterion or standards-referenced system. At the point at which students leave school, our secondary schools have, however, used highstakes testing, and some still do. A criterion-referenced system describes what students can do compared to pre-described levels of performance without limits on the number of students who are judged to have met the criteria. We have not relied on standardised tests in primary schools, and if used they are looked on as additional sources of information for teachers, and are used to improve children’s learning. Examples of such tests are the Observational Survey of Literacy (the Six Year Net) developed by Marie Clay, or the Progressive Achievement Tests published by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. Clay’s test is used specifically to identify the lowest progress readers and to provide them with additional support, through Reading Recovery tuition. Our assessment methods in primary and intermediate schools have ‘focused on monitoring students’ learning, improving learning through direct feedback to students or adjustments to teaching programmes’ (Crooks, 2002, p. 246). Things have changed somewhat since Crooks’ 2002 article. The Progressive Achievement Tests (PATs) were introduced in 1970 in Reading, and shortly after in Maths and Listening, Study Skills and Spelling. Other tests such as ACER5 tests and Burt Word Recognition tests were also in use and readily available at NZCER (Elley, 2012a). Young (2009) describes three waves of assessment practice in New Zealand schools, with the first wave being from 1989 to 1996. This involved a piecemeal approach relying on PATs, running records and spelling tests. (Achievement testing began well before 1989, however, according to Elley, and was used by principals to monitor cohorts of students.) The second wave, from 1996 to 2002, saw the introduction of a more systematic approach to assessment, and the introduction of school-wide systems. In 2001 schools were required to set annual targets and report on progress to the Ministry and their communities. From 2002 onwards there were massive changes in assessment, as a response to educational reforms to demand accountability and curriculum implementation. This resulted in the introduction of new normative assessment tools, such as STAR (Supplementary Test of Achievement in Reading) and asTTle (Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning), as well as the introduction of a variety of formative assessment procedures. John Young argues that the lack of a prescribed external assessment system meant that ERO had a major influence on school practice. ERO began a campaign for national testing in the late 1990s, which resulted in a commitment by the 5

Australian Council of Educational Research.

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Ministry of Education to the production of Exemplars for performance in all areas of the curriculum, as well as national tests in literacy and numeracy. A change in government in 1999 resulted in tests such as TTle becoming optional, but after 2000 a range of assessment tools was made available to help teachers assess their students against the curriculum. Various professional development programmes also provided help for teachers to implement curriculum goals and appropriate formative assessment methods. In 2003 the Ministry of Education introduced a Planning and Reporting process whereby schools had to set annual targets and report on them in their annual reports. Young comments that the proliferation of assessment instruments in the four years before 2009 was almost as much of a problem as the almost total absence of them 15 years previously. It is therefore a challenge for teachers to find the most appropriate assessment tools, and to balance the use of assessment to improve children’s learning with requirements for accountability. Young (2009) carried out case studies of three primary schools, and he found that each school made extensive use of formative assessment, and had participated in professional development to help them implement it. All of the schools used a system of portfolios comprised of student work. Two teachers at one school estimated that they were collecting between six and eight samples of work per term for each child. Teachers made annotations on each sample describing the work and the success criteria. It was, however, a challenge for some teachers on a practical level to implement formative assessment, and some felt that they were in danger of spending more time on assessment than on teaching. Two teachers in his study responded to comments by ERO that they should provide more written feedback, and were attempting to do so with some difficulty. One teacher said: It is one of my goals for this year to write more. According to the ERO, the whole process doesn’t take very long and we were talking about marking books and things like that and it is great the whole thing only takes you a minute but it doesn’t – it doesn’t take you just a minute. You might have eight children in that group, or eight children you are going to see that day just for that writing session, you are only going to deal with them. It is not always that easy. That is the reality (Susan). (Young, 2009, p. 247)

The implementation in 2010 of a system of National Standards has increased the challenges for teachers and been a step backward in progress towards formative assessment. The argument the government used for National Standards was that one in five young people were leaving school without skills and qualifications to enable them to succeed (Tolley, 2009), and that it was imperative to lift student achievement.

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The National Standards will enable us to improve student achievement by providing sound information about how students are progressing. Early identification of students who are falling behind will allow schools, teachers, and parents to make informed decisions about how to improve the students’ achievement and to provide additional support where appropriate. (Tolley, 2009)

The National Standards in reading, writing and numeracy describe what children should be able to do by a particular age or year at school (Crooks, 2009). Schools must report their results to the Ministry. The main metric for reporting on each individual’s achievement is whether they are above, at, below or well below the target standard for the year of schooling. This seems to be a return to a normative approach to assessment of comparing students to each other around the country that we have been moving away from, and for which there is little evidence of effectiveness in improving learning. Crooks (2011) argues that his National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP – see next section) data showed that on almost every performance task there was a huge range and diversity in performance, and that the best Year 4 students had a higher mean than the worst Year 8 students. So he argues that it is nonsense to use a particular standard as an appropriate level for all students to reach in a particular year of schooling. The more teachers focused on trying to get all students in their class to a prescribed standard in a subject, the less appropriate their efforts were likely to be for the most capable and least capable students in that class. Because New Zealand’s National Standards place a huge focus on whether each student is above, at, or below the target standard for their year of schooling, they tend to lead teachers, students and parents away from the best current learning targets for many of the students. This is a fundamental flaw in our National Standards system. (Crooks, 2011, p. 9)

Crooks (2010, 2011) argues that it is more appropriate to focus on student progress over time rather than static achievement levels. Measures of students’ progress are far more educationally useful and fairer (especially for schools and students in low-decile areas). A student may be placed at an average level and may have made no progress or even fallen behind, or a student at an average level may have made enormous progress (perhaps from a below-average level earlier in the year). The fact that the system has been imposed on schools with minimal consultation and involvement by teachers and without appropriate professional development suggests, according to Crooks, that the system is just a new form of accountability for schools, rather than a way of helping underachieving students. The Minister of Education argued that National Standards would give parents

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information about their children, yet as Warwick Elley (2012b, p. 1) pointed out in a letter to the Minister: ‘Any parent who wants information about their child or school can get it if they ask. Most schools already provide lots of relevant information. If ERO is doing its job, it should identify those who don’t.’ Elley told the Minister that the data produced by National Standards would be unreliable and unfair, and that it would lead to schools distorting their outcome measures to make their schools appear better. This would drive an even bigger wedge between the top and bottom schools and give no indication of how students were progressing. It could, according to Elley (2012b), also lead to teachers feeling pressured into coaching children for standardised tests. Elley (2012a) told me that the work of Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg confirmed his reading of the PISA6 results: that countries that have adopted National Standards, and Accountability and League Tables and Competition between Schools and School Choice (rather than zoning) ... such as USA, England, Canada, Australia and Japan in recent years have all gone backwards in their average PISA scores in the international surveys of 2000, 2003, 2006 and 2009.

Given the lack of appropriate rationale for National Standards, the failure to consult with teachers in developing the scheme, and the evidence that similar schemes overseas have led to declining standards, the system is likely to be an expensive failure. Another potential expansion of standardised testing within our education system is screening at school entry, which is advocated by researchers Rebecca Sargisson, Peter Stanley, and Rosalind de Candole (2013), to identify children experiencing difficulties, so that professional help can be accessed for them at an early stage. The authors carried out a study to determine an efficient and costeffective method of carrying out such screening. They concluded that assessing children’s gross motor skills was the most successful way of identifying ‘at-risk’ children (by comparing scores on a variety of tests with identification of children who were referred to Special Education). Combining scores on Concepts about Print (CAP, a test of children’s pre-reading skills), with assessments of gross motor skills (include skipping, laterality, catching a ball, balancing on one foot) were suggested to be suitable screening tools. Personally I am sceptical that a test of gross motor ability has as much validity as the regular and ongoing assessments of classroom learning (including the CAP), and observations of learning and behaviour in context, used by teachers in their everyday classroom practice.

6

Programme for International Student Assessment.

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Assessment for accountability

In many education systems throughout the world, tests are used to impose external systems of accountability on schools and teachers. Since education is costly, it is not unreasonable that schools should demonstrate that the money invested has produced the desired outcomes, but systems of accountability can be oppressive to individuals and particular social groups in society: ‘This accountability aspect of educational assessment is very significant in its impact on the nature of schooling since it reflects and reinforces the legitimacy of existing educational practice and effectively prevents any very significant departures from the status quo’ (Broadfoot, 2012, p. 23). High-stakes testing refers to the use of tests for accountability purposes and when the results lead to serious consequences for at least one stakeholder (Stobart & Egen, 2012). Patricia Broadfoot describes such tests as using arbitrary criteria, based on the characteristics of powerful people in society, which are often handicapping for other social groups. She believes that assessment can be seen as ‘subtle and complex agencies of social reproduction and control’ (2012, p. 73). The United States Education System is strongly influenced by such highstakes testing regimes, through the No Child Left Behind legislation which was introduced in 2002. In the United States it is a legal requirement for all schools to show students progressing towards higher standards with the goal that all students are proficient by 2014 (Stobart, 2008). Every child is tested annually between grades three and eight on English and Maths (Science is to follow), and if schools do not meet the standards the outcomes are draconian. If targets are not met for two years, schools are identified as ‘needing improvement’ and students are given choices of other schools. If they do not meet their targets for five years, the school must be totally restructured or taken over. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the introduction of a National Curriculum in 1988 was accompanied by national assessments, with standardised testing of English, Maths and Science for all 7-, 11- and 14-year-olds (Stobart, 2008). Performance tables are published of the percentage of 11-year-olds receiving level 4 scores or above, and these are converted by the media and published into rank-ordered league tables. If schools fail to improve, special measures can be imposed and the school closed or re-organised. This regime was criticised by Philip Gammage (1991) who saw the system as cumbersome and inflexible, acting as a brake rather than a spur on schools, because it relied on an arbitrary list of curriculum objectives and used assessment as a tool for monitoring teachers, rather than as an aid to learning. In Australia the National Assessment Program (NAPLAN) tests of literacy and numeracy were introduced in 2008 in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 (Klenowski & Wyatt-

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Smith, 2012). This has resulted in pressure being exerted on principals to improve their test results, with implications that their jobs are on the line unless results improve. Line managers require schools to lift their results, and suggest the identification of a select group of students (those most likely to improve) who should be given extra assistance. It has also resulted in a plethora of commercial products to help schools prepare for the tests, and reports that schools have encouraged some parents to keep their children at home on the day of the tests. There is, however, no evidence to show that high-stakes testing regimes have improved overall achievement. For example, a recent major United States review by the National Academies of Sciences showed that United States levels of achievement had not increased to the level of the highest performing countries: ‘the overall effects on achievement tend to be small and are effectively zero for a number of programmes’ (Hout & Elliott, 2011, cited by Stobart & Eggen, 2012, p. 4). The unintended consequences of the high-stakes assessment had been to narrow the curriculum, encourage teachers to teach to the tests, neglect wider areas of the curriculum, avoid encouraging higher-order thinking skills (which are difficult to assess), and to spend a lot of time on coaching and practice (Klenowski & Wyatt-Smith, 2012). In addition, children (and families) experience constant stress throughout children’s lives and nothing is done to implement their education rights as set out in the UNCRC. New Zealand has taken a different approach to accountability through NEMP, which was introduced in 1995. NEMP regularly assesses small random samples of student performance on innovative and curriculum-relevant tasks, which is a greatly superior system of keeping an eye on National Standards than ‘high-stakes’ assessment. NEMP uses national samples of 3 per cent of Year 4 and Year 8 students selected from schools throughout New Zealand, assessing three curriculum areas every year. The tasks for the assessments are designed in consultation with teachers, and were not originally intended to be used by schools. Between 1995 and 2003, however, approximately 600 tasks have subsequently been made available to schools for use in their own teaching and assessment (Young, 2009). NEMP has been externally reviewed by expert academics whose judgement about the project has been very favourable. The National Educational Monitoring Project is well conceived and admirably implemented. Decisions about design, task development, scoring, and reporting have been made thoughtfully. The work is of exceptionally high quality and displays considerable originality. We believe the project has considerable potential for advancing the understanding of, and public debate about, the educational achievement of New Zealand students. It may also serve as a model

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for national and/or state monitoring in other countries. (Black, Kane, & Linn, 1996, cited by Young, p. 108)

There is an important place for monitoring children’s learning and development and checking on the quality of educational environments on a country-wide basis, and the NEMP approach manages to do this effectively without negative consequences for schools or students. It is much more constructive to monitor national standards by using representative samples and low-stakes testing (Stobart, 2008). NEMP does not provide league tables, but looks at the overall picture of the achievement of New Zealand students. In contrast, high-stakes decontextualised, standardised, normative testing being administered to entire populations of students can have very negative consequences. The quality of teachers and schools is judged on the basis of students’ performance on tests, without consideration of the impact of socioeconomic status (or other confounding variables) on performance. It is unfair to compare schools by looking at test (or examination) performance since schools have very different intakes of students with vastly different social, economic and cultural backgrounds. Also, schools may easily achieve short-term gains in achievement results by focusing on teaching to the test content, at the expense of real depth of understanding and ongoing motivation. There is also an insidious side-effect of narrowing the curriculum to focus on ‘the basics’ of literacy and mathematics. Accountability practices have had a very negative effect on kindergarten and primary schools in the United States (Bredekamp & Shepard, 1989). Teachers experience strong pressure towards instructional practices they disagree with, in order to reach targeted improvements in test performance. High-stakes tests are used to evaluate or reward teachers and administrators, to allocate resources to schools and to make placement decisions about children. Such pressures have resulted in the downward extension of a narrow academic curriculum into early childhood, with teachers being forced to see their role as preparing children for the academic rigours to come. There is widespread publication of kits or manuals to give preschool children test-taking skills on such tests as the California Achievement Tests. Some early childhood centres have become obsessed with literacy and numeracy in readiness for the next stage of schooling (Paley, 2004; Smith & Shepard, 1988). Curricular content is broken down into small, carefully sequenced units and taught directly with the same curriculum and methods for everyone. The child who does not keep pace with this pressured curriculum is labelled a failure. Thankfully New Zealand has so far managed to avoid the use of high-stakes testing, because this would likely have a negative effect on our progressive education system.

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Summary

Assessment is a process of making judgements that has a powerful impact on a child’s quality of education and success in learning. While most assessment in New Zealand schools is informal and formative, normative testing has still been influential in thinking about how to teach children. Attempts to measure intelligence with mental tests began in the early part of this century. Most tests in current use are fairly similar to the original Binet Test. Such tests attempt to measure a global capacity for rational thought, which is assumed to be relatively fixed, and which is used as a basis for making educational decisions. There is little evidence to support traditional views. IQ tests measure many overlapping, acquired behavioural skills rather than one underlying amount of cognitive ability. IQ test scores have been shown, in many longitudinal studies, to be highly unstable in the same individuals over time. There is also evidence (‘the Flynn effect’) of a gradual increase in IQ scores across generations. IQ scores are modifiable (though not readily so) by short- and long-term training programmes. IQ tests do not measure capacity or potential. They merely indicate how an individual performs on a test, not why he performs that way. The use of IQ tests as predictors of performance, as diagnostic instruments, as a basis for grouping and labelling, or for accountability purposes is not justifiable. In many individual cases IQ testing is harmful, especially for working-class children. It has been used to strengthen the dominance of middle-class, Pākehā children in the education system. Children who do not do well on IQ tests are assumed to have immutable defects. Such use of tests is legitimised by the supposed scientific basis of IQ. This chapter challenges the view that IQ tests have practical value, and suggests that informal classroom-based assessment is a much more valid approach, embedded in the curriculum and activities of the classroom, emphasising change over time rather than comparison between individuals, and focused on trying to improve learning. Formative assessment focuses on improving children’s learning. It provides feedback to actively involved students and modifies teaching to enhance learning, and encourages them to develop self-assessment skills. There is evidence to show that schools that use formative assessment can bring about extensive and substantive learning gains, especially for low-achieving students. A successful formative assessment procedure using narrative, Learning Stories, is used extensively in New Zealand early childhood centres (and an increasing number of schools) to help teachers implement curriculum goals related to learning dispositions and key competencies. Learning Stories position children as agents, support their learning identities, provide them with a repertoire of adaptive expertise, and connect centres and schools to families and communities. Assessment is commonly used to establish the accountability of schools and

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teachers for children’s learning through high-stakes regimes of national testing. New Zealand has fortunately avoided high-stakes approaches, and instead uses the National Education Monitoring Project to assess the performance of a representative sample of Year 4 and 8 students regularly. This approach avoids the deadening effect of high-stakes testing, as implemented in the United States, parts of the United Kingdom and Australia. The negative consequences include the narrowing of the curriculum; undue pressure on teachers, schools and students; and unfairness in failing to take account the influence of family income, social class or culture. The introduction of National Standards in 2010 purports to be designed to improve the achievement of ‘the tail’ or underachieving students, but since it is a normative procedure where students are assessed in comparison to an average, it is actually an accountability regime and unlikely to improve children’s learning.

Part IV Diverse Childhoods

10

Making Sense of Gender

Talking about gender for most people is the equivalent of fish talking about water. Gender is so much the routine ground of everyday activities that questioning its taken-for-granted assumptions and presuppositions is like questioning whether the sun will come up ... . Most people find it hard to believe that gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life and is the texture and order of that social life. (Lorber, 1994, p. 13, cited by Stainton Rogers, 2003, p. 198)

Childhood, according to childhood studies theory, is characterised by diversity and there is no one universal experience of being a child. Gender is a key element of social and cultural existence and has a profound effect on childhood experiences (James & James, 2012). The chapter examines five theoretical views about how children come to make sense of and enact gender. Gendered identities are shaped from birth by expectations and constructions of appropriate behaviour for boys and girls, within discourses and interactions with social partners. Gender identity, however, is not fixed and children play an active role in constructing their gender identities. The chapter shows how contemporary childhood is characterised by fewer and fewer differences between the sexes, and suggests how teachers, parents and children can challenge and resist gender essentialism. Boys and girls learn to behave in ways that are considered appropriate for their gender through social interactions and dialogue with other people, especially their families and friends, but also through the laws, media, customs and traditions of their particular culture and country. The term ‘gender’ is used rather than ‘sex’ because sex refers to biological differences between male and female, whereas gender refers to society’s construction of what is masculine and feminine (Lloyd, 1989). There is a variety of different and sometimes conflicting explanations of how and why boys and girls acquire their gender roles and identity. I will discuss some of these theories, all of which have something to offer, leading up to what

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for me are the most convincing theoretical frameworks – sociocultural and poststructuralist theories. Recent research from childhood studies is also important to this chapter, because it foregrounds children’s agency, and provides insights into how children perceive gender roles, and the everyday experiences that frame their perceptions. Individual gender-role identity is influenced by many factors in private and public life, as well as by biology. It is beyond the scope of this book to examine the many feminist theories explaining women’s oppression in our society. I do not, however, accept the status quo. Article 2 of the UNCRC asserts the rights of children not to be discriminated against on the grounds of sex (or race, language, disability or religion). Working with children therefore carries an obligation not to discriminate against them on the grounds of gender, and to ensure that children’s rights are implemented regardless of gender. Children do not just passively absorb gender like sponges, but construct and reconstruct their understanding of gender through the negotiation of meaning within discourses (McNaughton, 2000; Stainton Rogers, 2003). The health of individuals and the health of society are adversely affected by gender essentialism, restricting individuals to limited roles, exclusion and unequal power relations between men and women. Genderessentialist beliefs and actions are dysfunctional for both males and females and limit all aspects of their development. By understanding and challenging the processes through which we acquire our gender understandings, there is some possibility of addressing inequalities.

Social-learning theory

Some of the learning principles described in chapter 2 can be used to explain how children acquire gender roles. Both behavioural and social-cognitive theories suggest that sex-typed behaviour is learned, like any other behaviour, through a combination of reward, punishment and observation of models. Children are constantly bombarded with highly salient information from models following traditional gender-role divisions. Such models range from their own mothers and fathers, through siblings, teachers, peers, television and book characters, to prime ministers. Since one of the factors that makes models likely to be imitated is the extent of their similarity to the observer, models of the same gender are likely to be quite strong for children. Symbolic models (book, television or film models) are as powerful as reallife models and often exaggerate gender-role stereotypes beyond what happens in real life. Gender-role stereotypes are generalised and oversimplified concepts about desirable or typical behaviour and attitudes for males and females. Models who experience positive consequences are more powerful and are used a great deal in advertising. If a model is punished for counter-stereotypical behaviours,

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then the observer will be less likely to transgress the stereotype. The girl who does not use the right toothpaste, shampoo or deodorant to become a suitable sex object may be rejected by her friends. Learning through reinforcement usually occurs without any particular planning. For example, when a girl goes to school wearing a pretty dress and the teacher comments on how attractive the child looks, the chances are that the child will be more likely to wear a pretty dress again. Behaviour can also be strengthened by the removal of an aversive consequence or negative reinforcement. A boy may increase his more masculine play, such as playing rugby or climbing trees, to avoid the nagging of his father when he engages in more passive pursuits. Punishment is another way in which behaviour may be affected by consequences. A girl may be rebuked because she has played rugby with the boys and got dirty. She will be less likely to play rugby and get dirty in the future. A boy may be teased at school by his peers for playing in the family corner, thereby decreasing the chance that he will play there in the future. Various meanings and images become associated with masculinity and femininity through classical conditioning. When two stimuli become associated in a highly predictable relationship then both can come to evoke the same emotional response even when one is originally neutral. Thus, the image of a woman comes to be linked to qualities such as nurturance, warmth, gracefulness, dependency, passivity and motherliness; and the image of a man with strength, power, activity, independence, creativity and a multitude of work roles. From an early age ‘appropriate’ gender-role behaviours are encouraged through reinforcement and modelling, while ‘inappropriate’ gender-role behaviours are discouraged through punishment and extinction. Although most of the reinforcement for traditional gender roles tends to be of a social nature, such as praise, attention or recognition, it is by no means unknown for parents to use more tangible reinforcers. Social-learning theory has been criticised because it implies that people are merely a reflection of environmental forces and have no unique contribution to shaping their own interactions within the environment. In explaining gender-role development, little weight is given to thinking, interpretation and understanding, though this is more true of behavioural theory than observational learning theory (Bandura & Walters, 1963). Psychologist Carol Jacklin (1989) points out that there are gaps in the explanatory power of social-learning theory, reflected, for example, in children’s selective response to environmental events. Children model the behaviour of same-sex adults but not when they are doing something different from other adults. Children play an active role in selecting the reinforcing contingencies to which they respond (Fagot, 1985a). Researcher Glenda MacNaughton (2000) is critical of the idea that children soak up social

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justice and equity messages from their physical and social environments as ‘the sponge model of identity formation’ (2000, p. 19). Instead she argues that children have a much more active role in selectively constructing meanings from the environment. Childhood studies theorists are also critical of socialisation theories representing children as empty vessels without agency who cannot resist the transmission of adult messages (Mayall, 2002; K. Wells, 2009).

Cognitive-development theory

Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg focused on cognitive aspects of children’s gender-role socialisation, though he accepted both biological-genetic factors and cultural environmental influences (Kohlberg & Ullman, 1974). According to Kohlberg, children’s categorisation of themselves according to gender is important in organising gender-role behaviour. Children organise their learning and expectations around their conceptions of themselves as boys and girls. They actively structure and restructure their environment around their sexual selfcategorisation. Sexual self-categorisation means the feeling of ‘I am a boy’ or ‘I am a girl’. Once this cognitive understanding is developed, children’s behaviour is influenced by their classification of behaviour as masculine or feminine. Children come to positively evaluate behaviour thought to be characteristic of their own gender. There are, according to Kohlberg, culturally universal developmental shifts in gender understanding which are determined by the stage of cognitive development the child has achieved. Differences in behaviour according to gender appear very early in infancy, but children’s first step in gender-role understanding is the acquisition of gender labelling – where they can identify their own and another person’s gender. Most two-year-olds and virtually all three-year-olds have an understanding of gender labelling (Gelman, Taylor, & Nguyen, 2004; Weinraub, Clemens, Sockloff et al., 1984). The next step is to become aware of the characteristics that differentiate boys and girls and to acquire those characteristics that fit in with a concept of one’s own gender (gender identity). Even before children can categorise other children, they acquire information about what boys and girls are supposed to look like and do. The ability to correctly label is a milestone on the road from tacit knowledge to conscious awareness (Fagot & Leinbach, 1993). Children between two and four are therefore likely to be learning a lot about gender. There is an important distinction between gender identity, which is a private understanding, and gender role, which is a public expression of this understanding (Fagot, 1985b). Cognitive theorists argue that gender identity is acquired very early and is difficult to change, while gender-role behaviours change as a function of age or context. By the end of the third year most children are aware that there are activities and objects which are more associated with one sex than another.

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For example, they usually know that men and women wear different things and do certain tasks more often (e.g. men drive trucks and women do the washing). Gender stability, or the idea that gender is stable over time, develops around four or five according to Kohlberg (Kohlberg & Ullman, 1974), though other researchers have observed it much earlier, at two or three (Leonard & Archer, 1989). Gender constancy is more complex than gender stability and is acquired between four and seven years. When children understand gender constancy, they know that sex is not changed by superficial transformations such as dress or appearance. Younger children tend to believe that if you change a person’s clothes, hairstyle or even activity, there could be a change in sex. Once gender constancy is achieved, children are more open to wider concepts of gender roles and activities, since these do not threaten their gender identity. A cognitive-developmental perspective views children’s tendency to be gender-stereotyped in the preschool years as part of a stage of incomplete knowledge on the child’s part. Greater flexibility in gender-role behaviour accompanies a growth in understanding of gender concepts. It is argued that preschool children exaggerate gender-role divisions because they are attempting to understand them. Because they do not fully grasp that gender does not change when people do different things or change their appearance, they tend to oversimplify differences. A number of researchers have developed and modified the cognitivedevelopmental explanation for gender differentiation (Maccoby, 1988, 1990; Martin, 1991; Martin & Halverson, 1981). Carol Martin says that gender schemes help individuals to organise information. People use these constantly changing and evolving networks of associations to organise incoming information and to filter out what they will process. Gender schemes are highly salient and are formed from the diverse information that children acquire about gender. Because of their different gender schemes, boys and girls process information in subtly different ways. Children have a wider repertoire of meanings to draw on for their own gender than they do for the opposite gender. Children make a binary distinction between male and female – for them one cannot be more or less male or female, according to psychologist Eleanor Maccoby. Yet she sees the concepts of masculinity and femininity as fuzzy sets because no one attribute is sufficient to define the category (Maccoby, 1988, p. 762). A gender label, says Maccoby, acts as a kind of magnet that attracts new incoming information. Children sort and classify incoming information on the basis of gender. Once stereotypes are formed, they tend to become self-perpetuating and resistant to change, despite contrary information. Children’s ability to label their own gender and that of others is the foundation of a categorical distinction that becomes a powerful organiser of social functioning.

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Cognitive-developmental theory has provoked a great deal of research, much of which confirms the relationship between children’s gender knowledge and their behaviour. Jacklin (1989), though, argues that such gender knowledge is now thought to appear well before stage theory would predict it to do so. Other criticisms of the theory are that many gender differences in behaviour appear well before gender knowledge, so differences must be influenced by other variables besides gender schema. Researcher Beverly Fagot (1985a) argues that infant gender-role differences in behaviour are automatic – behaviour at that stage is overlearned so that children do not think about what they are doing. She believes that there is a stronger relationship between cognitive variables and behaviour after the age of a year because children then actively attempt to match behaviour to gender categories. More fundamental criticisms (Morss, 1991; McNaughton, 2000) stem from the rejection of fixed-stage and developmental explanations of human behaviour in favour of a much stronger influence of cultural context and the social constitution of gender through discourse. Cognitive-developmental theory seems to posit gender categorisation and gender stereotyping as an inevitable consequence of development, and this, based essentially on biological determinism, is a position most feminists find unacceptable.

Psychoanalytical theory

Psychoanalytical interpretations of gender differentiation have had a major influence on Western thinking about gender. Although their popularity declined in the 1970s, such interpretations re-emerged strongly in the 1980s and 1990s and were adapted and modified by several different strands of feminist thought (Chodorow, 1978; Gilligan, 1982; J. Mitchell, 1974). Freud had a major influence on thinking in developmental psychology (Archer & Lloyd, 1985). Freud’s theory was basically biological, and his major interest was in emotion rather than cognition. He drew attention to the importance of early childhood experiences for development later in life, arguing that everyday socialising experiences, such as weaning and toilet training, were highly significant events. Oral, anal, aggressive and sexual drives within the individual are at war with the civilised veneer of the socialised individual, and sexual drives and feelings are important from an early age. Children renounce the aggressive and sexual feelings they have towards their parent, which influences personality, character and gender-role identity. According to Freud, both boys and girls are thought to have sexual feelings towards their mother. For boys, these early sexual feelings culminate, at around three or four years of age, in a conflict between their love for their mother and their jealousy of and competition with their father. Conflict with the father

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evokes fear of castration in boys, resulting in renunciation of love for mothers and identification with fathers. This, known as the resolution of the Oedipus conflict, is thought to take place at about five years of age. Identification with the father enables the superego (or conscience) to emerge, since parental standards and moral values become incorporated in the identity of boys. In the process of resolving their Oedipal conflict, boys acquire a clear male gender identity. Mothers are also the first love-object for girls, Freud suggests. Anger towards the mother is a result of jealousy and of girls blaming their mothers for their lack of a penis. Girls turn away from their mothers, but identify with them and adopt their feminine gender identity. Freud regarded the resolution of the Oedipal conflict as much harder for women, who never totally achieve the boys’ degree of ego and superego strength. Freud believed that women achieve only ambiguous gender differentiation and a less strongly structured moral rule system. They never become as separate and autonomous as boys, who are able to deal with their hostility to their mother by directing it at their fathers. Psychoanalytical feminists such as Nancy Chodorow (1978) replaced Freud’s negative description of female psychology with a positive account. Chodorow rejected the idea that women’s mothering is innate, and that early infant mother– child fusion leads in different directions for boys and girls. Fusion is more pronounced in girls because mothers propel boys towards separation, difference and individuation earlier. Boys have an early sense of separateness in personal relations, whereas girls are more empathetic. Chodorow said that the feminine personality is defined more in relation and connection to other people than the male, because women are largely responsible for early childcare. Women do not have weaker egos, according to Chodorow, but come to experience themselves more through attachment to other people. Separating from their mothers has advantages for boys, because they realise that power and prestige follow from identification with men. Chodorow advocated shared parenting so that the intensity of mother–child relationships would be more diffuse and boys would not grow up thinking nurturance was unmasculine. Chodorow argued that genderrole stereotyping (and women’s oppression) was due to women’s exclusive responsibility for mothering. Carol Gilligan (1982) also turned psychoanalytical theory around to develop a positive view of women’s differences from men. She believed that the individuation of women did not centre on separation and independence but on making and maintaining connections to others. Women therefore develop a different pattern of moral understanding, based on an ethic of caring and affiliation rather than one of impartial justice. Psychoanalytical theory has been criticised from many perspectives. The main problem, from a feminist point of view, is that ‘normal’ gender-role differentiation

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results in drastically different and stereotyped roles for men and women, a view which has long been rejected, except by conservatives. Freud’s transparent male egocentricity, his cultural bias towards the European nuclear family, his assertions unsupported by research evidence, and his failure to understand children’s perspectives have all been attacked, yet the theory, or modifications of it, has continued to be influential in shaping our thinking about gender.

Sociocultural interpretations We are told that the social gap between the sexes is narrowing, but I can only report that having, in the second half of the twentieth century, experienced life in both roles (male and female), there seems to me no aspect of existence, no moment of the day, no contact, no arrangement, no response, which is not different for men and women. The very tone of voice in which I was addressed, the very posture of the person next in line, the very feel in the air when I entered a room or sat at a restaurant table, constantly emphasized my change in status. (Jan Morris, cited by Riger, 1997, p. 403)

Social representations are the rules or codes a society constructs to control values, ideas and practices that help individuals to orient themselves to their social worlds, and give them codes for classifying aspects of their experiences and their contexts. Gender relations and gender knowledge are part of such social representations. Jan Morris experienced living as a man and a woman, and her explanation illustrates how social representations of gender are inherent in human communication and interaction. Social representations are almost tangible entities. They circulate, intersect and crystallize continuously, through a word, a gesture, or a meeting in our daily world. They impregnate most of our established social relations, the objects we produce or consume, and the communications we exchange. (Moscovici, 1976, p. 40, cited by Moscovici & Duveen, 2001, p. 3)

Knowledge of social representations is not explicitly taught but it is acquired by almost everyone just by virtue of living and interacting in a community. Infants gain access to social representations of gender through their interactions with others, especially parents, but also siblings, other adults and children. Children internalise codes about gender, and come to use them to assert and express their own gender identities. The hierarchical nature of gender relations in education, politics or economics is structured by the power and prestige that marks masculinity (Lloyd & Duveen, 1990). Social interactions based on essentialist hierarchical structures influence interactions between children and adults from an early age. Children’s meanings are negotiated in interaction and communication

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with others. These meanings then become internalised. When adults interact differently with boys and girls, they influence how children come to construct their gender understanding. Children do not, however, passively absorb adult understandings, since they construct their own gender understanding, in the process of constructing and reconstructing meaning. Gender differentiation first occurs at the level of communication and play, but then becomes internalised as reflective understanding. Adults provide scaffolding for the emerging understanding of social representations of gender. Conversations between mothers and their infants express essentialised gender concepts implicitly through reference to categories of gender, gender-labelling, and frequent contrasts between males and females (Gelman et al., 2004). Parents in their everyday talk with children are therefore unintentionally helping children to construct gender essentialist constructs, as a result of their joint construction of meaning with children. Stainton Rogers (2003) points out that in a genderless world, gender would not exist and would not influence how people act or are treated. Children would not think of themselves or act like boys and girls, but as children! As discussed in chapter 2, Bourdieu introduced the concept of ‘habitus’ – ‘systems of durable, transposable dispositions’ (1990, p. 53) which direct actions, thinking and language – to explain how attitudes and behaviour are shaped by their wider environments (Connelly, 2006). Habitus is a particularly useful and relevant way of explaining gender identity. For Bourdieu, the habitus represents all of those ways that each person has developed of approaching, thinking about and acting upon their social world. They are ways of thinking and behaving that are the product of their lived experience and that have been accumulated over time to become now largely taken-for-granted and instinctive aspects of their lives. (Connelly, 2006, p. 143)

Paul Connelly (2006) talks about habitus in relation to how young boys come to perform taken-for-granted ways of being male and develop their masculine identities. Habitus is not totally located in the minds of individuals, but it is also located in and mediated by a vast array of objects, events and activities – such as clothing, or playing football. He draws on the work of sociocultural theorist Lave to show how habitus is associated with ‘distributed cognition’. ‘“Cognition” observed in everyday practice is distributed – stretched over, not divided among – mind, body, activity and culturally organized settings (which include other actors)’ (Lave, 1988, p. 1, cited by Connelly, 2006, p. 144). Habitus is involved in the embodiment of gender and played out in children’s actions, attitudes and bodily gestures. It is continually restructured through encounters with the outside world. When habitus becomes engaged with

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something unfamiliar, however, transformation can occur (Reay, 2010). It is therefore possible and necessary to challenge the taken-for-granted ways that boys and girls understand and perform gender in their everyday lives. Change can take place through reflection and dialogue about gender, and through modifying routines, practices and artefacts (for example, dolls, football, makeup or clothing) relating to gender, in order to disrupt gender essentialism.

Post-structuralism

Post-structuralist theory is informed by social constructionism and the idea of discursive positioning. It suggests that gender identity is not stable and fixed into indisputable opposites, but fluid and positioned according to how people participate in different discourses (Davies, 1989, 1997; McNaughton, 2000; Stainton Rogers, 2003). Discourse refers to a set of interconnected ideas that work together to include a particular ideology or view of the world. Dominant discourses structure our society and how we think, feel and act. They tend to incorporate unchallengeable ‘truths’, and perpetuate existing power relations (Blaise, 2005). Our ideas of gender are discursively constructed within dialogues that usually contain unquestioned assumptions of opposition and difference. If we want to read the ways in which the culture inscribes itself on the inner and outer body, and if we want to read against the grain, that is, discover other than dominant truths embedded in our experience and in the possibilities the culture holds open to us, we must look again, and more closely, at how discourse works to shape us as beings within the two-sex model. (Davies, 1997, p. 11)

Both Bronwyn Davies and Glenda MacNaughton (2000) argue that the liberal position of reducing the exclusion of females or increasing the number of female role models in powerful positions is insufficient to bring about equity. Gender inequality, they say, is located in early childhood and school programmes and in the fine detail of the discourses of teaching. Minor and individual changes in individual power relations do not alter the inequity. The child, in Davies’s model, is an active agent recognising for herself or himself the way the social world is organised. Children make sense of who they are in relation to the rest of the gendered world, and the concept of the duality of gender maintains a central defining role in their identity. Cynthia Epstein (1997) also decries the use of dichotomised classification by gender as a tool in the creation of social order and control. She argues that essentialism, which focuses on basic differences which are believed to differentiate groups (even when advocated by feminists like Gilligan), serves to justify unequal treatment and even aggressive and subordinating behaviour. Gender boundaries, she believes, are reinforced by the unnoticed habits and language of everyday life

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which are not easily perceptible. Her view, like Davies’s, emphasises that concepts of male and female comprise multiple realities for the individual and society. She believes that multiple interpretations of any category occur and that these vary according to the circumstances of the interaction. For example, women can act in a bawdy way in all-female groups without being censured. There are also different and contradictory components within the self. Bronwyn Davies (1997) gives an example of a girl who loved to play with and dress similarly to dominant macho boys. Yet when she was observed being aggressive to other children (throwing sand in their faces) she explained that she had been cleaning up some sawdust left by the carpenters! As Davies explains, she re-positioned herself into ‘an acceptable storyline for her gender’ (Davies, 1997, p. 12). A post-modern view removes individuals from being at the mercy of overpowering, controlling social structures and sees class and gender as ‘shifting sets of possibilities, of subject positionings made available in the texts, the narrative structures, the discursive practices in which each person participates’ (B. Davies, 1989, p. 8). Change is still not easy, but it is possible because styles of discourse and textual forms can be altered. Davies is optimistic about the power of critically and socially literate classrooms to open up new possibilities for reshaping ‘a complex, rich, fluid, social world’ (Davies, 1997, p. 29). Such classrooms encourage the participants to shift playfully between and among discourses through critiquing text and context, allowing children to develop an understanding of how language is formed and how it affects them. Both sociocultural and post-structuralist theories help to explain early gender differentiation within the context of the actions and interactions of infants in family and preschool settings. It is through their early joint activities with others that children construct meanings and understandings about gender as well as gender identity. Neither cognitive-developmental nor social-learning theory adequately explains both gender-differentiated behaviour and gender knowledge in such a coherent way. Sociocultural theory constructs a bridge between early action-based knowledge and later symbolic understanding of gender. A poststructuralist position goes well beyond the social-representational view in suggesting that, to address inequalities, it is necessary to challenge and change the discursive practices that create and maintain inequitable social structures, as well as the way in which these dualities are expressed in individual gender identity. Feminist post-structuralism focuses on helping girls and women to become aware of oppression and to transform their worlds, and acknowledges that the social and political construction of gender needs to be uncovered (Blaise, 2005). Strong intervention is necessary to disturb and disrupt dominant discourses.

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Sex differences

Whether or not there are sex differences in the skills and abilities of boys and girls is a source for ongoing debate, argument and research. This section looks at research from the developed world as it is clear that in the majority world many girls do not even get to school, so of course there are major differences in their educational achievements. Although on a global level there has been improvement in reaching the goal of gender parity in primary and secondary enrolments, by 2005 only 49 out of 145 countries had achieved this goal (Subrahmanian, 2007). Clearly many girls in the world are missing out on the opportunity to participate in education and improve their chances in life. There is strong evidence, however, that in the Western world sex differences in achievement are few and diminishing (Hyde & Plant, 1995; Hyde & Lindberg, 2005; James, 1997). Differences are always based on averages without taking into account the distributions or within-group variation. Women are not all the same, and nor are men, and even if there are significant differences between groups of men and women, the differences may mean little in practical terms. For example, if a study shows men perform better on average than women in spatial tasks, there will be many individual women who do better than individual men on the same task. In other words there will be a large overlap between the performance of the sexes. Sex differences in favour of men on spatial and mathematical ability and in favour of women for verbal ability used to be reported (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974), but more recent research (Hyde, 2005; Hyde & Lindberg, 2007) reports that these differences are no longer apparent. Indeed, the gender differences hypothesis has been replaced by a gender similarities hypothesis (Hyde, 2005), suggesting that males and females are similar on most psychological variables. Janet Hyde’s survey of meta-analytical studies suggests that any differences between males and females are very small and have effect sizes1 of near zero (less than .1) or are low (.1 to .35). The only area where she found a moderate effect size was for males outscoring females in spatial perception (.44) and mental rotation (.56). New Zealand figures on educational achievement provide an interesting illustration of changes in the relative status of boys and girls over time. In the 1980s, New Zealand emphasised female underachievement, especially in mathematics and science, and the need for teachers to give girls better educational opportunities (*),.ő ) ő ."ő )3&ő )''#--#)(ő )(ő )#&ő )&#3, 1988). Since the 1990s the research findings have changed to show much more favourable outcomes for girls. The Christchurch longitudinal study (Fergusson & Horwood, 1997) has followed the educational achievements of a cohort of 1,265 Christchurch children from the 1

This measures the size of differences between the means for different groups – an effect size of 1 is the equivalent of 1 standard deviation.

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point of school entry until 18. The findings showed pervasive gender differences in school achievement. Boys had lower scores than girls on all standardised tests and performed less well in reading, written expression, mathematics, spelling, School Certificate results and school leaving qualifications, and had higher rates of reading delay. There were no differences in the scores of boys and girls in terms of IQ scores, however. Boys were also more likely to be disruptive, inattentive and distractible in the classroom. When classroom behaviour measures were entered into a regression equation, achievement differences between boys and girls disappeared, suggesting that boys’ disruptive behaviour may have influenced their poorer achievement. A more recent analysis of data from this cohort (Gibb & Fergusson, 2009) showed differences in the subjects girls and boys chose for School Certificate.2 Girls were more likely to take science, English, foreign languages, history, home economics, music and typing, and boys more likely to choose graphic design and workshop technology. When comparing the achievement of boys and girls, the results showed a pervasive tendency for girls to have higher achievement than boys in almost all subjects (12 out of 14). Only in accounting and foreign languages did boys do better than girls, but the effect sizes showed the differences to be small (–.24 and –.03 respectively for success ratios). The mean grades showed girls doing better than boys on 12 of 15 subjects. It was only in three subjects, however, that there was a significant difference in favour of girls – English, history and music (the latter very small). Although the authors interpret these findings as evidence of boys’ disadvantage, an alternative interpretation is that the differences are slight compared to the overlap. I shall return to the issue of ‘boys’ underachievement’ later. It is also important to remember that these results refer to children growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, and that the comparisons may well have changed more than 30 years later. New Zealand’s NEMP provides a more current picture of gender differences in this country. This project was designed to identify and report on trends and patterns in educational performance in New Zealand, to meet public accountability purposes, and to provide information for policy-makers and curriculum planners. The study provides a snapshot of children’s performance on a variety of tasks at Year 4 (ages eight to nine) and Year 8 (ages 12 to 13). A carefully selected random national sample of 1,440 Year 4 and 1,440 Year 8 children from 120 schools are assessed at regular intervals. Recent NEMP findings show very few differences between boys and girls on mathematics (Crooks, Smith, & Flockton, 2010). Boys performed slightly better 2

School Certificate was an examination offered to high school students in Year 11, which has now been replaced by a different system of assessment (NCEA) in New Zealand.

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than girls on 11 out of 60 maths tasks at Year 4, but not at Year 8. For information skills and inquiry learning (Smith, Crooks, & Allan, 2010), younger and older girls did slightly better than boys, and they reported liking hunting for information and writing it down more than boys. There were no meaningful differences between boys and girls in scores on graphs, tables and maps (Smith, Crooks, Flockton, & White, 2008), or on visual arts. There were slight differences in favour of girls on music (Crooks, Smith, & White, 2009a), and reading (Crooks, Smith, & Flockton, 2008). Girls, however, were moderately better than boys on speaking tasks and writing tasks (Crooks, Flockton, & White, 2007) and were also more positive about writing. In summary, while the NEMP findings show a great deal of similarity in the performance of boys and girls, girls are doing moderately better than boys in writing and very slightly better in reading, speaking, music and visual art. They are more enthusiastic about verbal, arts and music tasks than boys. The only area where boys had a slight advantage was at Year 4 for mathematics but by Year 8 this advantage had disappeared. The NEMP findings do not show large gender differences in achievement, as Fergusson and Horwood (1997) found, but the participants in the NEMP surveys were schooled in a different historical time and had not yet reached secondary school. Major efforts in the last 30 years have tried to settle the question of whether sex differences are large and socially meaningful, but most of the evidence I have looked at suggests that the differences are very small, especially if you compare differences due to socioeconomic status. Showing that sex differences are small and contextually determined does not, however, help bring about equality for women. For example, women still earn a great deal less than men and there are still few women in certain powerful high-status sectors of the workforce. In New Zealand, males earned 14.9 per cent more per hour than females, and 24.3 per cent more in weekly wages in the New Zealand Income survey in 2008 (Gibb, Fergusson, & Horwood, 2009). Women from the Christchurch cohort were earning 38 per cent less than men at 30 years of age, despite the fact that they had significantly higher educational achievement (Gibb et al., 2009). They also worked fewer hours per week, had more dependent children, were more likely to be the primary caregiver and were more likely to have an employed partner. Even after adjusting the data for human capital measures, job characteristics (such as hours per week) and family responsibilities, there was still a wage gap of 11.5 per cent. The study suggests gender discrimination still exists in the labour market, since women with similar characteristics are paid less than men. Labour market practices have some way to go to achieve the same good results as have been achieved in the education system. From a human rights perspective, more equitable work policies are essential if women are to reach their full potential.

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Recently, a discourse of girls’ success being framed as ‘detrimental for boys’ has become prominent in Aotearoa (Gunn, 2012, p. 121). Boys are assumed to be disadvantaged because of their underachievement, their over-representation in truancy and suspension statistics, and the lack of male teachers in early childhood and primary education. Alex Gunn describes the recent emergence of an officially sanctioned discourse that attempts to identify boys’ particular needs and the type of education they require in order to become ‘good men’. This discourse, as Gunn points out, embodies the notion of gender essentialism, that there are certain different and unique characteristics of boys that require special teaching styles and particular kinds of teachers. It is part of a re-masculinisation project (Martino, 2008, cited by Gunn, 2012, p. 128) that constructs female teachers as inadequate for meeting the educational needs of boys, and boys as needing different equipment, pedagogy, resources and teachers. They work to re-inscribe traditional and narrow conceptualisations of what it means to be legitimately male and female. They invoke the gender binary and seek to fix gender in a narrow frame. In such a climate, opportunities for boys, men, girls and women to learn about and express their genders in complex and diverse ways are constrained because the discourses tend to hold them to frameworks that construct them in a particular manner and as naturally at odds with one another. (Gunn, 2012, p. 130)

The discourse of boys’ disadvantage also greatly over-emphasises the very small differences that have been empirically demonstrated in Western countries (including New Zealand) between the performance of boys and girls. This discourse also creates a backlash against the progress of girls in education, and this is inimitable to equity and social justice. It continues to be vital for teachers to reflect and analyse how gender is created and constructed through social interactions and relationships, and to facilitate gender diversity rather than gender essentialism.

Family influences Family life is one of the most important set of relationships within which children learn the significance of gender in all its dimensions from the psychological to the political and economic. (K. Wells, 2009, p. 55)

The first stage of developing an identity, the child’s ‘primary habitus’, comes from the family, ‘a set of beliefs, expectations, attitudes and behavior which have evolved in the course of the family’s history and experience in social class and cultural contexts’ (Brooker, 2006, p. 117). Powerful messages from discursive practices within the family soon make children aware of the socially acceptable behaviours for their gender.

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Differential treatment of children according to gender begins immediately after birth. Pink clothes for girls, ‘isn’t she sweet?’ comments, and greeting cards emphasising feminine cuteness and prettiness contrast with blue clothes, ‘isn’t he strong?’ remarks, and greeting cards emphasising future qualities of leadership and strength. Babies are dressed in different colours, given differently decorated rooms and toys, and different expectations are set down for them (Polnick, Dwyer et al., 2007; Witt, 1997). During infancy there is evidence that girls are more often talked to and looked at (distal stimulation), while boys receive more rocking and handling (Korner, 1973). Several studies suggest that adults interpret the same behaviour differently if they think an infant is a boy or a girl when sex is indeterminate (Condry & Condry, 1976; Condry & Ross, 1985; Frisch, 1977). Negative emotional behaviour is interpreted as anger in boys and as fear in girls. Boys’ play is more likely to be perceived as aggressive and girls’ play is seen as more nurturant. Children assumed to be boys are encouraged towards vigorous action and masculine toys or roles, while girls are talked to more, encouraged to play with feminine toys, and praised for being clever and attractive. Parents tend to respond to girl toddlers with gentle touches or talking, while boys force adults to pay attention through crying, whining or screaming (Fagot, Hagan, Leinbach, & Kronsberg, 1986) resulting in more assertive behaviour from boys when they were two. Adults interpreted boys’ assertive behaviour as aggression and therefore watched it and responded to it more, thus shaping boys towards being more assertive and less communicative. It is clear that parents commonly reinforce and punish gender-typed behaviour differently (Fagot & Leinbach, 1987). Parents also act as powerful models who influence their children’s aspirations and behaviour, though, as we have seen before, children do not just passively absorb the models they are exposed to, or else there would never be any cultural change in gender roles. If fathers participate in childcare and domestic chores this increases flexibility in children’s thinking about gender, although parents’ egalitarian attitudes are a more powerful influence (Baruch & Barnett, 1986; Weisner & Wilson-Mitchell, 1990). Nevertheless, children in egalitarian families still tend to occupy traditional gender roles. However, these children (especially the girls) are ‘multischematic’; that is, they are aware of and practise more than one way to classify information by gender. Parental influence is important but children are not isolated from their wider cultural context. Children can know and understand that tasks are equally suitable for boys and girls but at the same time engage in gender-typed play and choose same-gender friends. Recent research suggests that gender-role essentialism can be subtle and only evident upon careful observation. A United States study found gender to be a salient feature of children’s conversations with their mothers (Gelman et al.,

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2004). Mothers made explicit mention of the gender of people in stories about half of the time people were mentioned. There was, however, very little explicit stereotyping according to gender and mothers often negated gender stereotypes, yet they did not challenge children’s own gender stereotyped statements. They also gave children implicit messages about gender through gender labelling and contrasts (‘Is that a girl or a boy?’), and through generic gender statements (‘Girls aren’t that much into sport’). Gender differentiation and identity construction are clearly shaped by family practices. For example, boys and girls talk rather differently about their relationships with their fathers and mothers, so that girls seek support from mothers and boys from fathers, and fathers have the role of helping children manage their role in the public world (Morrow, 2006). Expectations for boys and girls can, however, be explicit as is shown by Berry Mayall’s (2002) conversations with nine- and ten-year-old children from different cultural backgrounds in the United Kingdom (Box 10.1). Her research shows how culture influences parents’ expectations and demands of their boys and girls. Family expectations for boys and girls are framed by cultural and religious values. Traditional cultures typically expect girls to carry out domestic and household chores of cleaning, cooking and childcare, while boys are given outside tasks and are expected to fulfil rigorous religious responsibilities. Mayall points out how these roles are passed on from generation to generation, although parents may try to change things so that their children have more opportunities than they did. Box 10.1 illustrates the intersection between gender, culture and class in children’s everyday lives, though interestingly expectations for the working-class English girl were not so different from those for the immigrant girls. In an ethnographic study of British reception classes, Liz Brooker (2006) found that Bangladeshi children who had grown up in remote and rural areas of Bangladesh with limited access to education, described their childhoods in highly gendered terms. Most of the children had domestic and agricultural responsibilities. Girls were being prepared for marriage by learning embroidery and other domestic arts, while boys were being prepared for business or travel abroad for work by learning additional languages. The Anglo parents of a group of children of similar socioeconomic status attending the same reception class, however, all expressed the need for both boys and girls to have equal opportunities, even though children’s household tasks were gender stereotyped. Children actively construct their understanding of gender in response to different constraints and norms often according to social class or ethnicity. The examples above show us that the meaning of gender differs in different ethnic and socioeconomic communities. Gender and ethnicity come together in complex ways to cause inequalities, so it is important to view gender in the context of ethnicity and class (Morrow & Connolly, 2006; K. Wells, 2009). ‘Social

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Box 10.1 Gender, families and culture Boys Sajid: They [parents] expect me to be nice, good, clear up, and we have to pray to God every day five times, but we miss one [at school] so we pray four times. My Dad says I have to study a lot, and my Mum says you have to pray when you come back from school and learn. She tells me to learn a whole page by heart and that’s really hard to do ... My Mum says, you have to do it proper and perfect [learning the Koran by heart], you should not get even one mistake. If you do make one mistake, you have to learn it all over again. (pp. 50–51) Simon (an English boy): After school – sometimes I invite a friend round, or I go to a friend’s, or I just go home and read [he details the names and authors of novels he is reading] ... And on Tuesdays I do art class and that’s all I do ... (p. 53). Girls /'(: Yes, since I’ve turned ten, I’ve got a lot more responsibility. I’ve got to learn to do things that my Mum does. You have to learn more things. Sidra: My Mum does the cooking, but I clean the house, put the washing in the machine and learn a lot of stuff for the future. (p. 52) Jan (a working-class English girl): Look after my brother, and sometimes I cook. I’ve only learned to cook potatoes and spaghetti Bolognese and ... clean the stairs and that’s all the jobs I have to do. (p. 54) Mayall, 2002.

differences do not operate in isolation, because social class, age, ethnicity, religion and location intersect to influence children’s childhoods and gender identities’ (Morrow, 2006, p. 93).

Early childhood centre and school experiences

Children are spending increasing times in institutional settings outside the family. Their first encounter with public education is usually early childhood education at three or four years (or even earlier), by which time their patterns of genderrole behaviour are fairly well established. But this does not mean to say that early childhood centre experiences are not influential for children’s construction of gender and their gender identities. The expectations, attitudes and discourses of teachers and peers influence children’s understanding and enactment of gender.

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School children internalise the social interactions in which they participate at school to develop their social constructions of gender. For example, if girls are given a marginal role in the classroom they may perceive their role in society as marginal. Negotiation of meaning in the classroom curriculum takes place between teacher, children and peers. Early childhood centres can, therefore, be expected to have considerable influence on children’s conceptualisation of gender roles, as well as on their gendered activities. Some of the early manifestations of gender differentiation appear in children’s play, during which they show preferences for different activities. Boys prefer energetic active play – construction activities, carpentry, blocks, bikes and trolleys – while girls predominate in the family corner, at the dough table, in painting and music. In Auckland early childhood centres, Brent Mawson (2010) found that boys and girls showed different styles of play. Boys, for example, were more involved in actions than words. They liked activities like digging a trench in the sandpit and filling it with water, but without much talk. Mawson observed two boys constructing a builder’s yard for 40 minutes with little conversation between them. Boys were also more aggressive and likely to engage in hierarchical power struggles for leadership. Girls on the other hand resolved disputes with very little aggression and used verbal exclusion (‘I won’t be your friend’) to establish control. Girls tended to play out domestic themes, acting out family relationships and rituals with a strong focus on food. Boys on the other hand tended to focus on scenarios involving vehicles or construction toys. Boys and girls also excluded each other from particular areas and we will see examples of this later. While there is no doubt that gender differences are a common feature of young children’s play, I am inclined to doubt Mawson’s designation of boys’ play being more non-verbal than girls. In our study (Carr et al., 2010) of children’s episodes of activity in early childhood centres, we saw many examples of boys using complex mutually constructed narratives. For example, one of our fouryear-old participants, Henry, constructed elaborate plots around fire engines (putting out a fire), restaurants (making cakes and pies), being marooned on a fort (escaping danger), finding hidden treasure (using treasure maps) and escaping from crocodiles (in a flood). All of these pretend activities involved Henry, often with one good friend, Peter, engaging in prolonged dialogue over planning and execution of the play themes. Admittedly there were many action adventure themes, but there were also examples of Henry being in family roles (of brother, and in one case Mum) and female role-play (cooking). Box 10.2 shows how children can contest the essentialised gender roles within the discourses of their early childhood centres. Many early childhood centres set out to challenge the overly rigid gender roles that children bring from home. Brooker (2006) found that Bangladeshi, Korean

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Box 10.2 Competing discourses of femininity Evie actively contested her peers’ promoted construction of what it meant to be a girl – she called herself ‘Spiderman’ and ‘Surf-boy’, refused to dress in pink or wear skirts, chose to have Batman face-paint, was one of the few older girls reprimanded for hitting, and was the girl who most frequently resisted teachers. While teachers appeared largely supportive of her efforts to shape her gendered identity, it seemed she struggled to find acceptance among peers of her own age. Maxine and Grace, active in maintaining gender boundaries, named her as a less-favoured playmate. Her mother reported that she frequently talked about James, the acknowledged leader of the boys, and wanted to invite him home, but in the centre she was only occasionally and peripherally accepted into his circle. Her most frequent companion was a boy a year younger than herself. Stephenson, 2011, p. 142.

and English children’s beliefs, preferences or choice of activities and friends were influenced by both early childhood education and home, but she believes that the transition from home to group settings actually reinforces rather than diminishes stereotyping according to gender and ethnicity. Early childhood settings typically espoused beliefs about equality of opportunity for boys and girls and children from different ethnic groups, and aimed to provide a liberating environment with fewer constraints than at home on gender and ethnic roles. Brooker, however, found it hard to identify any impact from teachers’ well-intentioned interventions when observing and talking to Bangladeshi, English and South Korean children. In the South Korean kindergarten deliberate attempts were made to challenge stereotypical views of gender and to encourage children that ‘anyone can do anything if they try’ (p. 112). A male cooking teacher gave demonstrations to the children but one boy said: ‘He looks like a mummy... because of his apron, he is like a woman’ (p. 123). Another girl said, ‘Women usually do housework and men go to work.’ Brooker points out that these gender stereotypes were all expressed verbally, rather than in children’s behaviour, which was similar. She thinks that in a free choice setting where children freely choose their companions and activities, it is easy for self-imposed or peer-group imposed gender boundaries to remain. It is necessary therefore for teachers to engage in proactive intervention and dialogue with children to challenge their assumptions. MacNaughton (2000) is critical of a Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) approach to interpreting children’s gender differences as normative. Within early childhood settings that encourage free play without adult

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intervention, gender segregation, gender exclusion and gender differentiation flourish. A sociocultural and post-structural approach requires a much more interventionist approach, where teachers engage directly with children ‘and help children recognise how gender shapes their and other children’s desires, understandings and actions and to examine the gendered power implications of these’ (MacNaughton, 2000, p. 240). Changing teachers’ attitudes and beliefs is one critical step towards creating more gender equitable environments for young children. It is hard to change practice when you do not believe in what you are being asked to do (Polnick & Dwyer et al., 2007). It is therefore important that early childhood teachers have access to professional development, collaborative action research projects and collective time to discuss how their programmes can encourage gender equity. One way in which schooling undermines the self-confidence of girls and reinforces the visibility and power of boys is through classroom talk and interaction. Many studies show that there is a different distribution of teacher attention to boys and girls in the classroom, with teachers more often interacting with boys, and girls being discouraged from talking by verbal and non-verbal means (Alton-Lee & Nuttall, 1991; Kelly, 1988; LaFrance, 1991; Sadker, Sadker, & Klein, 1991; Spender, 1982). Boys are more disruptive and receive more praise, more reprimands, more frequent teacher feedback, and are more often called by their names. These classroom dynamics teach girls about their inferiority and invisibility, and buttress the power and domination of males. Overall the research indicates that female students in classrooms control less floor time and receive less attention from teachers and other students; male students talk more, are permitted to respond to more questions, and receive more praise than girls. Teachers tend to maintain more eye contact with male students and ask them more content-related questions, accept their questions, and give them more academic help. On average, girls in school have fewer opportunities to practice public speech or engage orally as a way to refine their ideas. Concomitantly, males receive more overt discipline in classrooms and are subject to more overtly negative messages. (Taylor et al., 2007, pp. 289–290)

Peer culture

Gender is a highly salient characteristic of the peer culture for children and its power increases as children move from early childhood centre to school. Peers are an even stronger influence than parents on gender roles, according to Maccoby (1990). Children have a strong preference for playing with others of their own gender and start to play in gender-segregated groups from about two or three years of age (Dunn, 2004; Halliday & McNaughton, 1982; Maccoby,

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Box 10.3 Clothing – artefacts that prescribe femininity: observations in an Australian kindergarten Not only did skirts and dresses prohibit girls from climbing and swinging outside (because their panties would show), it also enforced certain ways that the girls sat on the rug during group times. For example, Sophie was seen frantically waving her hands, attempting to inform Laura, who was sitting across from her in the circle, that her panties were showing. Sophie showed Laura how to delicately pull her skirt over her legs and appropriately sit with her knees together so that no one could see her panties. Clothes enforced a different set of rules for the girls, since the boys did not seem to worry about how their clothing might prevent them from participating in activities or being a certain kind of boy. The other form of femininity that was noticed in the classroom was sophisticated, mature and cool. The cool girl look clashed with the innocent, sweet and compliant girl. Cool girls achieved their look by wearing clothes considered to be the latest in fashion such as bell-bottoms, Spice Girl logos, baseball caps turned backward, and the color black. Cool girls did not seem like they belonged in a kindergarten classroom, painting at an easel or building with blocks. Instead they looked as if they should be out at a nightclub dancing. Blaise, 2005, pp. 107–108.

1988, 1990; Smith & Inder, 1993). This preference for the same gender increases as children get older, with preschool children spending three times as long playing with same-sex peers, and school children spending eleven times as long with same-sex peers (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974). Children use gender as a basis for social grouping without any social pressure from adults to do so. Cross-gender interactions usually occur only when adults explicitly structure the situation to encourage them and this is a cross-culturally universal phenomenon. Playing in same-gender in-groups and out-groups amplifies existing gender role divisions, exaggerates similarities, minimises differences and exacerbates sexist behaviour unless there is intervention. Box 10.3 illustrates how girls were constrained by their clothing and perceptions of cool in an Australian kindergarten. The more time boys spend in stable same-gender groups, the more likely they are to be rougher and more aggressive in their play the following year, while girls become increasingly adept over time at making polite suggestions, and acting reciprocally and collaboratively (Dunn, 2004).

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Children perceive others of the same sex to be more positive, less negative and more likeable and similar than the opposite sex, according to Kimberly Powlishta (1995). Children miss out on opportunities to learn from and cooperate with each other if gender segregation is tolerated, so it is important to break down these barriers. Such different styles of interaction are incompatible, so teachers have an important role as mediators and moderators of male power in early childhood settings, and in challenging children’s gendered boundaries. Children can, however, resist male power, as is shown by Kimberly Scott’s ethnographic research with first-grade African–American girls over lunch-time play (Scott, 2002). Initially the boys and girls ignored each other and relative harmony was maintained, but as the year progressed, the African–American girls became more active and started to interrupt or supplement male-dominated dialogue with their own views, and protected their own female-dominated space where a group of mixed-race girls, ‘the Club’, met and conversed. The girls progressed to playing chase with the boys, showing assertiveness and interdependence – not characteristic of a feminine stereotype. In his study of working-class five- and six-year-old boys, Connelly (2006) showed that it was not just a question of boys bringing particular forms of behaviour (such as aggression and racism) from home to school, but of the school exacerbating these tendencies. Gender was linked to ethnicity so that different forms of behaviour were enacted and responded to differently in black and white children. It was, for example, most often black boys who were publicly disciplined and punished for troublesome behaviour. This strengthened their image with the other children as being hard and physical and increased their status and domination over their peers, which they used to dictate who could and could not play football. Black boys excluded Asian children from their play and constructed them as weak and small. The boys were not passively and uncritically repeating what they had heard elsewhere, but ‘appropriating, using and defending racist ideas and practices’ (Connelly, 2006, p. 149). The masculinity of working-class boys from various cultural backgrounds was not just acquired and internalised, but mediated by particular aspects of their school environment (such as football). The study, according to Connelly, shows young children’s active role in developing and reproducing their gendered identities, and that there are multiple forms of masculinity or femininity reflecting children’s location in particular social and economic contexts. Box 10.3 from Mindy Blaise’s (2005) research shows how femininity is reproduced in an Australian kindergarten, in a similar way to Connelly’s working-class boys’ masculinity. Connolly concludes that ‘it does not have to be this way’ (p. 150), and that the school could disrupt the processes through which black children are constructed as tough and troublesome, for example, by changing their approach

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Box 10.4 Gender exclusion at preschool and school During a boys-only play episode in the sandpit the boys start chanting, ‘No adults, no teenagers, boys are in the sandpit, no babies, no girls allowed in the sandpit, only boys.’ This led to the following exchange. Barry: No girls allowed on here. Clive: No girls allowed in the sandpit. Henry: Only boys, boys, boys, boys, boys, no girls allowed. Barry: Yes and when the girls come I will get the axe. Henry: Yes and we will slice their heads off, yes and then we will slice their feet off. Mawson, 2010, pp. 125–126.

In the lunchroom, when the two second grade tables were filling, a highstatus boy walked by the inside table, which had a scattering of both boys and girls, and said loudly, ‘Oooo, too many girls,’ as he headed for a seat at the far table. The boys at the inside table picked up their trays and moved, and no other boys sat at the inside table, which the pronouncement had effectively made taboo. Thorne, 1993, p. 61.

An African–American girl sits on an arched climbing apparatus, allowing her feet to dangle in front of the boys’ faces below. A white girl classmate moderately yells, ‘No boys!’ The smallest African–American girl echoes this request, screaming over the white girl the same phrase. Janet, another African–American girl, takes off her shoe and begins to swat at the hands of boys who were attempting to grab the railing of the structure. Scott, 2002, p. 403.

to discipline. He says, ‘If we want boys to think differently about themselves and their masculine identities, then we need to provide them with alternative tools to do this with’ (Connelly, 2006, p. 151). Separation of male and female peer cultures has very negative effects in adolescence, especially when sexism is nurtured within male-only groups. Box 10.4 gives examples of both male and female gender exclusion, and Box 10.5 is an example of a male-only culture. Male gender exclusion can nurture a climate of negativity towards women, and encourage sexual harassment and violence

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Box 10.5 Fictional example of male culture in a boys’ boarding school They were all lining up for the showers. Just the juniors at this stage; the seniors were allowed an extra half an hour in bed. Hartnell was the duty senior [a boy], in charge of feeding the juniors in and out of the showers for the regulation three minutes. As each set of six boys put down their towels and scampered into the shower with soap and flannel, Hartnell scored a well-aimed flick on their arses. If any boy was too quick for him he ordered him out of the water and made him present his arse for an extra-special flick. Steph and Devon walked into the showers, slowing for the regulation branding. Dawe, 2012, p. 97.

towards them. In an ethnographic study of two New Zealand secondary schools, Bill Rout (1992) studied boys’ construction of themselves as masculine and their use of power in the subordination of girls and women. Rout characterised the male perspective in these schools as valuing ‘being staunch’. Physical prowess (such as rugby or surfing), bullying, fighting and verbal hassling were part of the dominant masculine ideal. If they were to be respected, boys had to handle being hassled and learn to stick up for their rights. The boys affirmed their masculinity by putdowns of girls or feminine characteristics in boys (e.g. taunts such as, ‘You’re throwing like a girl’). One of the schools was a boys’ boarding school that had only recently admitted girls to the senior classes. This school was particularly oppressive to the girls. Explicitly sexual graffiti portrayed women as ‘sluts’ and posters of scantily clad women in provocative poses were displayed. Boys were aware of everything girls did, even though they pretended to ignore them. They mimicked girls’ talk and laughter, called them by nicknames, commented loudly on their physical attributes stared or growled and sat next to them deliberately to embarrass them. When asked about having girls at the school, one male sixth former commented, ‘It’s like having goldfish in a pool of sharks!’ At the coeducational state school it was easier for boys and girls to form social relationships, but girls were still subject to many of the same sexist behaviours and attitudes. Rout argues that, in these two schools, boys learned that sexual harassment was normal acceptable behaviour. Box 10.5 is an extract from a prize-winning novel for young people showing another description of a gendered culture that was as harmful and violent as the one described in Rout’s research.

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Public versus private space

Many studies of gender segregation have been carried out in preschools and schools, but there is evidence that girls and boys are more likely to engage with each other in more private and localised settings. Outside of school, mixedage interaction is much more common (Dunn, 2004). Children are much more likely to play with opposite gender peers in their homes, neighbourhoods or on street corners, than at school. Children’s play in playgrounds is markedly more aggressive and gender-dominated than on the street or in wild places. Crossgender friendships are often maintained outside school settings in homes and neighbourhoods, but go underground at school. Katy and Jake, two seven-year-olds taking part in our Pennsylvania research who had lived in the same neighbourhood all their lives, and who played together very frequently during the weekends and breaks in school hardly talked at school, even when they were in the playground together. When I asked Katy why, she said simply ‘We’d both get teased. He doesn’t want to be called ‘Sissy’ – and we both hate jokes about kissing and stuff ... .’ (Dunn, 2004, p. 115)

Observations in Amsterdam playgrounds showed that they were gendered spaces, and that their physical and symbolic features emphasised a binary gender divide (Karsten, 2003). Girls were outnumbered by boys in these playgrounds, and comprised about a third of all of the children observed. Ethnicity was also an issue, with some ethnic groups being rarely seen on the playgrounds. Turkish and Moroccan 10- to 12-year-old girls, for example, although living in the neighbourhoods did not go to playgrounds – because their parents did not allow it. Girls avoided playgrounds that were dirty or disorderly, and were more likely to be seen in higher quality playgrounds. Gendering of activities was also apparent, with boys predominantly playing soccer in bigger groups and controlling larger areas of space, and girls playing in smaller groups doing gymnastics, hopscotch or swinging. Girls tended to leave playgrounds as dusk fell, while boys remained. There were examples of children wanting to cross gender boundaries, such as girls wanting to play soccer, and these were sometimes achieved. For example, girls were playing ‘elastics’ looping the elastic over a traffic bollard, and asked a nearby boy to act as another bollard and hold the other end of the elastic. The younger boys also sometimes colluded in fantasy play with the girls. It was generally more attractive, however, for girls to participate in boys’ play than the reverse, and boys who did play with girls were often called ‘sissies’. Lia Karsten found that both boys and girls challenged the traditional gender divide but that girls did it more often. She argues that changing the physical features of playgrounds is important

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to facilitate space for girls and boys, with play equipment taking up as much space as space for ball games and bike riding. A study of 11- to 15-year-old boys and girls at scout camps in Denmark, Portugal, Slovakia and Russia showed how the gender split between private and public spaces was reproduced in a wilderness area (Nielsen, 2004). The girls were in charge of cooking and washing up while the boys lit fires and chopped wood. Boys played rough physical games and girls kept out of their way or watched in admiration. The girls aspired to making new friends from attending scout camp, while the boys wanted an adrenalin rush from being strong, daring, courageous and competitive. Even countries with strong gender equality goals like Portugal and Slovakia showed gender blindness and unequal distribution of privileges in their scout camps. The Danish leaders believed that everyone should be free to do what they wanted to do, yet their camp revealed hidden subordination and open sexualisation of girls. The Portuguese and Russian camps espoused a gender complementarity model, but while this gave girls some power, their space and exercise of power were restricted to the private realm. Two boys are strapping plastic bottles to their bodies – they are going to swim over the river for more water! They get everybody’s attention and admiration and their photos are taken. While this is happening, a girl sits alone at the river washing up the big pots. She has been working continuously for 2 hours now, but this does not seem to evoke any attention or admiration. (Nielsen, 2004, p. 215)

Sexuality

Sexuality is woven into the experiences and discourses of childhood, through relationships, dialogues and interactions in families, schools, communities and public spaces. It is a myth that childhood is an asexual time of latency, because many studies show that from early childhood children are learning to understand sexuality through discourse and asymmetrical power relations (Kehily, 2009). Ethnicity intersects with gender to produce many different ways of becoming sexual. Blaise’s study of Australian preschool children showed girls’ sexualisation through shared interests in makeup and clothes, and a desire to be ‘beautiful’. In Liz Brooker’s (2006) British study, Bangladeshi girls were being prepared for marriage, not only through being taught cooking and embroidery, but also by being taught to be submissive and nurturant. First-grade American (predominantly African–American) girls were already developing relationships with boys in the classroom or on bus rides to and from school, even though the supervising adult believed that they had no interest in boys, in a study by Kimberley Scott (2002). ‘Boyfriends’ were a frequent subject

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of conversation, and girls went out of their way to attract the attention of boys, and boys did the same towards girls. The adults in these settings thought that the African–American girls were ‘overly mature’ and that it was inappropriate for them to be talking so much about sex. The findings of the Scott study fit well with Mary Jane Kehily’s argument that the official discourse of school that children are innocent and in need of protection, contrasts with informal peer and teacher– child discourses reflecting ‘an active and knowing sexuality’ (Kehily, 2009, p.226). The ‘hidden curriculum’ can also be seen in terms of the regulation of sexgender categories. Within the context of the school much informal learning takes place concerning issues of gender and sexuality; the homophobia of young men, the sexual reputations of young women, the pervasive presence of heterosexuality as an ‘ideal’ and a practice mark out the terrain for the production of gendered and sexualised identities. (Kehily, 2009, p. 225)

Schools are a key arena for the production and regulation of sexual discourses. Such discourses are revealed in an ethnographic study of ten- and 11-year-old United Kingdom children in their final year of primary school (Renold, 2002). Children informed the researcher of numerous incidents of heterosexual harassment. Girls were verbally harassed by being called names like ‘bitch’, ‘slag’, ‘tart’ and ‘slut’ to unsettle and intimidate them, and also physically harassed by being punched in the breasts, having their bras pulled or their skirts flipped up. The girls did not report these instances of bullying to their teachers as they feared confrontation, conflict and embarrassment (‘They’d just laugh’, p. 421). The researcher interpreted the harassment as not just about sexuality, but about violence and power. Although this was less common than boy/girl harassment, some children who talked to researcher Emma Renold described instances of dominant girls sexually intimidating subordinate boys, and ‘girlfriends’ being physically violent towards their ‘boyfriends’. Although the dominant girls’ behaviour challenged the stereotype of girls as passive sexual beings, it simultaneously shamed alternative masculinities and reinforced gendered power dynamics. The study also revealed many homophobic practices where boys who chose to participate in fantasy games and different music, rather than hegemonic masculine discourses like football, fighting and girlfriends, were labelled as ‘gay’. Girls who did not cultivate their femininity were also positioned as Other. Bullying took the form of verbal abuse, exclusion, ridicule and labelling as physically unattractive, and this had been experienced by a third of the children in the study. This study attempts to: ... break the silence regarding young children’s sexual cultures and ‘presumed innocence’ by exploring the primary school as a key site for the production

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of sexual identities and how hegemonic masculinities and femininities involve the ‘heterosexual presumption’ ... [She has] explored how homophobia, heterosexism and heterosexual harassment provide ways of securing gender dichotomies, creating and maintaining dominant masculinities and passive subordinate femininities, and policing heterosexual hierarchies. (Renold, 2002, p. 429)

Despite the prevalence of same-sex attraction through history, and homosexuality now being part of the public domain that makes it ‘tellable’, it is not surprising in the light of the above research that childhood is often an unhappy time for gay youth (Kehily, 2009). Their experience of being Other and not fitting in is not usually able to be shared until they find a community of gay people. Teaching about sexuality through sex education focused on the mechanics of sex is clearly not enough to help children understand the multiple ways of being sexual, or about injustice and discrimination on the grounds of gender or sexuality. Renold (2002) suggests that sexuality should be addressed as an equal opportunities issue, to help children understand sexuality as a process of identity construction. I would add that if heterosexism and homophobia in schools are not challenged, schools are failing in their responsibility to recognise children’s rights as expressed in UNCRC not to be discriminated against (Article 2), and protected from all forms of mental and physical violence (Article 19).

Combating gender essentialism

There seem to be implacable forces shaping gender essentialism and imposing major restraints on children and young people’s choices and opportunities in life, according to gender. It would seem to be an uphill battle to interrupt these forces, yet change is possible. Boys and girls do not share the same reality, but they can be positioned in such a way that they can become aware of many different ways of being a boy or girl. The role of the teacher is tremendously influential in helping children envision multiple possibilities for masculinity and femininity. Bronwyn  Davies (1997) showed how one male teacher helped open other possibilities for masculinity by celebrating a wide range of performances that were masculine. While accepting some forms of dominant masculinity, he was sensitive and emotional, and invited students to connect with what they were learning through their own emotions, and to share his fascination for and connectedness to the physical environment. One of the most important ways that adults (teachers and parents) can break down gender barriers is to engage with children in dialogue about multiple ways to be boys and girls, and to set up opportunities in the physical and social environment for all children to have access to similar experiences. For example,

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adults can mediate in children’s play to ensure that children have access to all play areas, ensuring that girls can access the block play or have the opportunity to play soccer, and that boys can play in the family corner and enjoy books and quiet activities. Deliberate structuring of situations to encourage cross-gender interactions can teach children fairness and mutual respect, add to their skills and competencies, and prevent the escalation of gender stereotypes in samegender groups. One of the most insidious things about same-gender groupings is the exclusion of the opposite sex from participation in activities. This must be confronted directly by teachers through explaining the right of all children to access different areas, establishing equal access rules and challenging children’s exclusionary tactics. Biologically based beliefs that boys and girls have different learning styles and that these must be catered for are founded in gender essentialist interpretations and should be challenged by teachers and parents. There are actually minimal gender differences in achievement and there is a huge overlap between the performance and achievements of boys and girls, so there is no need for rigid gender categorisation or catering for ‘boys’ disadvantage’. Most importantly, it is within discourse that the hearts and minds of children and young people can be changed to encompass a more gender-inclusive view of the world. MacNaughton suggests that teachers should invite dialogue with children about gender and focus on some of the following strategies: ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ ƀLJ

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One way to educate children about gender equality is through teaching them about human rights and the meaning and implications of the UNCRC. A women’s non-government outreach centre in Bolivia carried out an interesting intervention project with adolescent boys to promote gender equality through human rights education (Gervais, 2012). Boys attended a weekly workshop for three hours (45

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workshops) to learn about human rights. The workshops involved lectures, guest speakers, videos, photo essays, debates, leadership games, personal reflections, case studies, socio-dramas and creative arts. The assumption underlying the project was that children are citizens who are competent rights-bearers, decisionmakers and social actors. The project helped boys to see things differently in relation to gender, and sensitised them to the rights of others. For example, one boy said at the end of the course: I had a different vision about women’s rights but with my participation in the workshops, I have come to understand that all I had thought before was wrong because I thought that women did not have the same rights as men but now I know that it is not that way and that we all have the same rights (aged 17). (Gervais, 2012, p. 362)

This intensive education project demonstrated that if young people are given engaging opportunities to think about fundamental issues of human rights, they can be powerful agents of change. The young men built solidarity with others in the workshops and were supported to position themselves as agents of social change to pursue human rights, and came to see their masculinity in a different light. There is no reason that such opportunities cannot be built into mainstream education, if teachers themselves have a commitment to human rights and are prepared to directly confront issues of injustice and inequality in society.

Summary

This chapter looked at five main theoretical views about how children come to make sense of gender and develop gender roles and gender identity. The sociallearning view is that children are reinforced for ‘appropriate’ gender roles as well as being continually exposed to and learning from gender-stereotyped models. The cognitive-developmental view is that children develop sexual selfcategorisations (‘I am a girl’ or ‘I am a boy’) which they use to organise and structure their experience. Psychoanalytical theory says that gender differentiation comes about through children’s resolution and rejection of the sexual feelings they have for their mothers and identification with their same-sex parent. Sociocultural interpretations suggest that children gain social representations through joint action and communication with others, but that they play an active role in constructing their understandings. Habitus is the taken-for-granted way that children perform gender, which is structured and re-structured through everyday encounters. Post-structuralism suggests that gender identity is not fixed but fluid and positioned according to the discourses that children participate in, but that dominant discourses can be disrupted by discursive positioning. Gender differences in skills and abilities appear to be disappearing and

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changing, yet beliefs about differences have major consequences for development. Parents react differently to male and female children from birth and interpret children’s behaviour differently, depending on their sex. Boys are encouraged towards activity and exploration, girls towards dependence and interpersonal relationships. Early childhood centres, schools and the peer culture tend to amplify and reinforce existing differences between males and females. Yet there is research to show that change in gender attitudes and knowledge can take place through the discourses and affordances of homes and classrooms. Teachers can address the area of gender in the organisation of the classroom by attending to the dynamics of interactions with children, using gender-inclusive resources and curriculum, and through overt discussion of the inequalities that result from gender essentialism.

11

Inclusion of Children with Disabilities

Disability cannot solely be described as a health problem residing in the individual, nor is it solely the result of oppressive practices, and neither can it be solely reduced to discourse (Shakespeare, 2006). Rather disability arises from the complex interaction between the person with an impairment and the complete physical, human-built, attitudinal and social environment (Birkenbach and others, 1999). (Watson, 2012, p. 198)

Disability is a major social justice issue because of the pervasive marginalisation of disabled children, excluding them from the opportunities that other children have within their social and cultural contexts. The chapter looks at different theoretical perspectives on disability, and the barriers (both social and impairment-related) that limit the rights and opportunities of disabled children. Disabled children’s competency and agency have often been ignored, so the chapter highlights their voices (and those of their families) to argue for inclusive educational and social policies. Disability is only one part of a disabled child’s identity, and as Berni Kelly (2005) explains, they are children first. All of the other chapters in this book are therefore just as relevant to disabled children as to all children. Disabled children have been viewed predominantly as the passive and vulnerable victims of their impairment, while their agency and voice have been invisible and unrecognised. I will draw on research showing that disabled children, like all children, are active agents interpreting their everyday lives and negotiating their way through barriers and difficulties, with the help (or otherwise) of adults and peers. This chapter discusses how disabled children experience their lives within the context of the discourses, social interactions and material circumstances that surround them. In doing so, it asks what can be done to facilitate all children’s inclusion in a society and education system that respects, values and caters for diversity and difference from the outset. Inclusion is more than just placing disabled children in mainstream classrooms but involves ‘participation, social relationships, and learning outcomes for all children’

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(Odom, Buysse, & Soukakou, 2011, p. 345), giving children a sense of belonging and membership, as well as access to friendships and learning opportunities. Historically, children with disabilities were placed in institutions separating them from other children, their families and access to mainstream education. Whilst we have come some way towards a less unjust system, there is still a long journey ahead before disabled children are fully included in their communities, and have access to all of the social and material resources that other children enjoy. In inclusive classrooms children are entitled to participate in experiences that are supportive of learning and well-being. I start from the assumption that placing disabled children in regular educational settings is the most appropriate policy. My view is based on the human rights of disabled children, and the evidence that disabled children achieve significantly better in regular classrooms than they do in segregated classrooms. Within regular classrooms disabled children have access to a wider curriculum, learning and social environments. Moreover, students without disabilities benefit from being with diverse peers, and teachers can become more versatile and confident about teaching diverse students in collaboration with professionals. Regular school placements increase the likelihood of better outcomes for disabled students because they usually have higher expectations for disabled students, give them access to more appropriate role models, and provide opportunities for more stimulating social interactions (MacArthur, Kelly, & Higgins, 2005). But in order to achieve full inclusion for disabled students in ordinary classrooms, inclusive philosophies and congruent pedagogical practices, quality teaching, positive attitudes towards disabled students and resource support are essential.

Language and labelling

The language around disability is very important, as it shapes thinking and reflects attitudes. Language can act to maintain stereotypes or to open up possibilities. I use the term disability rather than ‘special needs’, because ‘special needs’ implies that there are two kinds of children, those who are ‘special’ and those who are ‘normal’, an implication which in the past has led to segregated facilities and the exclusion of children with disabilities from mainstream education. ‘Special education exists to cater for children who are deemed sufficiently different that they do not belong within ordinary school settings alongside others from their communities’ (Ballard, 2004, p. 317). The language of special education is based on medical and psychological deficit models, assuming that disability is an individual problem and that disabled students require separate and different teaching from other students. This label ‘special education’ fails to recognise the influence of ecological and social contexts, and gives people permission to use discriminatory practices. A dominant discourse of disability is that it is a ‘personal tragedy’ and

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that impairment is a personal deficit (Rietveld, 2010). The term ‘disabled people’ acknowledges that disability is socially constructed and that disability is influenced by attitudes and discourses that exclude and discriminate against people with impairments (Carrington et al., 2013). Disability is a product of the interaction between individual characteristics (impairment as well as other characteristics) and the social and cultural context (Read, Blackburn, & Spencer, 2012). In this chapter I have chosen to use the words ‘disabled children’ rather than ‘children with disability’. This is consistent with the language used within the disabled people’s movement (Priestley, 2003, cited by MacArthur et al., 2007, p. 102). Educational researcher Roger Slee explains that ‘people are not of themselves disabled’ and that disability ‘is a relational concept within a sociological discourse rather than a pathological descriptor within a medical discourse’ (2001, p. 175, cited by Rutherford, 2008, p. 19).

Social versus medical models

The social model of disability was a reaction to the personal tragedy, deficit, medical or sickness model by disability rights activists in the United Kingdom (Shakespeare, 2006). It posited that disability was located in societal barriers rather than in any deficits in the individual. The social model argued that it was necessary not to ‘cure’ impaired individuals but to remove barriers to their full inclusion in society. This shifted the onus of impairment from being the individual’s problem, towards insisting that society change. The model has been liberating for disabled people, giving them a strong sense of identity, and leading to the removal of many physical and social barriers. It implies, though, that it is unnecessary to take an impairment-specific approach to issues for disabled people – for example, people with autism or visually impaired people should be treated similarly, and this view has been criticised (Shakespeare, 2006; Watson, 2012).

Impairment and disability

Tom Shakespeare compares the distinction between disability and impairment to that between gender and sex. Impairment and sex are biologically determined but disability and gender are socially constructed. He explains, however, that it is not really so simple and that it is impossible to distinguish between impairment and disability. He says that ‘in most cases disabled people are experiencing both the intrinsic limitation of impairment, and externally imposed social discrimination’ (p. 41). For example, having a spinal injury can lead to depression, anxiety and low self-esteem diminishing the disabled person’s well-being. But similar negative impacts on well-being can arise out of negative attitudes or discrimination and the resulting feelings of rejection and isolation.

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Critics of the social model of disability argue that impairments are real, and that they can cause pain, discomfort and limitations that no amount of barrier removal will prevent (Shakespeare, 2006; Thomas, 2004). It can be problematic to have an impairment even without social barriers. Shakespeare, however, argues that impairment and disability are inextricably linked, and that one cannot separate the effect of the social context from the effect of the actual impairment. What counts as an impairment is always determined by a social judgement, and qualitative research with disabled people confirms the impossibility of separating impairment and disability. It is therefore important to seek the views and perspectives of disabled people because the social model tends to ignore the realities of disabled people’s experiences. Disabled feminist, Liz Crow, explains the importance of the individual experience of disability: As individuals, most of us simply cannot pretend with any conviction that our impairments are irrelevant because they influence every aspect of our lives. We must find a way to integrate them into our whole experience and identity for the sake of our physical and emotional well-being, and subsequently, for our capacity to work against Disability. (Crow, 1996, p. 7, cited by Watson, 2012, p. 195)

Sociology of childhood

The social model of disability focuses on adults, so the issues that face disabled children have not been given as much prominence (Watson, 2012). Watson says that research with disabled children has been marginalised and disabled children are only rarely included in other studies of children and childhood. He contrasts the amount of research on disability in childhood with research on gender, ethnicity and social class. Childhood studies theory highlights the socially constructed nature of childhood and the importance of viewing children as social actors, as well as criticising universalised notions of the child. There is always a tension between social constructions of children as in need of protection, and of children as active, knowing and competent beings. Disabled children are even more likely than non-disabled children to be considered the objects of protection, because of societal attitudes. Much of the research that has been carried out on disabled children constructs them as passive and dependent, and their voices have been excluded. Sociology of childhood theory is important because it acknowledges the importance of socially constructed perspectives on childhood, and the unique perspectives of disabled children. Watson also points out that disabled children are not a heterogeneous group, and that there are many different types of impairment and experiences of disability. It is important to acknowledge and cater for difference without

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stigmatising disabled children, and to take into account the very real impact of different types of impairment on children’s functioning. Disabled children are often represented as a homogeneous group without recognising the complexity of their lives and their differences (Davis, Watson, Corker, & Shakespeare, 2003). There is a fine line between denying or minimising disabled children’s learning, behaviour, communication or physical challenges on the one hand, and highlighting difference on the other. Clearly, ignoring children’s impairmentrelated differences in order to make them feel part of the peer group is not an option for teachers ... The denial of difference can also compromise children’s learning by denying them access to necessary teaching approaches that support their learning. (MacArthur et al., 2007, p. 114)

In contrast to the problem of denial of difference, disability can be overemphasised, so that children are seen only in terms of their disability. Children with disability are often the objects of intervention, with ongoing social interactions and medical treatment being focused on ‘fixing’ their disability, often with harmful rather than positive effects on them. All these efforts to make a child normal by stimulating brain waves, hanging them upside down, pushing, pulling and cajoling, mean that the child receives the very clear message that there is something about them that nobody likes. Chances are that they will learn not to like it either. Since it is likely to do something about which, realistically, they can do little or nothing, this over emphasis is likely to only create a sense of failure or even self-hate. (Middleton, 1996, p. 37, cited by B. Kelly, 2005, p. 264)

Assumptions that adults can control and manipulate the learning processes for disabled children have been observed in New Zealand educational settings, reinforcing an image of the disabled as ‘other’, ignoring the relational context of their learning, and constructing them as ‘problems that need fixing’ (Macartney & Morton, 2011, p. 9).

Sociocultural theory

Impairment is real but always socially mediated, so sociocultural theory can help us interpret the process through which impairment is mediated by everyday social interactions and embodied experiences (Gaffney, 2012). Sociocultural theory highlights the way that children gradually come to make sense of the world through joint activities with others in the context of their culture, institutions and history. Reciprocity – the negotiation of mutual sense and interest with others, giving opinions, taking into account the perspective of others, sharing responsibility and ideas – is an important characteristic of supportive learning

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contexts (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998; Carr et al., 2010; Smith, 2009). To achieve reciprocal interaction, there should be influence in both directions – both responsiveness and stimulation. To enhance learning and the joint construction of meaning, sensitivity to disabled children’s signals or talk is necessary, and children should have the opportunity to initiate as well as respond. Agency emerges out of reciprocity as children are given more and more opportunity and space to be independent and take initiative. Being able to engage reciprocally is particularly important for disabled children, because they are often constructed predominantly as in need of help and support, rather than as social partners, and their strengths, competencies and capacity for agency, are ignored. Service provisions for disabled people can be based on a set of normative assumptions about pathological problems and vulnerability associated with disability and that also fail to examine the cultural contexts that create poor self-image, social isolation and segregation (Davis et al., 2003). Children’s learning progresses in their zones of proximal development (ZPD) when they are supported or guided by others – often in collaboration with other people somewhat more skilful than themselves (see chapters 1 and 8). Social relationships and affect are inextricably tied to learning, because when others have close relationships with and know disabled children really well, and understand their current strengths and skills, they can provide the appropriate scaffolding to promote learning in their ZPDs. Learning is mediated through language and other artefacts and tools (such as books, assessment, school uniforms, grouping of desks in the classroom). Warmth and respect between social partners enhances collaboration and learning. Many disabled children would like to be respected rather than treated as the objects of charity (Davis et al., 2003). Identity emerges out of social practices and modes of belonging within communities (Wenger, 1998). The discourses and practices of the classroom about disability have a profound effect on the identity of the disabled child. Sociocultural contexts that acknowledge that disabled children are like other children in many other ways are likely to build identities in which disability plays a part, but only one part, of the child’s identity. The assumption that disability is the defining feature of disabled people’s existence and experience is challenged by Robyn Stark et al. (2011). They argue that the disabled person should be seen as an individual with particular personality, feelings, life histories and relationships, rather than in terms of their disability. More attention should be given to the multidimensional identities of disabled people across gender, age, class, ethnicity and sexuality, according to Kelly (2005). For some disabled children, impairment is a big part of their identity, but for others impairment is not so important. When Kelly asked disabled children about their ‘magic wand wishes’, only one out of 32 learning disabled children mentioned getting rid of an impairment (Laura, who

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wanted to be able to walk). Most children wished for the sorts of things that all children enjoy, such as toys, parties, money, animals and boyfriends, leading Kelly to conclude that ‘learning disabled children are children first who do not view their impairment as the most important thing in their lives’ (p. 269). Other people’s social responses to disabled children are very important for helping to shape disabled children’s identity and achieving inclusion. Christine Rietveld (2005) points out that peers of disabled children need to learn (and be taught) about diversity and disability, and to understand that disabled children have a right to be accepted and made to feel that they belong in the classroom. Children, according to Rietveld, may not always know how to respond to disabled children, and may act in ways that undermine their disabled peers’ feeling of belonging, preventing them from becoming an integral part of the classroom community of learning. The mediating role of teachers in helping non-disabled children understand their disabled peers is therefore crucial. Classroom norms can be built on values of respect for diverse ways of children being competent, taking into account some disabled children’s difficulties with such tasks as speaking during news time or participating in sport, and accepting that the disabled child belongs to the classroom community rather than being labelled ‘not one of us’. Clare Connors and Kirsten Stalker (2003) suggest that there are two main types of barriers within disabled children’s sociocultural contexts – barriers to being and barriers to doing. Barriers to being are the processes that undermine psycho-emotional well-being, including attitudes and values that are unaccepting, rejecting or ignoring of disabled students. Children experience hurt when differences are badly managed, which makes them feel excluded and deficient. Barriers to doing are the barriers that students face in their everyday lives that restrict their participation and inclusion, for example, lack of ramps for children in wheelchairs, which may hinder their access to public transport, their ability to go shopping or to restaurants in their neighbourhoods, or to take part in activities in certain parts of school buildings.

Human rights and the policy context

The rights of disabled children at school are a matter of urgent concern in many countries, including New Zealand, since there is a lot of evidence that these rights are not being realised. The UNCRC has many articles that are particularly pertinent for disabled children. The right not to be discriminated against (Article 2); the right to survival and development (Article 6); the right of disabled children to a full and decent life and to dignity and independence (Article 23); the right to an education that allows them to reach their full potential (Article 29); and the primacy of the best interests of the child (Article 3), all need to be taken seriously. Participation rights are also very important for disabled children, with Article 12

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asserting that children should be given the opportunity to express their views and be heard, and Article 13 saying that children should have access to information and be able to give others information. A more recent United Nations Treaty, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Disabled People (UNCRDP, 2007), was ratified by New Zealand in 2008. The UNCRDP says that, ‘all disabled people enjoy legal capacity ... in all aspects of their lives’ (Article 12). The treaty advocates inclusive education and the importance of voice and participation for disabled people, recognising that alternative communication techniques like sign language and assistive technologies should be available (Sanderson, 2011). There are serious deficiencies in New Zealand’s implementation of the UNCRC and UNCRDP for disabled children, and an urgent need for more sensitivity to disabled children’s human rights and removal of physical and social barriers that impede them. Without respect for these rights, outdated policies and practices will continue. The Education Act 1989 gave all New Zealand children, including disabled children, the right to attend a state school. There is still no legislation to enforce the right of disabled preschool children to attend early childhood centres. The Human Rights Act (1993) prohibits any educational organisation from refusing to admit a student because of disability (Section 57) but Section 60 allows enrolment to be declined because of lack of resources (cited by Purdue, Ballard, & MacArthur, 2001). At around the same time as the new Education Act came into force, other educational reforms led to the decentralisation of educational administration, so that policy and decision-making was devolved to schools with often adverse effects for children with disabilities (Gaffney, 2012). Special Education Services was separated from the Ministry of Education in order to distribute funds to support students ‘with special needs’. *#&ő/.#)(őüúúú was a policy document (Ministry of Education, 1996a, p. 5) that aimed to ‘achieve ... a world class inclusive education system that provides learning opportunities of equal quality to all students’. New Zealand has retained educational placement choice for parents, so while there has been progress towards inclusion, segregated placements for some children continue. The New Zealand Disability Strategy (Dalziel, 2001) stated that no child should be denied access to their local school; that teachers and educators should understand the learning needs of disabled students; and that schools should improve their responsiveness and accountability for the needs of disabled children. Despite the good intentions in this policy, educational barriers for disabled children in New Zealand remain because of ‘deep and pervasive structures and attitudes that define some students as “special” and as not belonging in the regular classroom’ (MacArthur, Kelly, & Higgins, 2005). Schools and early childhood centres need access to funding to support the

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full inclusion of disabled students in classrooms. Although appropriate funding is essential, its lack can be used as a barrier, as some teachers think that they do not need to change their philosophy and practices. Instead, they may assign teacher aides to be responsible for the child’s ‘inclusion’, while the classroom and school context continue to exclude disabled children. The Ongoing Reviewable Resource Scheme (ORRS) funding policy in New Zealand makes it necessary for parents and caregivers to emphasise disabled children’s deficits in order to get funding to support them. Funding is attached to individual students depending on the level and significance of their disability. The grading of students on the severity of their impairment tends to provide a label that follows them throughout their school lives. In the United Kingdom, John Davis et al. (2003) found that similar policies put children under pressure to demonstrate their difference in order to justify special provision, and reinforced discourses of difference and exclusion. Although intended to facilitate inclusion, the policy has often failed to support inclusive practices (G. Rutherford, 2012; Sanderson, 2012). Where ORRS student-specific funding is not available, schools can draw on their Special Education Grant (SEG) which is part of their operational grant, and they can also draw on the services of specialist support teachers – Resource Teachers of Learning and Behaviour (RTLB) and Resource Teachers of Literacy (RT:Lit).

Disabled children’s perspectives

Talking to disabled children directly is necessary to understand how they negotiate their lives in the context of their everyday experiences, and to find out whether there are barriers and supports to implementing their rights and ensuring their well-being. Although there has been in the past a paucity of studies of disabled children’s perspectives, there is now a body of research that gives some glimpses of their views about different aspects of their lives.

Participation and communication

The agency of disabled children is consistently downplayed because of their isolation, lack of access to services and material support, and compliance with the medical model of young people as passive recipients of adults’ attempts to ‘fix’ them (Davis et al., 2003). The barriers to disabled children and young people’s participation rights are even greater than for non-disabled students. Physical communication difficulties, for example, can prevent children from telling people about their concerns, unless adults take the trouble to learn how to communicate with them, to help them formulate their views and to see issues from the perspective of disabled children. Berni Kelly (2005) found that adults consistently underestimated the competencies of disabled children in her research in Northern Ireland, often incorrectly assuming that they could not understand or communicate.

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Children repeatedly provided evidence that they were able to interpret their experiences and articulate their views on complex issues, such as feelings, needs and sources of support. For example, although children were excluded from reviews of respite care services, they were able tell the researcher about their experiences of these services. (p. 270)

Deaf children told the researchers in Davis’s study about how important communication was in their lives. One girl said that she could communicate with her sister because they could both finger spell, but that it was hard to communicate with her mother and brother because they could not understand her. Another child, Zoebia, said that she taught her hearing cousin, who is her best friend and lives next door, to sign. In Zoebia’s family others had not had the opportunity or the motivation to learn sign language, so she could not communicate with them.

Overprotection

Another major issue for disabled children found in Davis’s study was that they felt overprotected by professionals, who were constantly worried that children would be harmed if they were allowed independence. For example, Dibly felt confident about her ability to go to town on her own from school and was annoyed when her teachers continually checked up on her. At home she was allowed to go to town on her own and she was fine. I can do a lot more things than they give me credit for ... . I can do it [go to town]. I can’t understand why they want to check up on me, but they do and they keep doing it. You get that awful feeling, you’re over protected ... . I just do what I can do, and I just wish here they wouldn’t be so overprotective. (Dibly, in Davis et al., 2003, p. 203)

Similarly, a visually impaired child complained to the researchers that everyone was overprotective towards her. ‘It’s like they don’t make you feel independent. Like they want to do stuff for you. It’s like you want help, but you don’t want charity’ (Irene, in Davis et al., 2003, p. 206). The mother of a ten-year-old learning disabled child, in Connors and Stalker’s (2003) study, felt that she could not let her son go and play outside home with other children because of his vulnerability, and other parents in the study restricted their children’s capacity for independence by placing limits on their visits to friends, and not freely allowing them to cross the road or go to the shops.

Lack of challenge

Another issue that Davis and his colleagues found from talking to children, was that some felt that their academic competence was under-estimated and that

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teachers were not stretching them enough at school. One child told the researchers that the teacher thought that they (deaf students) were ‘thick’ and asked them insultingly simple questions. Boredom was a word commonly associated with school in a study by Connors and Stalker (2003), and the researchers quote one boy’s letter to the head teacher complaining about not being provided with a level of education appropriate to his needs. Disabled children mainstreamed in a New Zealand secondary school talked to Lara Sanderson about low teacher expectations and wasting time at school. ‘We don’t do much in study, we just sit around talking for most of the period. We don’t do any study actually,’ and, ‘Oh, it’s just writing on Friday, we don’t do anything else, so I enjoy it when she takes me out of that cos it’s pretty boring’ (A.)J., in Sanderson, 2011, pp. 71–72). One disabled child in Jude MacArthur’s (2007, p. 104) study was described by the teacher as ‘pottering’ and ‘puddling’ in class, but it seemed as if nothing more was expected. These findings reinforce the importance of teachers and teacher aides working in children’s ZPDs and providing them with sufficient challenge and stimulation to promote learning.

Feelings about impairment and school

Learning disabled children (five with sensory and six with physical impairments) in Connors and Stalker’s (2007) study tended to see their impairment in medical terms, unsurprisingly since most of them had had a great deal of contact with health services. They talked about hospital admissions, operations, contact with professionals and things that they had found frightening. One ten-year-old child remembered an eye operation when he was five or six years old. He said, ‘What made me scared most, there were these tongs, they were like that ... with big bridges with lights on them, you know, and “oh, oh, what are they for? What are they for?”’ (Connors & Stalker, 2007, p. 25). The children did not view their impairment as a ‘tragedy’, or talk about loss or being badly treated, and seemed to take impairment as a normal part of their lives that was not ‘a big deal’. They did talk about some of the impact of their impairment, such as pain, difficulty doing schoolwork, getting tired easily or having repeated chest infections, although most seemed to be managing or putting up with these issues. Most children said they were happy most of the time, they had a sense of sporting or educational achievement, and viewed themselves as good friends and helpful classmates. Some teachers were able to engage disabled children with activities they really enjoyed. For example, in Sanderson’s (2011) research, there was a popular teacher who had good relationships with the disabled students, and the students spoke about their enjoyment of her drama classes, rehearsing a Shakespearean play to perform in front of parents. A.)J. said:

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I like doing the plays you know, like what we did last night, I like that sort of thing and going to a disco ... I just love doing those sort of things at night cos I don’t get to do much at home at night. (p. 74)

The teacher who took these Shakespeare classes said that one reason she set up the activity was to show other people (parents, other teachers and teacher aides) that the disabled students were highly competent, because they demonstrated this in their drama performance. The question of how disabled students experience difference was explored by MacArthur et al. (2007). Most children were aware of difference and believed that they were treated differently by teachers and other students. Their appearance, behaviour or communication skills were what made these students feel different. For instance Luke described himself as, ‘lazy, annoying, badmouthed’, and Pete said that ‘I learn a bit different ... it’s harder but I mainly get it right’ (MacArthur et al., 2007, p. 103). Emma wanted to be taught in the same way as other students, even though she found school work challenging. She tried to do what others in the class did, but did not like using her computer because it made ‘funny noises’, but when the old computer was replaced with a laptop she felt more comfortable. Gaffney (2012) carried out an ethnographic study with Ben, who had a memory impairment. Gaffney found that Ben had his own way of understanding challenges during literacy activities. Ben said, ‘Sometimes I forget, sometimes the words I know and stuff.’ And when asked how others could help him, he replied, ‘Like when I am stuck? I probably like help, like to sound the word out and stuff.’ When he was asked how he felt when he could not find the right word he replied: Ben: Yeah, it really annoys me. Mother: You do get annoyed because you get really cross when you want to tell me something, but you can’t find the words to ask the question or you can’t find the words to explain what you have been doing. You can get really mad about that, you say ‘don’t matter’ and you walk away in a huff, how does that make you feel? Ben: Stressed out and stuff. (Interview with Ben and Family, Year 7, Gaffney, 2012, p. 76)

Disabled children often experienced difference adversely, ‘through negative and discriminatory social encounters, including social isolation, a lack of friends, and being ostracised and bullied in relation to their impairment’ (p. 104). Emma, for instance was afraid to speak out in class because others might make fun of her. The children particularly disliked being laughed at or called names. Disabled

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Box 11.1 Disabled children’s experiences of bullying Example 1: Telling the teacher One boy was asked how frequently he was bullied: Child: When people bully me and make fun of me. Interviewer: And how often is that? Child: About nearly every day. Interviewer: And what do you do? Child: Go and tell the teachers. Interviewer: Uhuh, and what do they do? Child: They give them detention for it. Interviewer: And does that help? Child: A little bit. (p. 60) Example 2: Kicking back If I get bullied, I pull the finger and say, ‘Piss off’ to them ... that’s the best solution for me, go ‘Piss off’ and some other kinds of words ... just give [it] back ... kick back, kick butt. (p. 40). MacArthur & Gaffney, 2001.

children often suffer widespread bullying and they have various strategies for dealing with it (Davis et al., 2001; Connors & Stalker, 2003; MacArthur & Gaffney, 2001; MacArthur et al., 2007; Ytterhus, 2012). Box 11.1 gives some examples of bullying and children’s response to this experience, showing that they exercise their agency in resisting this treatment. Despite having some negative experiences in school, children in several studies said that they liked school and engaged in social interactions with peers, told jokes and laughed together, like other students (Connors & Stalker, 2003; MacArthur et al., 2007; Sanderson, 2011). Children were mostly positive about their teachers, and discussed their work with them, but resisted being discriminated against. Several children in the MacArthur study were pleased at how their teachers had responded to their being bullied. They made deliberate attempts to resist stereotyping and bullying, demonstrating their agency in many different ways. For example, Joanne said that she liked proving people wrong who thought that she could not do things. She said that she tried everything and then was pleased with the response of teachers who ‘didn’t know she could do that’ (p. 108). Sanderson’s research (above) shows that some teachers, however, were aware of students’ competencies and planned their programmes so that they could demonstrate

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their skills. Some teachers acknowledged diversity by explaining to peers that the disabled students needed extra time and support, and were prepared to modify classroom rules for the disabled students. The researchers found that how the teachers explained and acknowledged diversity to the other students was critical to successful inclusion.

Families/whānau

In this section I will draw on an ecological perspective to highlight the importance of immediate and wider contexts for disabled children and their families. The innermost core of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979a) ecological system is the microsystem of the family or caregivers (see chapter 1 for further explanation). As with all children, their parents and wider extended families are central to the lives of disabled children. Disabled children are reliant on their families for love, care, support, advocacy, and access to education and recreation. Parents play an important part in ensuring that disabled children are treated inclusively in society, and in facilitating children’s understanding of impairment and its part in their identity, as well as providing scaffolding for their growing independence. They are usually the key players in breaking down barriers to young people’s participation in society. One important role they play is as providers of information to children about their impairment.

Participation rights within the family

From rights and learning perspectives, disabled children should have the opportunity to participate in the practices of their families, communities and classrooms. Participation in communities of practice allows children’s ongoing negotiation of meaning over time, gives them a feeling of belonging and supports their agency. Participation rights mean that children’s voices should be heard, that they should be involved in decisions about their lives, and be given information and support to express their views. Adults play an important role in scaffolding children’s participation rights and providing disabled children with the support to formulate and express their views (Smith, 2002). Kelly (2005) found that disabled children in Northern Ireland had difficulty understanding their ‘learning difficulty’ labels, and that parents or carers avoided discussing their impairments with children, as they assumed that it would be upsetting for them. If children had received explanations from parents, they had a good understanding and could explain their impairment to others. Kelly showed that parents (and other adults) rarely consulted with disabled children about important issues or involved them in decisions about their lives. Only 5 out of 32 parents had discussed impairment or disability with their child. Children, however, gathered information from other sources in an effort to understand their

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impairment and disability. They often came up with idiosyncratic explanations when parents did not provide scaffolding for their understanding. He said the word a few times and I think he has heard it in school. I don’t think he is aware that there’s anything wrong. He asked one time why he’s not at his brother’s school and we said that was because he had to go a special school because he’s a special boy. ... But he doesn’t think any further you know. (Parent of Christopher, autistic ten-year-old, B. Kelly, 2005, pp. 266–267)

In another United Kingdom study, parents told the researchers that they dreaded being asked for explanations by their disabled children, and that disabled children tended to ask once and then drop the subject (Connors & Stalker, 2007). There were three possible explanations given by parents: the child was ‘special’ it was part of ‘God’s plan’, or there had been an accident or illness at the time of the child’s birth. Several of the children had never talked to their parents about their impairment, and silence or avoidance seemed a typical response. One sibling of a disabled child said that his mother had forbidden him to tell other people about his sister’s impairment. Similarly in Jane Lyle’s New Zealand study (2008) of families with a child with Down Syndrome (DS), parents were reluctant to talk about disability with children. Two of the three children with DS were aware of their condition and its label, but one of the parents did not realise that their son understood the label. Only one family said that the child became aware of the barriers he faced in society after he was placed with a different group (from his normal class) for a crosscountry race. There are interesting parallels in these findings of silence around the issue of children’s impairment with other research showing how children in foster care are not given explanations of why they were in care (Smith, Gollop, & Taylor, 2000), and children whose parents were separating not being told the reasons for the breakup (Smith, Taylor, & Tapp, 2003). In all of these examples, children’s well-being was improved (even if they were upset initially) when they were given information about their families, enabling them to understand and develop their own coping strategies. The same principle applies to disabled children. Disabled children’s agency, well-being and rights are enhanced if parents give them simple and honest explanations of their impairments. This enables the children (and their siblings and friends) to explain the situation to other people, and to be able to incorporate the impairment into their own identity in a positive way.

Ecological context of risk and support

How families/whānau of children with disabilities cope with the demands on them depends on their ecological context of risk or support. There are a number of

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additional risk factors associated with having a disabled child, and these include social isolation, difficulty in accessing support or services (health, education or recreational), and poverty (Parish, Saville, & Swaine, 2011). In the United States there is evidence that poverty and childhood disability are linked, and low-income families with disabled children have problems with issues like food security, and safe and healthy housing. In the United Kingdom, ‘many disabled children and their families continue to face the eroding and damaging impact of living in poverty, often for protracted periods’ (Read et al., 2012, p. 227). The additional responsibilities for caring for disabled children can prevent parents from working and thus contribute to poverty, so poverty can be both a cause and consequence of disability (Parish et al., 2011; Read et al., 2012). New Zealand parents with disabled children told Jane Lyle (2008) that they faced severe budget restrictions, and that this prevented them from participating in activities that they regarded as part of normal family life. Raising a child with a disability can place an additional financial burden on families because of the costs of treatment, home adaptations, transport or special equipment. Poverty is an additional risk that adversely influences all parents’ ability to cope, and the well-being of children is indirectly influenced by this financial stress, as I will show in chapter 12. Multiple risks are much more likely to lead to adverse effects that single risk factors. Having a child with a disability also can cause ongoing disruption and family stress, through parents having to deal with the effects of impairment, such as behaviour or chronic health issues, in combination with other risk factors (such as low income). One parent with a child with a disability in our study of family resilience described the stress she felt when she took her child to the supermarket: They [the public] don’t know what it is like. You know like when you see people at the supermarket with screaming kids everybody is standing there you know, ‘If that was my child ...’. And I know how that person feels. And the worst thing is to have people staring at you because the child looks normal, you know. And all the attitudes you come across and that sort of thing ... Oh you just don’t go places. It restricts you ... you have to plan ahead. (Parent in Duncan et al., 2005a, p. 45)

Parents of children with Down Syndrome in Lyle’s (2008) research acknowledged that raising a disabled child could be a stressful experience, and talked about how important support was for them. Parents reported that in order to live a good and ordinary life they were faced with many barriers and frustrations. Parents talked of their struggles to access home support packages from agencies, with often many months of phone calls, form filling and waiting, before they could access support. Having extended family support was very valuable, yet this

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was often not available or grandparents lived too far away to be able to provide practical help. Lack of information about their child’s condition was another problem for parents. Although services and opportunities were available in the community, parents were unaware of them.

Early childhood centres

Early childhood centres are potentially important resources to support parents of children with disabilities and to collaborate with other professionals (such as health professionals), in order to enhance children’s learning and well-being. The early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki, has an inclusive philosophy and its basis in ecological and sociocultural theory should help teachers to carry out inclusive practices (MacArthur et al., 2003). Unfortunately there are a number of studies showing that early childhood centres often present barriers rather than support for parents and children with disabilities (Grace, Llewellyn, Fenech, & McConnell, 2008; MacArthur et al., 2003; Purdue et al., 2001; Rietveld, 2010, 2012; Stark et al., 2011). While the curriculum provides a strong foundation for inclusive practice the ‘powerful and pervasive medical and charity discourses of disability can overwhelm the principles and strands of Te Whāriki, and become dominant in some early childhood environments’ (MacArthur et al., 2003, p. 154).

Access issues

In order to access and gain the advantages of participation in a quality ECE centre for their children, parents are often put in the situation of having to advocate for their children’s access or for their child’s well-being within centres, and they feel isolation and lack of acceptance from teachers and other parents (Purdue et al., 2001; Stark et al., 2011). Parents have to stand up for their children, act as communicator between different services, and plead for basic physical requirements like hand rails in a toilet. ‘Parents who had a child with a disability typically experienced an ongoing and at times exhausting struggle to have their child’s needs and rights acknowledged in the early childhood centres that they approached’ (Purdue et al., 2001, pp. 40–41). Gaining access to a place for their child in an early childhood centre was very difficult for parents of disabled children in an Australian study (Grace et al., 2008). The majority of mothers in the study wanted their children to participate in a mainstream early childhood centre, but had great difficulty in finding a welcoming centre or any centre at all to accept their child. One parent reported contacting over 20 centres, but only five were willing to consider taking her child. She applied to all five of them (including paying application fees and filling out forms), only to find that none would guarantee her child a place until they knew that their funding application had been successful. One centre got back to her

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a year later, but the other four never got back to her. Most other mothers had similar problems with access, and reported having to accept whatever conditions (including times) that were on offer, because there was so little choice. This often meant different times from other siblings so that they had to make repeated visits to centres to pick up and drop off children. Having gained access to early childhood centres, parents in Grace’s study found that the teachers were often not well informed about disability issues and that they had to educate them (for example, through providing published materials) about their child’s disability. They reported staff not responding appropriately to their child’s difficulties, for example, not preventing bullying from other children, or misinterpreting children’s behaviour. One parent, for example, had explained her son’s vision and hearing loss to the staff but they regularly sent home notes reporting that he had been in trouble for ignoring the teachers. Another parent found that their child had been basically left on his own all day and the staff did not make any active attempt to include him. Parents thought that it was very important to have warm reciprocal relationships with staff, and this did happen in a minority (about 13 per cent) of cases. When there was reciprocity, warmth and sharing of ideas between parents and children, parents found that this was very helpful. Parents were able to give teachers ideas about more effective ways to interact with their child, and teachers were also able to make useful suggestions to parents. Sadly, a focus on supportive parent–teacher partnerships was lacking in many centres. ‘Few of the early childhood centers in this study were able to provide those elements of early childhood education identified ... as being essential to social inclusion’ (Grace et al., 2008, p. 27).

Inclusion and support

Early childhood centres can provide parents with a break from uninterrupted time with children, and support parents in other ways such as helping them access financial, health or welfare support from agencies, and sharing stories about children’s achievements (Duncan et al., 2005b). Early childhood centres, however, are places where different discourses about disability take place and these can either support or limit inclusion for disabled children. There were examples of both exclusionary and inclusionary discourses in Kerry Purdue et al.’s (2001) research with parents of children with disabilities in early childhood centres. Exclusionary discourses treated disabled children as different and belonging elsewhere. Other parents (of non-disabled children) often had negative and unsupportive attitudes towards disabled children’s inclusion, disabled children were seen as a burden, and parents heard such comments as, ‘you don’t want too many of them coming here’ (chairperson of an ECE centre, p. 42). Parents of disabled children have to battle with other parents who view children

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with disabilities as not belonging in ordinary centres, and they talk ‘of struggle, advocacy, negotiation, a constant fight’ and being left feeling ‘angry, disillusioned, frustrated and exhausted’ (Stark et al., 2011, p. 8). Centres in Purdue’s study set restrictive conditions for children’s access, such as a teacher aide or the parent having to stay with the disabled child all of the time. Lack of resources was an excuse regularly given for not accepting the child, or not making any adjustments to programmes. Teachers frequently lacked confidence and knowledge to help them work with disabled children, and expected teacher aides to take responsibility for disabled children (notwithstanding the fact that teacher aides also lacked training and knowledge about disability and inclusion). When staff in centres had inclusive perspectives, disabled children’s participation was seen by teachers and parents as ordinary and natural, occurring without fuss. Children were accepted in such inclusive settings, as belonging to the community, and teachers attended to disabled children along with their non-disabled peers, seeing this as a regular part of their responsibilities. They talked about the importance of treating children with disabilities in the same way as their peers and of using ordinary early childhood teaching techniques to include and teach. When encouraging a child with a disability to engage in activities, for example, one teacher saw her role as ‘being honest, not drawing attention to the disability, but not pretending there was nothing different’. (Purdue et al., 2001, p. 46)

The peer culture

Unfortunately it can be the case that teachers say ‘We are an inclusive centre’, but the reality is that teachers are not aware about the exclusion that disabled children are experiencing within the peer culture (Rietveld, 2010, 2012). What teachers think disabled children are experiencing and what is actually happening are often quite different. Rietveld found in her research with children with DS that there is a hidden curriculum within early childhood centres where children with DS are often treated like younger and inferior members of early childhood communities. For example, she observed six children sitting around the morning tea table being handed beakers of water, while David (who has DS) was given a two-handled ‘Tomee Tippee’ cup with a straw, a cup associated with much younger children. Other children laughed at David and commented that he had a baby cup (Rietveld, 2010, p. 20). In another observation Rietveld observed Adam (a child with DS) being teased by Jason, who offers him a toy, but then runs away with it, telling Adam that if he is good he can have a turn, but then denying him a turn and saying, ‘He

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(referring to Adam) is twice as slow as me!’ (p. 22). These observations illustrate that because of the low status assigned to the disabled children and the lack of reciprocal interactions, they lacked the opportunity for joint engagement and collaborative learning. Teachers or parents (Adam attended a playgroup run entirely by parents) either ignored or were unaware of the way disabled children were being treated by their peers, and asserted that non-disabled children treated the disabled children just like other children and as one of the group. Rietveld points out that such treatment has a negative effect on the identity of disabled children, and that unless teachers or parents intervene, disabled children will continue to be marginalised and excluded. They are likely to internalise the messages that they are inferior, incompetent and undesirable peer group members, which in turn is likely to negatively impact on their motivation to seek inclusion, thus interfering with their learning of culturally-valued skills. (Rietveld, 2010, p. 27)

Responsive social contexts

In a United Kingdom study of children with disabilities, Melanie Nind, Rosie Flewitt, and Jane Payler (2010) also emphasised the importance of the nature of the social interactions within sociocultural contexts for enhancing children’s agency and identity. This study focused on supportive adult–child contexts for disabled children’s engagement. The authors emphasise that children are not the mere victims of their impairment but are complex active meaning-makers who contribute to and participate in social settings. In certain sociocultural contexts children can elicit, prompt and reward social interaction, but this is less easy in other contexts. Children’s agency, as observed by Nind and her colleagues, was often more supported in the freer and more responsive contexts of their home environments, than in early childhood centres. For example, in one early childhood centre, two adults sat with Helen (a child with epilepsy and developmental delay) with a book, and asked questions like, ‘What are those Helen?’ in a context ‘dominated by adult physical presence and language with a potentially confusing profusion of non-iconic and iconic gestures and signs cluttering the interaction’ (p. 662). When Helen did not respond, teachers provided Helen with the answers. In contrast, at home Helen and her father looked at books together on the settee and she engaged with pleasure and concentration with her dad’s playful questions, and demonstrated knowledge that her teachers knew nothing about. ‘Helen’s father was skilful at gently adjusting the activity for optimal arousal levels and sense of achievement. In turn Helen demonstrated knowledge and abilities ...’ (p. 662).

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Cultures of exclusion

Constructions of disability by parents (including parents of non-disabled children), teachers and non-disabled children about disabled children can provide impenetrable barriers. When such a culture of exclusion exists, it is unlikely that young disabled children will have the opportunity to engage in normal, ordinary everyday interactions and shared learning with their peers and teachers. Early childhood teachers are in a potentially powerful position to provide leadership and challenge stereotypical interpretations of disability. They can also support the parents of disabled children in advocating for the rights of disabled children to be accepted into early childhood learning communities. Doubtless, real inclusion happens in some early childhood centres, but the research provides a disturbing picture, suggesting that all too often, centres and teachers could be providing much better support for disabled parents and children. The appropriate macrosystem structures surrounding early childhood teachers, such as opportunity for professional development and provision of additional resources should also be in place. It is clear, however, that existing structures are inadequate and tend to be based on deficit rather than inclusive models. Quality early childhood education should be available for all children, and policies need to be in place to ensure that disabled children’s rights to such access are ensured.

School experiences

The New Zealand curriculum (NZC, Ministry of Education, 2007), like Te Whāriki, takes a socioculturally and credit-based approach, assuming that all children will become ‘confident, connected, actively involved, lifelong learners’ (p. 7), and that they will experience a meaningful curriculum that connects to their wider lives, families and communities. The NZC recognises that children learn best in the context of positive, responsive relationships and opportunities to engage actively with other students in learning communities.

Prevalent disability models in schools

Despite the NZC’s apparent commitment to inclusive education, what happens in practice seems to draw more from dominant deficit views of disability (Macartney & Morton, 2011). Observations of the approaches taken to inclusion in early childhood and primary classrooms by the researchers suggest that disabled children are often positioned as passive and ‘other’, and that the role of adults is to control and manipulate their learning towards predictable results. Disabled children are not considered as active learners or as belonging to classroom communities. Researchers Bernadette Macartney and Missy Morton consider that there are challenges for teachers in responding positively to diverse learners, within the spirit of the NZC, rather than from an individualised medical model

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construction of disability. Kathryn Underwood (2008) argues that the classification of people as ‘disabled’ is created in schools, but that schools reproduce the inequities present in society. If teachers, parents and/or students believe that disability is an individual condition resulting from psychological factors, then they will respond to individuals as though they had pathological conditions. (Underwood, 2008, p. 155)

In the section on children’s perspectives, I showed that disabled students have both positive and negative experiences at school, with the level of expectations and the quality of teaching provided by the teacher having a big influence on whether their experiences at school are enjoyable and productive. Teachers have a direct influence on classroom processes through their attitudes and ways of engaging with disabled students. They also have an indirect influence through their mediation of the interactions that take place between peers, and such interactions have a powerful and often hidden effect on disabled children’s opportunities for learning. Rietveld’s (2005, 2012) research has continued to follow three children with DS from early childhood centre to primary school, and her perceptive observational methods have revealed the hidden processes embedded in primary school contexts that influence disabled children’s learning and identity. She argues cogently that teachers have a responsibility for ensuring that disabled children are valued members of classrooms, and for ensuring that peers recognise this. Classroom norms can reflect diverse ways for children to be competent, and teachers can help children understand and interpret unconventional behaviour, so that non-disabled children learn acceptable ways to respond. If non-disabled children do not understand impairment, then their behaviour and attitudes are likely to be rejecting and unkind, so teachers have a responsibility to explain pertinent information to other children. For example, when Jonathan did not hear instructions to move on to the next reading activity, peers talked to each other about Jonathan being naughty. The teacher did not dispute the children’s labelling so this reinforced Jonathan’s marginalisation, and did not help the other children understand Jonathan’s impairment. But changing the sociocultural context of the classroom could have prevented this problem. If the signal to move on to the next group had been more obvious (e.g. louder, use of a visual cue or a system where peers reminded each other), Jonathan may well have undertaken what was required. Rietveld does not advocate a denial of difference, as it ignores the very real impact that impairment has on the functioning of disabled children, and can lead to them experiencing a learning environment that does not match their ZPDs. Recognition of impairment and provision of information to non-disabled children

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Box 11.2 Observations of inclusion and exclusion of DS children in primary classrooms Inclusion of Ian In the school library, the teacher asks Elliot to help Ian find a book. The pair walks to the shelf together. Ian selects a book about dinosaurs and hands it to Elliot. Both smile at each other. The teacher asks the boys to look at it together. They sit next to each other with the book in the middle, pointing to the various pictures and smiling and laughing about the content. ... [Children chat to each other.] Later on Ian takes out the library card and fiddles with it. Elliot says to him, ‘It stays there’ and helps him put it back. Elliot refocusses on the interaction on the book’s content and they continue sharing the book. (p. 16). Exclusion of Jonathan Instead of sitting on the mat, to read his book, Jonathan sits on the teacher’s chair, and ‘reads’ his blown-up book, which the teacher read to the class earlier in the day. He points to and names some of the pictures. Michael says to George, ‘Jonathan’s not sitting on the mat. He’s sitting on the teacher’s chair. You’re not allowed to read that’ [blown-up book]. When finished, Jonathan picks up a regular size book, one that was lying on the floor between him and Hamish. [Hamish was reading another book]. Hamish says to Michael, ‘Jonathan took my book off me’. Hamish tries to take (pull) the book from Jonathan. Jonathan resists. (p. 17) Rietveld, 2005.

about it, so that they can understand and accept unconventional behaviour and appearances, is an important task for the teacher. Rietveld (2005, p. 18) shows how teachers can create shared meanings with other students concerning the diverse characteristics of disabled students. For example, when Ian was not paying attention during reading, his friend Philip asked him if he wanted a stamp, and when Ian said he did, Philip said he was a good reader. Ian then refocused on the reading task. The children in this class had learned to interpret Ian’s unconventional behaviour and respond appropriately.

Teachers’ mediation of peer culture

Teachers’ sensitivity to and awareness of the nature of peer interactions in the classroom is important, so that they can mediate to support positive engagement. Box 11.2 gives examples from Rietveld’s research of how peers can on the one

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Box 11.3 Barriers to doing in a secondary school Students had placed their bags at the top and along the side of the wheelchair ramp so I had to move all of them (50 or so bags). I asked a student to help me. The student kicked a bag and left. A teacher watched as I cleared the bags in order to get Snookums into the hall. Students began replacing their bags and I did tell them in a stern manner not to leave them there. No one offered assistance. Once seated in the only row wide enough we were joined by Cobweb [another disabled student]. Other SSC [special class] students sat at the back. Leaving the hall students tried to climb over Snookums and rush in front. We could not go any faster because of the other students in front of us. I said again in a stern manner, ‘If you want to go in front, go now. Otherwise let us go first!’ A teacher who was standing on the side made no effort to clear a path, although smiled at me as I left (Field Notes, 09/09/09). Sanderson, 2011, p. 76.

hand engage with disabled peers in a reciprocal manner, or on the other hand exclude them from such engagement. Although she found many examples of ‘inferior inclusion’, Rietveld (2012) also found examples of ‘facilitative inclusion’, where disabled children participated with peers on equal terms, engaged in reciprocal relationships, were valued as members of the classroom community and had friends. Facilitative inclusion involved providing a different sociocultural context that invites the child with a disability to participate and show their competence. She observed facilitative inclusion when Ian and his friends were playing football. When Ian couldn’t see the ball, Brendan found it and handed it to Ian. The boys kicked it to each other, and Ian called out to one of the other children to get the ball. Ian interacted with his peers positively on an equal footing, praised their efforts, acknowledged their contribution and joined in the spirit of the game (p. 5). Peers positioned Ian as competent, and this encouraged him to engage reciprocally with them. In contrast, Jonathon (Box 11.2) was positioned negatively by his peers, and was discouraged from participating. It would be a mistake to forget that there are real ‘barriers to doing’ as well as ‘barriers to being’ in schools. When Sanderson (2011) observed disabled students in secondary schools she was frustrated to be part of the episode in Box 11.3, where physical barriers made the access of a young disabled student to assembly in the school hall difficult. Sanderson was taking the disabled student (Snookums) to the assembly.

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Teacher aides

Teacher aides are frequently part of the school experience of disabled students, and the role they play is a crucial influence on students’ learning and well-being. Teacher aides can provide scaffolding to support disabled students’ learning, but there is ‘a fine line between support that facilitates involvement in learning activities and support that inhibits social interaction and the development of autonomy of the disabled child’ (Egilson & Traustadottir, 2009, cited by Gaffney, 2012, p. 105). Teacher aides are now an accepted, although marginalised, part of the education workforce in New Zealand (Rutherford, 2012). The employment of teacher aides is intended to facilitate inclusion, but Gill Rutherford argues that they can be part of the problem for disabled students. Their roles and responsibilities are often unclear, and they are not required to have any training. Rutherford’s research explored the experiences of ten disabled students with varying levels of teacher aide support, as well as the perspectives of the teacher aides. In optimum situations, the teacher aides worked in partnership with teachers, and both teachers and teacher aides had high expectations of disabled students, and recognised their competence. At the same time, both teacher and teacher aide worked with and supported the learning of both non-disabled and disabled students. Rutherford found that in such situations, which were rare, there were positive working relationships between teachers and teacher aides, and that aides were available to work with other students without compromising their work with the disabled student. Only one of the 18 aides Rutherford interviewed consistently worked in this inclusive way, while a third of them did so occasionally. They acted as interpreters, translators and role models of appropriate ways of communicating, and helped non-disabled students’ understanding of the competence of their disabled peers. The majority of the aides in Rutherford’s study, however, worked in contexts where disabled students, while physically present in the class, were differentiated from other students and excluded from many aspects of school life. Students could not go to technology classes, for example, when their aide was sick. The disabled student and her/his aide were regarded as ‘a packaged deal’. Teachers privileged the majority of the students who were not disabled, and engaged very little with disabled students. They did not attempt to adapt the curriculum or teaching strategies to ensure that learning was accessible to all students. Students also felt stigmatised by having an aide. One of Rutherford’s participant students, Rachel, described her aide as over protective and always ‘on her case’, while she would have preferred to do something a bit different and have some space (Rutherford, 2012, p. 767). The presence of the teacher aide acted as a disabling barrier for students being fully accepted members of the classroom, and resulted in their becoming disconnected from other students and the possibility of peer

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interaction. Teacher aides themselves were marginalised within schools and were required ‘to move shadow-like through schools, alternating between states of visibility and invisibility, experiencing respect and disrespect, all the while unsure of their actual role, yet working well beyond its boundaries’ (Rutherford, 2012, p. 768). When a teacher aide is assigned to be constantly ‘velcroed’ to a disabled child, this prevents the child from developing relationships with other children, allows teachers to abrogate responsibility for the child, and interferes with the child’s opportunities to interact with peers and take initiative (MacArthur & Dight, 2000, p. 40). Gaffney’s (2012) research with a disabled student in intermediate and secondary school showed how teacher aides can be sensitive scaffolders of students’ learning, and encourage rather than impede disabled students’ involvement in class activities. Ben’s teacher aide said that she was careful not to help him too much, and stepped in as late as possible. Ben told Gaffney that the teacher aide helped him with reading and writing sometimes, but that he could do most of the tasks without her help. The teacher aide in this case showed a good understanding of Ben’s ZPD, and knew that there was a balance between supported and independent learning. Ben’s teacher aide had a detailed understanding of the progression of Ben’s learning – what he could do without help, and where he needed help. She knew when something was too difficult for Ben and was able to make modifications to the curriculum to accommodate his difficulties. Ben was positive about the support she provided for his school learning and did not mention any disabling elements of her participation. She had ‘developed a nuanced understanding of Ben’s inner thinking that was influencing his engagement in learning activities’ (Gaffney, 2012, p. 109). Although there are some dangers and disadvantages in the involvement of teacher aides in disabled students’ learning, in the right circumstances they can help to remove barriers to being and doing. It is unlikely, however, that teacher aides will be able to facilitate inclusion without access to training. Their role as partners with teachers requires that they know about the curriculum and about student learning, and in addition understand how their presence can facilitate the inclusion of disabled students rather than result in their isolation and marginalisation. Without the partnership of well-informed and well-trained teachers with an understanding of inclusion, the work of the teacher aide is difficult and may lead to more harm than good.

Summary

This chapter explored how disabled children experience their everyday lives, and challenged dominant constructions of disability (as associated with vulnerability and protection), suggesting instead that disabled children, within contexts that

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support their agency, are active and competent agents. Disability arises from the interaction between an individual’s impairment, and how society interprets and responds to the person with the impairment. The language of ‘special education’ is inappropriate because it is based on medical and psychologically based deficit models, implying that disability is an individual problem requiring separate and different teaching. Disability is influenced by barriers set up by society and does not reside solely within the individual. Biological impairment can result in intrinsic limitations, but external societal responses to impairment can lead to further limitations, such as isolation or rejection. Impairment is always socially mediated. Disabled children have been invisible and their voices have been rarely heard. The dominance of constructions of disabled children as passive objects of treatment, and the denial of the diversity of disability, have reinforced their marginalisation, exclusion and isolation. Sociocultural theory highlights that children make sense of the world in contexts where they jointly construct meaning with social partners, and where there is reciprocity and balance of power. When disabled children are fully included in community and educational contexts they have the opportunity to learn in collaboration with others. Warm and trusting relationships enhance opportunities for disabled children’s competencies to be stretched in their ZPDs. Identity emerges out of social practices. Impairment influences disabled children’s identity, but most disabled children see themselves as children first, even though their impairment may be part of their identity. Disabled children experience barriers to being when their psycho-emotional well-being is undermined by rejection or negative attitudes. Barriers to doing are those that prevent disabled children participating in the ordinary activities of everyday life. Human rights treaties (UNCRC and UNCRDP) emphasise the rights of disabled children to participate in society fully and to lead a full and decent life. Disabled children have the right to the best education possible and not to be discriminated against, and to attend a state school (but they are not guaranteed access to an early childhood centre). Despite the aspirations of the New Zealand Disability Strategy that children should be included in regular schools, and have their needs met fully, there are still pervasive barriers to access and full inclusion of disabled children in early childhood centres and schools. Disabled children’s competencies and understanding are often underestimated, but there is ample evidence that they have the capacity for agency within supportive contexts. Communication and social interaction with disabled children are important so that they can feel a sense of belonging in communities, but disabled children should be given space to express their own views and to be as independent as possible. Adults have the tendency to overprotect disabled

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children, and children are often not provided with enough stimulation and challenge. Disabled children do not usually see their impairment as a tragedy, though they experience its impact, and are aware of their difference. Reluctance on the part of adults to explain and discuss impairment with disabled and nondisabled children, or to model strategies of effective engagement with disabled children, inhibits their understanding and denies recognition of diversity and difference. Difference is sometimes experienced negatively when disabled children are laughed at, teased, bullied or called names, but disabled children can oppose and resist such treatment with the support of sympathetic adults, and peers can support and defend them from other children’s bullying. Families with disabled children play a crucial role as nurturers, protectors, supporters and advocates. Supporting families with disabilities formally and informally is essential, as having children with disability can be stressful and is often associated with financial difficulties. Early childhood centres are in a good position to provide support for parents with disabled children, but research suggests that parents often struggle to gain access to ECE for their children, and once access is gained, they have to stand up for their disabled children, and educate teachers and other children about how to cater for their children’s rights, learning and well-being. Even when teachers feel that they have inclusive centres, research shows that there is a hidden curriculum of discrimination and exclusion within the peer culture. Schools in New Zealand are supposedly committed to inclusive education, yet research reveals that disabled children are often marginalised and isolated at school. When teacher aides are employed to assist disabled children, though intended to support inclusion, this can further add to their isolation, since it can result in their being the total responsibility of the untrained teacher aide, while the teacher concentrates on teaching non-disabled children. Facilitative inclusion involves teachers treating disabled children as full participants, enabling them to be full members of classroom communities, and supporting their reciprocal engagement in classroom and peer activities. This does not mean denying children’s impairments, but making accommodations to the curriculum and classroom processes so that disabled children can participate fully.

Part V Sustaining and Nurturing Human Capacity

12

Families and Whānau

I have left this chapter until last because the focus of the book is children and childhood, whereas children’s experiences often are obscured under the ‘conceptual umbrella’ of the family, rather than being studied in their own right (James & James, 2012, p. 54). The embedding of children in family life has also tended to prioritise children’s dependency and under-emphasise their agency. Nevertheless I recognise that children’s lives are profoundly influenced by their family/whānau experiences and that our strongest memories of childhood are inextricably tied to our families. This chapter therefore discusses the role of families/whānau in providing early sensitive and responsive nurturance, and gradually increasing opportunities for children to be responsible and agentic. The internalisation of consistent warm parental messages and authoritative parenting facilitates children’s growing independence and autonomy. The chapter looks at the demographic trends in Aotearoa New Zealand (and other Western) families, the rapidly increasing diversity of family forms and the unique characteristics of Māori whānau. I also discuss the risks and supports for families, and the policies needed to support rather than to challenge family resilience, so that there is a positive impact on children’s well-being. There are many transitions in our lives between birth and adulthood, but the family probably provides the most stable and enduring feature of our lives. The family is a group of people who are irrationally committed to each other’s wellbeing, according to Bronfenbrenner (1979b). He argues that the family ‘is the most powerful structure known for nurturing and sustaining the capacity of human beings to function effectively in all domains of human activity – intellectual, social, emotional and physiological’ (p. 6). Concepts of the family have expanded and changed from being defined largely on the basis of blood relations, to being based on affection, commonality of interest and mutual support. The New Zealand Families Commission (cited by Cribb, 2009) identified four core functions of families:

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Family issues are inextricably linked to human rights issues – families can allow human dignity to be either fostered or denied (Sokalski, 1994). [T]he family, [is] the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth and well-being of all of its members and particularly children, [so it] should be afforded the necessary protection and assistance so that it can fully assume its responsibilities within the community. (Preamble, UNCRC, 1989)

Both the state and individual families have a responsibility to ensure that children have a sense of identity and belonging, and of being loved and appreciated, are provided with safety and security, and are supported in their developing intellectual and social competency. The erosion of many of the benefits and services traditionally offered by advanced welfare states places a significant burden on the caring and distributive functions of families. The state, however, if it has any kind of long-term vision extending beyond the next election, has a vital interest in supporting effective family functioning. Families encompass a huge range of different kinds of human experience, however, so it is unrealistic to see the family in idealised terms. Families do not live in splendid isolation from each other nor do their lives have a single, easily defined dimension. Families live in the full experience of human goodness, human frailty and human cruelty. They live in poverty and in wealth. They span across generations and geography. They can be the haven of cruelty, intolerance, abuse and fear. They are the source of continuity and active agents of innovative adaptation and change. (Sokalski, 1994, p. 12)

Children’s constructions of family

Children construct their own ideas of families through their own and others’ experiences. This conversation between nine-year-olds shows that caring contact is an important part of a family in children’s opinion, although a biological relationship is also mentioned: Thahera: I think that Sally and Karin are family and Sally and her father are family because they have all got the same flesh of blood, but I don’t think Sally and her husband (Karin’s father) are family because they’ve got nothing to do with each other anymore and they haven’t got the same blood of flesh.

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Alan: I don’t think all three of them are a family, because the little girl, I don’t think she’s a family with him because she don’t live with him or nothing and he might have forgotten everything about her and might even have gone and had another child or something. (O’Brien, Alldred, & Jones, 1996, p. 92)

Face-to-face contact, according to sociologist Hayley Davies (2012, p. 8), is ‘how children practice, imagine and constitute their closest relationships’. Her qualitative study suggests that being in direct contact with family members is an important aspect of children’s kinship relationships. Being able to engage in social interaction and sharing activities; having intimate knowledge of appearance, voices and bodies; and physical engagement such as hugging, laughing or tickling; are all important to achieve emotional closeness for these eight- to ten-year-old British children. Oliver: I know best my mum, my dad and my sister because I see them every day. My gran would be the next one because I see her every week or every two weeks. Hayley: So how well you know them depends on how often you see them does it? Oliver: Yeah, I know my dad, mum and sister very well. (Interview, Davies, 2012, p. 14)

Emotional connectedness is an important part of being in a family, and a study of Chinese adolescents (see Box 12.1) showed that the meanings of family (expressed in metaphor) encompassed both positive and negative emotions, and expectations about achievement and for financial payback (Chan, 2013). New Zealand children appear to have liberal views that diverse family forms count as real families (Anyan & Pryor, 2002; Rigg & Pryor, 2007). In a quantitative study of adolescents’ perceptions of families, young people were asked to indicate whether vignettes representing different scenarios describing groupings of people (married couples with and without children, lone-parent households, two women with a child etc.) were families (Anyan & Pryor, 2002). The majority of young people (80 per cent) agreed that groupings of at least one adult and children and extended family members constituted family. Almost all (99.6 per cent) thought that married parents with children were a family, while 92 per cent thought that a lone mother with children was a family. Cohabiting families were accepted by most (88.4 per cent) young people as families, and two women and a child were also considered families by 80 per cent. Legal status and two parents were therefore not important criteria for acceptance as a family, reflecting the high level of cohabitation (of which we will hear more) in New Zealand and social norms where legal marriage is less important. The presence

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Box 12.1 Chinese adolescents’ metaphors for their families Honey: We are inseparable, but ants like honey too, which means our family will always have some issues with itchiness. A warm place: My family members care about me very much. Because of this, I feel a lot of pressure to meet their expectations. A volcano: All my family members have complaints about each other. When the truth is about to be exposed, something happens to neutralise the disharmony, but we are always on the verge of an explosion. A wet market: We are like customers bargaining with a store owner for a discount. A loan company: When I was small, my parents offered me resources and financial support. However, now that I have grown up, I have to pay them back. Chan, 2013, p. 109.

of children and grandparents, however, was important in defining family for these young people. New Zealand primary and intermediate schoolchildren between 10 and 13-and-a-half years of age, from a range of cultural backgrounds, were asked about vignettes representing different family scenarios by Andrea Rigg and Jan Pryor (2007), partly replicating the previous study on adolescents. There was unanimity that married couples with a child were families, and other scenarios were generally acceptable as families, including cohabiting couples and children (88.3 per cent) and extended families (93.7 per cent). Cohabiting couples without children, however, were only accepted as families by 49.5 per cent and samesex couples with children by 48.6 per cent. Cultural context seemed to have little impact on children’s perceptions of families, and there were no major developmental differences from the views of adolescents in the previous study. When asked what families were, in an open-ended question, children mostly identified affective factors like love, care and support. The research suggests that the nuclear family did not dominate the perceptions of these New Zealand children, and that they had inclusive and realistic views of the nature of a family, reflecting the diversity in today’s societies.

The role of families in children’s learning

The earlier chapters in this book have emphasised sociocultural perspectives on human development, which suggest that children’s higher mental processes

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are formed by the scaffolding of children’s developing understanding through social interactions with skilled partners. If children are to acquire knowledge about their world and participate productively in it, it is crucial that they engage in shared experience of relevant scripts, events and objects with others who are close to them. Hence warm and reciprocal affective relationships and shared experience within families are likely to be fertile ground for the developing mind of the young child. Especially for young children, others need to help interpret and extend their understanding, so that they can gradually come to ‘know others’ minds’ (Bruner, 1995). Children’s developing social and intellectual skills are dependent on reciprocal interaction with more competent members of the culture, predominantly family members, who see the child as an agent and teach her to acquire the skills and knowledge valued by the culture. Families provide responsive learning contexts that allow children to gradually take more and more initiative in their own learning, and to work cooperatively on shared tasks with others. The key elements of the process are dialogue, social interaction and graduated assistance based on the child’s existing skills and knowledge. While in the early years the emphasis is on scaffolding and a dominant role for the more skilled other, responsive learning contexts move as quickly as possible to give the learner more opportunity for self-regulation, responsibility and initiative. This increasing independence of the child from help and control requires a supportive rather than restrictive family context. Research cannot provide an answer to the question of what the ‘best’ way of bringing up children is, because different approaches work better in different cultural contexts, for different families, children and in relation to different desired outcomes, though some general principles of effective parenting can be outlined (see chapter 2). On the whole New Zealand parents are likely to employ positive approaches like rewards, praise, reasoning and structuring the situation to socialise children (Lawrence & Smith, 2009). Through interviews with 100 parents of preschool children and collecting parent diaries, we found that most parents viewed discipline as a means of teaching their children about the boundaries of appropriate and inappropriate behaviour and that most (76 per cent) used authoritative (warm, firm, inductive) methods, or a mix of authoritative and permissive methods. Only about 4 per cent of parents employed authoritarian (demanding obedience without explanation) methods of controlling children. Our research suggested that: [T]he most common way that parents controlled their children’s behavior was through verbal instruction and explanation – telling them what to do or what not to do, explaining why, and backing this up with positive reinforcement

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Box 12.2 Parental voices about disciplinary issues I don’t use smacking and physical punishment but I find it difficult because that is the way that I was disciplined as a kid, and so the best thing to do is just learn from friends and the way I did it is maybe lots of treats and raise my voice quite a bit. (Participant 16, p. 18) Lots of praise, so we’ve used praise to sort of to try and shape his behaviour. Lots and lots of praise, particularly if he’s been regularly doing something not right and if he does it well catching him and ‘that’s brilliant’ and giving him a kiss or a cuddle. He loves doing the right thing – you can tell. (Participant 82, p. 20) When at the supermarket it’s just dreadful but I know other people have experienced this. I know that people are looking when you are dealing with a misbehaving child and that makes me more resolved that I have to be calm. This is my child, I have to stick to my guns. It is horrible in a public situation when a child loses it. I have trust that other people have been through this and they know what’s happening and it’s all okay. (Participant 71, p. 26) The number one issue for me, and it’s not a [child] one, it’s a social one, is how to reconcile the level of behaviour you want from your own kid when there are [others] around. You know in a social situation it’s a fine line between not offending parents around you. If there’s [child] and two others doing exactly the same thing when you pull your kid up the inference is that their kids are not that well behaved. We’ve had a couple of discussions about it and it’s hard. (Participant 5, p. 29) Lawrence & Smith, 2009.

and occasional use of mild punishment (the most common being time out). (Lawrence & Smith, 2009, p. 38)

Being a parent can be a stressful and demanding task at times. How parents cope with the demands on them is influenced by the personality of their child, the particular context, the way parents were brought up, the level of support they have and their other responsibilities (see Box 12.2). We asked parents of preschoolers about their daily hassles (using the Parenting Daily Hassles Rating scale). The most frequent hassle mentioned by parents (70 per cent) in our study

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was ‘continually cleaning up messes of toys or food’ (p. 32) but this was judged of high intensity by only one in five parents. Typical parenting tasks such as bathing, dressing, cleaning and meal times frequently caused hassles, but it was children’s behaviour such as ‘being nagged, whined at, complained at’ that tended to be associated with the highest intensity of hassles (Lawrence & Smith, 2009).

Trends in the New Zealand family

Ideas of a ‘normal family’ have evolved from the archetypal nuclear family to a much more diverse range of family forms. Diversity is now part of the social fabric of our society and old ideas of family have been shattered by a configuration of social and economic changes (Furstenberg, 1997). These changes are reflected in the liberal ideas that children have about family diversity (Anyan & Pryor, 2002; Rigg & Pryor, 2007). Such diversity, as well as reflecting different cultural attitudes and values, gives rise to a number of challenges for governments to provide support for families in the important role they play in society and to the families themselves (Cribb, 2009).

The changing family

There is no doubt that the characteristics of New Zealand families in the twentyfirst century are very different from those of families in the twentieth century, especially from the 1950s and 1960s. Perhaps the most dramatic change has been the move away from the nuclear family and the drop in family size. In the 1950s and 1960s the majority of families consisted of a married couple and their children, but by the 1970s more than a third of couples were living in de facto relationships. The total fertility rate in 1961 was 4.3 but it had declined to 2.1 in 2011 (Cribb, 2009; Pool, Dharmalingam, & Sceats, 2007; Statistics New Zealand, 2011). But there are some other changes to the family that constitute important trends, and these are outlined below. These statistics come from the Families Commission (2012), Rosemary Goodyear and Angela Fabian (2012); Ian Pool et al., (2007); Ministry of Social Development (2008); and Statistics New Zealand (2004, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c).

Later marriage

People are delaying marriage until they are older, so that in 2011 the median age of first marriage was 29.9 (for men) and 28.3 (for women), compared to 26.9 and 24.6 in 2005, and 23.5 and 21.2 in 1971. Māori mothers have their children younger. The median age of first birth in 2008 for Māori mothers was 25.6 years, similar to but slightly younger than Pacific mothers (27.3), but considerably younger than Asian mothers (30.3) and European/Pākehā mothers (30.9).

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Types of union

Marriage rates are declining. In 2011 the general marriage rate (number of marriages per 1,000 population) was 11.8, compared to 19.6 in 1991, and 45.5 in 1971. The majority of partners were legally married in 2006, but there were an increasing number of de facto relationships. The Civil Union Act 2004 came into force in 2005 and in 2007 there were 317 such unions registered, 80 per cent of which were same-sex couples. There are an increasing number of de facto couples, with 35 per cent of partnered people aged 15 to 44 years not legally married in 2006. For 15- to 19 year-olds living in partnerships, 90 per cent of women were in de facto relationships. There has also been an increase (but an unknown number) of couples in Living Apart Together relationships (where couples live separately).

Divorce rates

Divorce rates have been steady but gradually declining recently after a sharp decline in the early 1980s. There was a divorce rate of 9.8 divorces for every 1,000 marriages in 2011 compared to 11.3 divorces per 1,000 in 2008. About a third of New Zealanders who married in 1986 had divorced by their silver wedding (25 year) anniversary. The median age of divorce is increasing – it was 45.4 for men and 42.8 for women in 2011, compared to 41.9 and 29.3 in 2001. Remarriage rates after divorce have increased – from 16 per cent of marriages in 1971 to 31 per cent in 2010.

Fertility rates

New Zealand’s fertility rate has been steady and close to replacement rates, with minor fluctuations since the 1980s, after a very rapid drop around 1960. The total fertility rate was 2.04 in 2012, compared to 2.12 in 2011 (4.3 in 1961 and 3.1 in 1921). Māori fertility rates were the highest at 2.78 in 2006, compared to 2.95 for Pasifika, 1.52 for Asian and 1.92 for Pākehā. The New Zealand fertility rate is higher than the rates in many other developed countries, even though it is only just at replacement. The Organisation for Economic Development (OECD) average in 2005 was 1.6. The rates in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Australia, England and Wales were 1.9 in 2007 and 2008. It has been suggested that our higher fertility rate than other Western countries is due to the high birth rate of Māori and Pasifika families, but Pool et al. (2007) point out that this is counteracted by lower fertility in Asian families.

Families with children

There has been a decline in the proportion of two-parent families – 89.6 per cent of families with children had two parents in 1976, but in 2006 this had declined to 28.1 per cent. Conversely the number of families with children headed by a single

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parent has increased – from 10.4 per cent in 1976 to 28.1 per cent in 2006, though this increase is levelling off. New Zealand has the fourth highest proportion of children in sole-parent households in the OECD, with only the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada having a higher proportion.

Ex-nuptial births

The number of children born to women who are not married has risen markedly from just under 10 per cent in 1964 to almost half of all live births in 2010. Many of the children born in 1964 to married parents, however, were conceived before marriage. This large increase is mainly due to births to cohabiting couples but also to sole-parent families. New Zealand has the ninth highest rate of ex-nuptial births in the OECD.

Age distribution

Children aged zero to 14 years made up 20.7 per cent of the population in 2009 (a decrease from 22.9 per cent in 1999). The Māori population is much younger than the total population with a median age of 22.9 (in June 2009), 13.6 years younger than the median for the total population. (The 2006 census showed the following figures for population ethnicity: European/Pākehā 67.6, Māori 14.6, Asian 9.2, Pacific 6.9.)

Women working

The percentage of women in the labour force increased from 49 per cent to 58 per cent between 1991 and 2011, although women are more likely than men to be working part-time. In 2006 two-thirds of all mothers with children were in employment, an increase from 40 per cent in 1976. The majority of part-time workers (77.4 per cent in 2008) were women in 2008. Two out of every three dual-parent families were both working in 2009 (up from one out of three in the early 1980s). Fewer parents from single-parent families worked – 35 per cent of single parents worked full-time but 90 per cent of them earned below the median income (compared to 55 per cent in dual-parent families).

Housing

In 2009 37 per cent of children (compared to 32 per cent in 2007) lived in households with high outgoings-to-income (OTI) ratio. (OTIs are considered high when a household spends more than 30 per cent of its income on housing.) There has been a decline in home ownership. The percentage of owner-occupied homes (for 30- to 49-year-olds) declined from 77 per cent in 1986 to 65 per cent by 2001. New Zealand has a high rate of household crowding and high average household size compared to Australia, England or Canada. Māori households

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are more likely to be crowded than other households (13.5 per cent compared to 5.1 per cent).

Poverty

The child poverty rate (on the ‘moving line’ measure which uses comparisons to the median income) increased from 22 per cent in 2007 to 25 per cent in 2009. Children in single-parent families are more likely to experience poverty than those in two-parent families. Ninety per cent of sole-parent families had incomes below the median in 2009, compared to 55 per cent for two-parent families. Almost half of all poor children are from single-parent families. Children from Māori and Pasifika families are more likely to experience poverty. While one in six Pākehā families lived in poor households, one in four Pacific and one in three Māori children live in such households. To summarise the statistics, children make up a fifth of the population (but more in the Māori population), one out of four children live in a single-parent family, people are having children later, divorce rates and marriage rates are steady but falling slightly, and de facto partnerships increasing. Our average fertility rate (higher for Māori) is at the replacement rate of 2.04. (According to Pool et al., 2007, the replacement rate is actually 2.1.) The majority of children have both of their parents working, but their mothers are more likely to be working part-time. Almost half of children in single-parent families have very low incomes, while a quarter of Pacific families and a third of Māori families do. These family changes have reflected ‘massive shifts in the value systems relating not only to union formation but also to households and wider family relationships’ (Pool et al., 2007, p. 229). The family today is much more diverse than in the past, and includes many different forms, with nuclear family dominance declining and living together, living apart together, single parenting and blended families increasing. Single parents do not fit the stereotype of social isolates headed by very young women, since most single parents are not young but between 30 and 49 years, and many are embedded in other households (Pool et al., 2007). There is much greater ethnic family diversity as a result of Asian and Pasifika migration. About a fifth of children in 2006 had more than one ethnicity (Cribb, 2009). The shift to later childbearing seems to be related to the longer time spent in tertiary education, which has the effect of parents having older offspring at home for longer, often till their retirement. A major change towards increasing diversification of family forms is occurring with the legalisation of marriage between same-sex partners. New Zealand took this step in April 2013, when the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill was passed in the New Zealand Parliament by 77 votes to 44, in a conscience

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vote (New Zealand Herald, 17 April 2013). New Zealand was at the time the 12th country to legalise gay and lesbian marriage, and we were followed in May by legalisation in France and in June by the United Kingdom (New Zealand Herald, 17 July 2013), bringing the total countries where gay and lesbian marriage is legal to 14. The new Act came into force in New Zealand on 16 August 2013 and this is doing much to recognise the reality that lesbian and gay families live in much the same sort of loving and committed relationships that occur in other dual-parent forms. Children from gay and lesbian families are just as healthy and well adjusted as children from heterosexual families (Hicks, 2011; Stacey, 2009). Almost without exception they [psychologists and sociologists] conclude, albeit in defensive tones, that lesbian and gay parents do not produce inferior, nor even particularly different kinds of children than other parents. Generally they find no significant differences in school achievement, social adjustment, mental health, gender identity, or sexual orientation between the two groups of children. (Stacey, 2009, p. 491)

These diverse and changing family forms provide a challenge, however, to professionals such as teachers, nurses or social workers who work with children and their families where heteronormative discourses (based on the assumption that all families are heterosexual) are prevalent. Researcher Nicola Surtees (2013) believes that inclusive practices, recognising new and non-normative family forms, are essential to give all children and families a feeling of well-being and belonging in early childhood centres. It will mean ensuring curriculum experiences (such as art, storytelling and drama) and materials and resources (such as posters, pictures, puzzles, books and the ‘family corner’) represent diverse ways of being and doing family. (Surtees, 2013, p. 54)

The same adjustments to their practice and resources should also be made in health, social work and other agencies that work with families. Not all of the changes within the family are related to changes in individual attitudes. Government actions have also had a significant effect on families. ‘After the radical fiscal and financial restructuring of the late 1980s, central government in the early 1990s introduced far-reaching bodies of social policy that affected almost every aspect of family life’ (Pool et al., 2007). For example, economic and social circumstances have made it almost impossible for many young families to be able to buy a house, and measures to reduce ‘benefit dependency’ have forced beneficiaries, particularly sole parents, into work. It is important that government policies support families to continue having children. Theoretically, low fertility levels can threaten the very existence of

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countries. For example, if current levels of fertility in Italy (about 1.3) were to continue, the population size would drop in just 100 years to only 14 per cent of its current level. Many women in countries with low levels of fertility have to choose between family life or a career. Childbearing is often avoided because it can generate insecurity about the future. In contrast the Nordic countries and others with family-friendly social policies have very healthy fertility rates. The long-term pattern of low fertility in Aotearoa New Zealand and many other parts of the world is a threat to population replacement, one of the most fundamental functions of the family (Pool et al., 2007). A growing global economy needs a well-educated workforce and it is largely the family’s capacity to support children’s early development that determines whether this can be achieved. It is not just the individual child or family well-being which is at stake, but the wellbeing of our entire society. Neoliberal economics often assumes that children are the private responsibilities of their parents and (as they are not producers in the market) are of little social value. If people with children work they are expected to put the workplace first, to be available out of hours, not to have sick children or cope with children on holiday. Marketisation and privatisation means that only those who can afford to pay for it will have early childhood education, government support for families will only go to poor families, and early childhood centres are prone to cost-cutting. The cost of early childhood education already restricts access for poor families, and reinforces and increases inequalities. If there are further cuts to the level of support, or to the universality of early childhood education and other provisions which affect families, there might be marked consequences for people’s propensity to have children, with potentially very negative effects on our future population.

The Māori family

We tend to talk about the ‘average family’ in New Zealand, but this can neglect the unique values and practices of the Māori family. Māori family history reflects colonisation, the loss of its land and livelihood, the introduction of Christianity, and the change from rural to urban living. In Māori society, the primary social grouping among Māori tribes was the ‘hapū’, consisting of a number of ‘whanaunga’ or ‘whānau’ (kindred closely related by birth), of up to 30 individuals who usually lived and ate together. Joan Metge (1995) shows that today’s whānau have many continuities with pre-European whānau. The five main functions of the whānau by descent are providing support and help towards each other (economic and moral); collective responsibility for the care and rearing of children; care and management of property; organisation of whānau hui (meetings); and responsibility for dealing with internal problems and conflicts. Māori today, however, choose whether or

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not to take membership in a whānau of this sort, and are not a homogeneous group of individuals for whom the relevance of traditional values is the same. With the renewed emphasis on Māori cultural identity in recent years, there have been many new kinds of whānau, which incorporate Māori ways (Metge, 1995). Jenny Te Paa, the Principal of Te Rau Kahikatea, introduced her own whānau in this quotation: I am a child of Te Rarawa, the tribal group located roughly between Hokianga and Kaitaia. Geographically, I identify most closely with the community of Ahipara. My mother is the eldest daughter of Ephraim and Hariata Te Paa’s 16 children, therefore, I am Māori. From my mother’s brothers and sisters, I have 15 aunts and uncles plus many, many cousins. Then of course there are the whanaunga who count as ‘family’ because through whakapapa and through intimate knowledge, we are inextricably connected. The parameters of that network are so vast and so complex I would not even begin to guess how many I am talking about because there are my grandmother’s Catholic relations from Pawarenga and my grandfather’s Anglican and Ratana relations from Whangape, Te Kao, Awanui, Kaitaia and Ahipara. This then is my ‘Te Paa’ side. [Te Paa continues with a description of her Pākehā side]. (Te Paa, 1996, p. 20)

The hapū, rather than the individual, owned food, housing and land in traditional Māori society. Despite the migration of many Māori to the cities, Māori society is still largely whānau-based, with wider kin more often living together and kin remaining the basis for social life. Marriage in traditional times was generally arranged by the hapū and seen as a contract between kin groups rather than individuals. Traditional Māori practices were undermined by the arrival of missionaries, who frowned on arranged marriages, polygamy and premarital sex. Although Christian marriage slowly overtook traditional marriage, there remained widespread involvement of the hapū in approval for marriages. The word ‘family’ has a different meaning in Māori contexts (Metge, 1995; Metge & Kinloch, 1978). To Pākehā, family tends to mean the small nuclear family of parents and children, but to Māori the family/whānau normally refers to a much larger group of kinfolk. Pākehā tend to see the parental relationship as exclusive, with rights and responsibility focused on the mother and father. A much less individualistic and exclusive interpretation of the parent–child relationship is made by Māori parents, so that children are seen as not only belonging to their parents but to a wider kinship group. The network of affection and attachment is spread wide compared to the European emphasis on personal bonding. According to the traditional Māori way of thinking, parents do not have a ‘natural’ right to raise their own children. Traditionally, kaumātua often decided who would bring up children (and how), and had important rights, such as the

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naming or adoption of children, with little reference to parents (Metge, 1995). The shared parenting of children, when it functions effectively, makes the Māori pattern much less stressful on individual parents since others are ready to help. Māori parents expect others in the whānau to do for their children whatever they do themselves. ‘Such people do not hesitate to check, console, rescue or instruct youngsters in the presence as well as the absence of their parents’ (Metge & Kinloch, 1978, p. 25). Metge (1995) gives several examples of this shared parenting from her interviews of Māori informants. The houses were open to all the children. Everybody moved around, we moved together ... you didn’t worry where you had your meals, the closest house was where you went. They were all the same people. Anyone who went past was invited in for a feed. (Wiki Thomas, quoted in Metge, 1995, p. 151)

The treatment of infants in Polynesian families up to the age of 18 months was intensely loving. In the traditional situation, the babies got a lot of close attention, cuddling and stimulation. ‘Unrestrained warmth and love’ surrounded the child in the rural village Polynesian culture (Metge, 1995). Unfortunately, urban Māori families became more like Pākehā families, with less maternal contact, a practice of leaving children to cry and less tendency to breastfeed (Ritchie & Ritchie, 1979). The consequences of the dilution of Māori values about babies in urban areas are potentially harmful, especially when combined with poor economic resources. Along with early indulgence of infants, it is common for Māori families to expect children to become independent rather quickly, from the age of two onwards, considerably earlier than is the Pākehā pattern. This rather abrupt transition toward autonomy pushes children into a world of peers and responsibilities. Often older siblings take over aspects of the parental role and play a major part in socialising younger children. This tends to dilute the intensity of parental attachment and gives children a greater affiliation towards the peer group rather than a desire for individual achievement. In Māori culture, the peer group is tremendously important and a separate sphere from the adult world. Children have less contact with the adult world and are inclined to be more independent than Pākehā children. From an early age they share responsibilities and problems with each other. A type of consensus leadership and solidarity develops in many peer groups. Children of all ages have contact with each other. The Western ideals of individual achievement and competition conflict with Māori ideas of working together with others and social interdependence. Peer status does not depend as much as it does among Pākehā children on personal achievement. When Māori children are in a school system based on European dress, books, language, customs and values, and at the same time devoted to achievement goals

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they do not necessarily share, problems of alienation arise (Bishop, 2008). The development of the kōhanga reo and kura kaupapa Māori movements, which educate and care for Māori children within a familiar whānau-based context of Māori language, values and tradition, avoids the alienating aspects of the Pākehā system. Another kaupapa Māori project is Whānau Ora, an inclusive approach to providing health services focusing on the whānau as a whole, rather than individual family members, and involving integrated government agencies (Durie, 2012). Despite these initiatives, there are many Māori children in mainstream schools, so it is important to increase the degree of biculturalism within the whole school system in order to realise the rights of indigenous children. Durie has proposed a set of capacities to foster healthy whānau development: It includes the capacity to care, manaakitanga; the capacity to share, tohatohatia; the capacity for guardianship, pupuri taonga; the capacity to empower, whakamana; and the capacity to plan ahead, whakatokoto tikanga. A key conclusion is that there is no one typical family. Although two-parent families remain the most frequent, a plurality of forms exist and to a greater or lesser extent fulfill the functions of familyhood. (M. Durie, 1997, p. 21, cited by Tomlins-Jahnke & Durie, 2008, p. 8)

A study of conversations among Māori families by Huia Tomlins-Jahnke and Durie (2008) showed that Māori identified strongly as Māori and demonstrated their cultural values in their conversations. For example, parents and grandparents talked about supporting and engaging with their children, and demonstrated Māori values such as whanaungatanga, manaakitanga and tautoko. Children’s identity was underpinned through talk about kin relationships and whakapapa connections. Whanaungatanga (valuing kinship) involved frequent talk about and being in contact with relatives. Manaakitanga (obligations to kin) was reinforced by talk about staying with, looking after or helping out close kin, and of older siblings caring for younger ones. Tautoko (giving support to others) was apparent in many conversations. For example, children were expected to help their whānau (an example was children accompanying their mother to visit their Poppa in hospital), and to contribute to whānau work (like doing the dishes or folding the washing). This quotation from Merimeri Penfold demonstrates the meaning of tautoko well: My siblings ... numbered 12 ... Caring for such numbers was demanding for my mother ... Under such circumstances I grew up very quickly. I became my mother’s daily chief help at a very early age. I fetched and carried, cradling or feeding the baby, watching or adding wood to the fire, removing and replacing flax floor-mats when tidying the house, and gathering the washing from the line fence (Penfold, 1998, p. 82). (cited by Tomlins-Jahnke & Durie, 2008, p. 15)

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Penfold’s whānau is an example of the large family size characteristic of Māori families for the first half of the twentieth century. Fertility rates, however, began to decline in the 1960s with increasing urbanisation and availability of contraception (Jackson & Pool, 1996). The average completed family size fell from 6 to 2.25 in one generation – indeed, the drop in fertility was very rapid on an international scale. The Māori population still has a more youthful structure than the Pākehā population, with the median age for Māori in 2012 being 22 for men and 24.5 for women, compared to 35.7 and 38.2 for the non-Māori population (Statistics New Zealand, 2012b). Economic restructuring and rising rates of unemployment in the 1980s (from 12 per cent in 1984 to 24 per cent in 1991) had a severe impact on Māori in the late twentieth century (Metge, 1995). More recently there has been a financial recession, triggered by rising credit losses on mortgages in the United States in 2007 (Te Puni Kōkiri, 2009). Despite an increase in Māori school leavers with school qualifications, up from 60 per cent in 1996 to 90 per cent in 2007), the recession has had a disproportionatly negative impact on Māori, probably because they are over-represented in export-focused occupations such as agriculture, forestry and fishing, and in lower-skilled occupations. Because Māori are more likely to rent than own homes, to live in crowded houses, and to have lower job security and wages, they are at particular risk from economic recession (Te Puni Kōkiri, 2009). This results in considerable stress for Māori families, who suffer an undue amount of family adversity, related to unemployment, low income, imprisonment, family breakdown, poor health and housing, youth suicide, road traffic injuries, and low educational expectations and achievement. At the heart of Māori initiatives to achieve cultural renaissance and address current inequalities is tino rangatiratanga (self-determination), the right to pursue one’s own destiny within the context of relationships with others (Bishop, 2008). Tino rangatiratanga in this sense is an ability to control the way the world enters into our minds, bodies and daily lives – that is, to make sense and meaning of the world at the individual level and at the cultural level and from a given position that is Māori. (Skerrett, 2007, p. 6)

Central to enabling the survival of Māori cultural identity and the survival of te ao Māori (the Māori world) is reviving the language (te reo Māori). Skerrett points out that it is not enough to learn a few Māori words, ‘a bit of poi here and a haka there’ (p. 8), but it is essential that the language is revernacularised, and this means ensuring that children have access to oracy and literacy in Māori through participation in bicultural and bilingual (or immersion) early childhood centres. Both kōhanga reo and kaupapa Māori schools give control to Māori, and

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allow tamariki to be socialised into Māori ways of speaking, living and thinking. Skerrett argues that children brought up in this way will be prepared to become leaders of Māoridom in the future.

An ecological model of the family

An ecological model of the family shows that it is embedded within other overarching systems of influence (Bronfenbrenner, 1979a). The well-being of children is affected profoundly by events occurring in settings in which they are never present. The individual family is the most proximate ecological system influencing children’s development through increasingly complex social interactions over time (Mistry & Wadsworth, 2011). The family microsystem is nested within a wider framework of social and economic influences that either support or undermine the capacity of the microsystem to support children’s wellbeing. At all of Bronfenbrenner’s levels of the environment (micro-, exo-, macroand meso-), the family influences child development, and the family is in turn influenced by the rest of society. Ecological theory, based on principles of risk and resiliency, provides a useful conceptual model for analysing factors that impact on family functioning (Zimmerman & Arunkumar, 1994). Resilience is the ability of individuals and families to function normatively and recover from adversity in the face of risk, although it does not eliminate risk (Jensen & Fraser, 2011). It is not a static trait but changes dynamically with time and circumstances (Kalil, 2001). Resilience does not come from rare and special qualities, but from the everyday magic of ordinary, normative human resources in the minds, brains and bodies of children, and in their families and relationships and in their communities. (Masten, 2001, p. 227)

Ecological theory suggests that children’s well-being is influenced by children’s individual characteristics, their immediate contexts of home, school and community, and the wider contexts influencing their family functioning (such as parental employment) and the social policy context (state support for families). Risk factors are those that increase the likelihood that children will experience problems, and protective factors are those that help children prevail against adversity (Jensen & Fraser, 2011). Risk factors come from the environment (such as poverty or disorganised neighbourhoods, and unemployment), interpersonal and social factors (family conflict or ineffective parenting) and individual factors (alcohol or drug abuse, mental illness). The greatest danger to children within families is an accumulation of adversities – looking at one stressor alone is not useful because there is often a combination of overlapping risk factors (Garmezy, 1994).

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The family microsystem lies within a set of both supporting and undermining influences, some of which are within the family and some outside. How well the family functions in its child-rearing role is considerably affected by these influences. In the microsystem of the family, parenting varies from being sensitive, responsive and authoritative to being inconsistent, coercive or neglectful. Parenting outcomes are determined by the balance and accumulation of stresses or supports. Factors emanating from forces external or internal to the family may push parenting in either one direction or the other. Resilient children are socially competent, have problem-solving skills, are autonomous, and have a sense of purpose and goals for the future. Becoming resilient is more likely for children embedded in family, school or community settings with certain characteristics. These include caring and support from parents, teachers, peers and social groups; high expectations for maturity; learning and success being valued; and opportunity for participation and involvement. Psychiatrist Beatrix Hamburg (cited by Gates, 1996) lists seven conditions that foster healthy development and resiliency: 1. an intact, cohesive nuclear family 2. a multi-faceted parent–child relationship including consistent loving and nurturing 3. supportive extended family members 4. a supportive community, neighbourhood or cultural context 5. parents’ previous experience with child-rearing 6. a child’s ability to perceive positive future opportunities 7. a predictable adult environment. Despite an intact nuclear family having been identified as fostering healthy development, it is incorrect to assume that all single-parent families or other family forms (such as blended families) are harmful to development. (See later section on Family Stress related to separation and divorce).

Family stress factors Poverty New Zealand has disturbingly high and increasing levels of poverty, and there is abundant evidence that it has a devastating effect on children’s well-being. The government set up an Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty in 2012, but it remains to be seen if any action eventuates. One in four New Zealand children were experiencing poverty in 2009, and children in single-parent, Māori or Pasifika families were more likely to be living in poor households. New Zealand was ranked 29th out of 30 countries for child health and safety in 2009, and we have moved from being in the top third for most child well-being indicators in the

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1970s, to the bottom third in the early twenty-first century. Our infant mortality rate is twice that of Iceland (5.1 per 1,000 compared to 2.3 per 1,000), and our infant mortality rate in the most deprived neighbourhoods is worse than that of similar neighbourhoods in all but two OECD countries (Mexico and Turkey). There are myriad other concerning statistics showing that we are doing very poorly in terms of injuries to children, and rates of pneumonia, whooping cough and child maltreatment. This alarming picture occurs within the context of increasing financial pressure (unemployment and low wages), widening socioeconomic disparities, increasing single parenthood, high rates of abuse and neglect, and low government investment in early childhood education. We have high rates of child poverty and income inequality compared to other OECD countries (Public Health Association Advisory Committee Report, 2010; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). New Zealand is 18th out of 23 OECD countries for inequalities, and this high rate of inequality is linked to a larger number of health and social problems, including child well-being, across the whole society (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). So inequality affects everyone – not just the poor. Poverty does not deterministically result in poor outcomes, and some families survive poverty without outcomes for children being negative. Nevertheless, there is overwhelming evidence that poverty during childhood (particularly early childhood) constitutes a risk that has impacts across the life span, setting off a developmental trajectory which is cumulative, affecting every conceivable kind of health outcome from mortality rates to the incidence of many kinds of illness, as well as educational and life outcomes (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002; Duncan, ZiolGuest, & Kalil, 2010; Evans, 2004; Hertzman & Wiens, 1996; Williams Shanks & Danziger, 2011). A longitudinal study of 3,057 children between the ages of five and ten showed significant effects of family income on child behaviour and achievement over time (Smith & Brooks-Gunn, 1996). The study controlled for maternal education which does have an effect – but this disappeared after income had been controlled for. Poverty was a much more powerful influence than family structure: almost all of the effects on achievement were due to income and not family structure. J.)R. Smith and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn (1996) compared the effects of different levels of income on developmental outcomes. There were five levels of income: deep poverty, poverty, near poverty, middle and affluent. While it is not surprising that the effects of deep poverty were devastating, even near-poor families experienced significantly poorer child outcomes than middle-income or affluent families. The study suggested that the earlier that low income occurred the stronger the effect it had over time, and that moving people from one level to the next level up was likely to have a significant positive effect on children. Hence early efforts to address income inequity can have a long-term effect on children’s opportunities.

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From an ecological perspective, the effects of poverty can be seen to be a result of a combination of an accumulation of negative environmental factors rather than a single underlying agent or process (Evans, 2004). Gary Evans reviewed studies showing the environmental variables most associated with child poverty. His review shows that children in low-income families are more often exposed to negative psychosocial circumstances, such as family violence, family disruption, violent communities, and punitive and under-stimulating parenting. Low income exposes children to more physical risk through poor housing quality, air pollution, lack of food security and unsafe traffic. Poor families also have fewer and less supportive social networks and live in neighbourhoods with less social capital. Evans argues that the combination of multiple risks is a unique feature of childhood poverty. Compared with middle- and high-income children, low-income children are disproportionately exposed to more adverse social and physical environmental conditions. They suffer greater family turmoil, violence and separation from their parents. Their parents are more nonresponsive and harsh, and they live in more chaotic households, with fewer routines, less structure, and greater instability. (Evans, 2004, p. 88)

Economic hardship is gruelling and demoralising, heightening depression and conflictual marital relationships, and diminishing parents’ capacity to engage in warm and affectionate parenting (Mistry & Wadsworth, 2011). Clearly the macrosystem of government economic and social policies influences levels of child poverty. Child poverty rates were much lower (about half ) current rates in the 1980s, and the neoliberal reforms involving higher unemployment and cuts in welfare benefits were instrumental in a rise in poverty in the 1990s and early 2000s (Expert Advisory Group, 2012). The introduction of Working for Families, a system of tax credits in 2004, resulted in an increase in the disposable income of poor families (except for beneficiaries), and a fall in rates of child poverty between 2004 and 2007. Reducing inequalities is a priority because: The evidence shows that reducing inequality is the best way of improving the quality of the social environment, and so the real quality of life for all of us. ... It is clear that greater equality, as well as improving the wellbeing of the whole population, is also the key to national standards and how countries perform in a whole lot of different fields. (Wilkinson & Pickett, p. 29)

Economic forces have a direct impact on social services (exosystems) as well as on families. Rates of child abuse and neglect increase in economic hard times, but the services become less able to respond to family problems. Agencies have much larger case-loads, are likely to direct their services to the most extreme cases, and

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are unlikely to be able to do any preventive work with families at risk (Cicchetti & Toth, 1993). Poverty increases the number of children entering state care and protection. When financial cuts are made to social services this usually results in continual restructuring, inability to engage in good preventive social work, staff turnover, low staff morale, inability to follow children who move geographically, problems with family group conferences, slowness to act on complaints, and inadequate care and protection for children. Despite government concerns about the number of vulnerable children in New Zealand, as evidenced by Green and White Papers in 2012, recent attempts to force beneficiaries with children into work are unlikely to reduce child poverty. A coercive policy was introduced in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2012 to make education compulsory from the age of three for the children of welfare beneficiaries. If the children of beneficiaries are not in early childhood education by the age of three, parents will have their benefits halved. Apart from the negative effects of such an income cut for children, the policy singles out single parents as not able to make choices for their children, or to stay at home with them if they wish. The policy, while purporting to be for the benefit of children, is designed to force parents into work. It is unlikely to be successful if overseas experience is anything to go by. Welfare ‘reforms’ in the United States designed to force mothers into work, showed that they did not reduce mothers’ stress or hardship or improve outcomes for children. Poorly paid, unskilled work, or work with fluctuating hours, resulted in child behaviour problems (Pecora & Harrison-Jackson, 2011). Welfare agencies that restrict entry, push welfare exits and offer only a workfirst message exacerbate rather than help the situation of many poor families. The recent recession could bring harsher indictments of the effects of welfare reform as the number of vulnerable families with access to neither work nor cash assistance grew as employment and earnings fell (Pecora & Harrison-Jackson, 2011, p. 43).

Parental separation or divorce

Ecological theory emphasises the importance of transitions (Bronfenbrenner, 1979a) because they have a profound effect on the microsystems (immediate contexts) for human development. Transitions involve changes in children’s position in the ecological environment as a result of a change in role or setting. Settings (or microsystems) include the child’s roles, activities and interpersonal relationships, all of which change when a child’s parents end or change their relationship. A parental breakup is often accompanied by emotional and psychological upheaval for both parents, which is likely to change their relationship and interactions with children (some temporarily and some permanently). Also,

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material changes (such as one parent moving away, loss of income, moving house or schools, mother going to work) can affect the roles, activities and relationships of the child within the microsystem. The connections between different settings (the mesosystem) are a crucial ecological influence on children whose parents separate. If mesosystem connections, such as between the separated parents’ families, are warm and reciprocal, and there is a balance of power between the people in the different settings, children are more likely to move between settings and benefit from the connections. If there is no relationship or a hostile relationship between the settings the children move between (e.g. resident or non-resident parents), there can be a negative effect on children’s ongoing development. Bronfenbrenner says that there is a need for the role demands of different settings to be compatible, which requires a positive orientation and goal consensus between the settings. Transitions between settings are not necessarily negative, however, and if they provide opportunity for the child to engage in a variety of joint activities with different people they can be positive for development. Separation or divorce is not one discrete event but a complex series of events and processes that begins long before the parents move apart and continues long after. These events and processes are unique for each individual and family within their networks of family, friends, work and culture. For some families, separation may involve the gradual disintegration of a relationship, in others there may be a sudden unexpected breakdown. Sarah said, ‘we just saw our whole house and cats and dogs and pets and family members disappear – all just went “bang”. Everybody was gone’ (Sarah’s story, in Smith & Taylor, 1996, p. 68). In general, though, the breakdown of a relationship is more likely to be gradual, even though there may be dramatic immediate effects for children. Marital dissolution is a process that unfolds over time, beginning when couples are still married and ending years after the legal divorce. The legal divorce itself has few effects on children. Instead, the short-term stresses and long-term strains that precede and follow marital disruption increase the risk. (Amato, 2010, p. 656)

Sometimes separation triggers a series of further adverse events, such as economic decline, parenting stress, loss of a parent (for a child) and psychological problems such as depression. In other situations separation may provide a welcome relief from unsatisfying relationships and long-standing problems between parents, yet provide continuity of relationships for the child with both parents. Many of the problems associated with parental separation can also occur in intact families, so there are problems with untangling the effects of divorce from

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other family processes. There are many confounding variables in divorce research and all of it is correlational. Much of it has been carried out overseas, particularly in the United States and England, and looks at legal marriage and divorce, even though co-habitation is a very common relationship in New Zealand today. Despite its limitations, divorce research does have some consistent and replicated findings. There is a large literature on the immediate and long-term effects of marital disruption on children, which provides a consistent view that divorce has mild to moderate negative effects in many realms of behaviour (Ahrons, 2007; Amato, 2000, 2006, 2010; Hetherington, 2006; Kelly, 2007; Pryor & Rogers, 2001). Overall, the studies show that parental divorce is associated with behaviour problems (either withdrawal or acting out), lower achievement and problems in parent–child (especially father–child) relationships during childhood, and poorer psychological well-being (low life satisfaction and depression), family well-being (lower marital quality), socioeconomic well-being (educational achievement, income and occupational status) and physical health in adulthood. These negative effects are greater in older studies and in children in primary and secondary years (compared to early childhood and young adulthood). There are a number of possible reasons why divorce affects children adversely (Amato, 2000). The parental loss perspective suggests that losing a parent results in fewer resources for children when a breakup occurs, and reduces the availability of emotional support, information and guidance, monitoring and control, and appropriate role models. Divorce usually involves one parent leaving the home and varying amounts of continuing contact. Living separately often provides much more role stress on parents, because there is less possibility of sharing or exchanging tasks, including childcare. Multiple task involvement characterises many of the parents who have lost a partner. Another explanation for the negative effects of divorce is that it is accompanied by a decline in parents’ psychological adjustment. This can result in less warm, nurturing, and attentive parenting and more irritable, unsupportive, erratic discipline. One of the parents in our study (Smith, Taylor, Gollop et al., 1997) described her parenting after her separation: I got to the point where, when things were really stressful I was actually hitting him, it was mostly cos I was really angry and frustrated that I couldn’t ... things couldn’t be better ... I got to the point where I realised that I was, I would smack him for something that was just a normal thing like being noisy or something ... I’d be smacking him quite hard, you know so you got a sore hand afterwards, and I felt really sick about it and I realised that that wasn’t where I wanted to go with my parenting. (Jayne’s transcript,1 Smith et al., 1997)

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It is not inevitable for divorce to result in more disturbed parenting, and there are many ways that negative effects may be ameliorated. Divorce may lead to escape from conflict, building better relationships and an opportunity for personal growth (Hetherington, 2006), as shown in the following example of a mother who was very unhappy and depressed before the breakup but feels empowered and positive about her life now. She thought that this had been valuable for the children. I am so well ... it’s like I have come out of my shell ... there’s a little kernel in me that has been there all the time and suddenly I am bursting forth, and I’m empowered and I do things for myself ... I have much more initiative and I enjoy life ... [The children] they see me as an example of what can be done. And they see me operating and functioning in a happy [life] ... I’m hoping that I can give them an idea that’s important, that zest of life, that enthusiasm to do something and not to bow under from difficulties. (Julie’s transcript, Smith et al., 1997)

The research overwhelmingly supports the significance of conflict between parents in explaining the negative effects of divorce, and that these effects can continue for many years. Parental conflict is a potent influence on the developing child that has been linked to antisocial and aggressive behaviour and emotional problems. Growing up with chronically discordant parents appears to increase the risk of multiple problems for children in adulthood, including low psychological wellbeing, restricted social support networks, weak ties with fathers, and discord in children’s own marriages. (Amato, 2006, p. 197)

Often fights continue after separation when issues of custody, access and property are still in question. Children experience negative emotions such as fear, anger and distress when their parents are hostile towards each other and cannot detach themselves from their parents’ ongoing battles. They feel caught between parents and feel they have to take sides. Inappropriate verbal (and possibly physical) aggression provides poor models and scaffolding for children’s own developing social skills. A high-conflict family situation sometimes precedes and follows a divorce, and children are the witnesses of these events. Children are very vulnerable to the effect of conflict, and find it hard to cope with. It also is likely to have negative long-term effects on their own ability to develop relationships. This 1

These quotations are from transcripts of a research study carried out by the Children’s Issues Centre in 1996 and 1997, though the quotations are not all reported in the research report (Smith et al., 1997). Hence no page numbers are provided for some quotations.

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interview with a ten-year-old talking about events which occurred some years previously shows that children are not likely to forget these experiences. C[Child]: They were fighting with each other and I’d keep on smacking my Dad on the bum and saying ‘stop!’ I[Interviewer]: Do you know why they separated? C: Because they were fighting. I: Mmm, what was it like at home around that time? C: Well there was a big hole in the door. I: Was there? How come? C: Allan [Dad] went bang [mimed punching] and Mum just moved out of the way. I: Just in time? C: Yeah, he made a big hole in the wall, in the door. And when I went to bed I heard all this yelling. (Chris, in Smith et al., 1997, p. 24)

On the other hand some parents can retain their awareness of the child’s perspective and work hard to avoid conflict, as in this example: Mike and I had one argument in front of the children. I think it was the only one where Justin was there. And that had really disastrous effects. I mean I just couldn’t help myself and we were just getting a bit heated. I mean not shouting abuse, I mean that’s not like that, just getting heated about a point and just you know, I felt I had to overshout him, and he felt he had to overshout me, and that was, it was really a bad atmosphere. And after that we said look, let’s not do this again, I mean that, this is just stupid. So since then we have never ever had, you know like anything like that. (Julie, in Smith et al., 1997, p. 51)

Longitudinal studies show that conflictual relationships between parents associated with divorce can have repercussions on people’s lives 20 years later (Ahrons, 2007). Good relationships between divorced parents are also associated with better relationships for children with parents, grandparents, step-parents and siblings many years later. But where parents engage in ongoing hostilities many years after the initial breakup, children report still being plagued by loyalty conflicts, and describe how their parents’ conflict upsets them. This was particularly difficult on family occasions. Weddings, birthdays, and graduations were the only times their parents were together, and all these occasions posed dilemmas for their children. Some took a hard line and told their parents that they had to be civil or they would not be invited. Others hoped and prayed that their parents would behave and not spoil the celebration, and still others chose not to involve their parents at all. (Ahrons, 2007, p. 59)

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A major factor influencing the negative outcomes for children of divorce is the economic hardship that most custodial parents (especially mothers) experience. Mothers often have low incomes and poor job skills, are dependent on benefits, and find childcare expensive or unavailable. In a survey of Family Court clients, Gabrielle Maxwell and Jeremy Robertson (1990) found that most custodial females’ incomes declined after the separation, with many being on domestic purpose benefits, while income for both custodial and non-custodial fathers actually increased. Marital property settlements based on a ‘clean break’ principle mean that the family home is not usually available for the custodial parent and the expense of housing is an added stress on the family. Economic hardship has a number of indirect and direct effects on children. It may affect their nutrition and health; their ability to have access to computers, toys or other extracurricular activities; and their access to high-quality educational and health services. Although economic problems are not the sole explanation for negative effects, they clearly are important (Amato, 1993). The clearest findings from research on the effects of divorce are that multiple stress has a cumulative negative effect, and that if multiple stresses and transitions are associated with a breakup, life can be very difficult for children. The stresses may include loss of contact with a parent, poorer relationships with parents, exposure to conflict, moving house, losing contact with friends or relatives, a poorer standard of living, and remarriage of a parent – all of which in combination increase the chance of negative effects (Amato, 1993; Pryor & Rogers, 2001). An ecological model fits in well with the ‘life stress’ perspective on family transitions, since it suggests that parental separation can indeed be stressful for children, but if it is not accompanied by other negative influences on the family, children are likely to adjust and survive. Divorce and separation are, however, often stressful for children, and their well-being and development can be adversely affected unless additional support is provided. Some research shows that children can survive and flourish after family change when their parents are not isolated and unsupported, and they can provide a warm, accepting but consistent and firm family environment. There are many examples of families who do cope and whose children are resilient and doing well. Networks of family, friends, and supportive schools and early childhood centres, and continuing meaningful relationships with both parents, have been shown to be important.

Listening to children from separated families

In order to elucidate some of the factors that improve children’s well-being and development after a family breakup, we have found it valuable to talk to children. Much of the research on divorce follows pathogenic models focusing on the

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negative effects on children’s adjustment (Hetherington, 2006), and children as the passive vulnerable recipients of adults’ behaviour. Only a small body of research actually views children in divorcing families as competent and able to help us understand the meaning of the experience from their perspectives. If we are to strengthen children’s resilience after parent separation, we have to talk to children to find out what makes life difficult or easier for them. It is unhelpful to generalise about children’s perspectives since every child, including children in the same family, experiences their parents’ separation a bit differently, but the following research demonstrates that a lot of important information can be learned by talking to children. There are examples of children’s views about what parents needed to know when they separated in Box 12.3 (Smith & Gollop, 2001b). Children wanted to be listened to, to be given the chance to have a say and make choices, not to be forced into arrangements they did not want, to be given information about what was happening and why, and to have an input into decisions. They also wanted their parents not to engage in conflict in front of them and to maintain harmonious relationships with each other. The children in this study felt disempowered and invisible when they were not included or considered, and did not know what was happening to them. Children also provided useful information about how they felt about contact with their non-resident parents (Smith & Gollop, 2001a). Most children valued contact with their non-resident parent, and most would have liked more frequent and longer contact. Only a very small minority of the children (2 per cent) were completely negative about contact and wanted to stop it. Children reported on good or bad things about contact visits that increased or decreased their enjoyment of these visits. Conflict between parents was problematic for about a fifth of the children, and these children found it very painful. New relationships sometimes caused resentments as their non-resident parent appeared to be giving more affection and attention to new partners. It was sometimes stressful to be regularly on the move between two homes, even though such moves were built into their life in a regular way. Most children, however, had positive things to say about contact time – such as doing fun things and having treats, having space away from their resident parent, being given more freedom, and having interactions with step-parents or the parent’s friends. If they had a good relationship with their non-resident parent, they enjoyed contact, but if their parent was grumpy, in a bad mood or uninterested in children, they reported being reluctant to see him (it was most commonly the father). Our research has led us to suggest that professionals and parents should look more critically at their assumptions about children’s competence, and that they should be aware of the crucial role they have in helping children to have a voice

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Box 12.3 Children’s advice to separating parents Listen to children: The only thing I’d say would be to like listen to your kids and let them have their say because ... for the kids, it must be real hard ... . They’ve got to really listen to the kids to let them know how they’re feeling. Like say if they split up and like both parents wanted them, they’d have to like consult you and listen to you to who you wanted to go with. (Yvonne, 12) Choice: If you give them set out choices – not just ‘What do you want?’ but ‘Do you want so and so or do you want so and so? Or we could it do it some other way if you have any other ideas.’ ... . But still giving them on option ... so they know what their options are. (Kayla, 16) ,(.&ő ,&.#)(-"#*-: Don’t fight because your child ... they probably wouldn’t like it and ... try and ... not to fight ... . Oh, try to talk to each other better than you were last time. (Seth, nine) Fair arrangements: I reckon you should try and make it fair, but see I always wanted to be with my Mum so I wasn’t being fair on my Dad, but that’s just the way it was. I just wasn’t happy spending too much time with him. Like if you get on with both your parents then like just spend half time with each other. (Kelly, 15) Consider the children: Even if separation is the best thing and they never want to see their partner again, it’s absolutely vital that they make a huge effort to try and make a child’s life, especially a young child, as stable as possible. ... When they’re separating, really focus on the child and what they can do for the child. (Charlotte, 18) Information: Well ... some kids, like their parents won’t tell them why they’re separating and that sort of thing and they’re like, ‘My father ... he doesn’t love me anymore.’ I think that would be hard. I think they’re better tell them that they’re separating ... I actually never got over that ... I was like waiting and like, ‘When’s he coming back?’ (Jodie, 15) Smith & Gollop, 2001b, pp. 26–29.

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in important decisions after parental separation and to adjust to the situation afterwards (Smith, Taylor, & Tapp, 2003). Almost all children are competent enough to express a view, especially if they are provided with sympathetic, trusting contexts and encouragement to express their views. We do not advocate that children should be asked directly which parent they would prefer to live with as this would face them with a difficult task. But we do argue that children’s views and participation should be routinely part of family and legal decision-making. We argue that children’s views should be taken into consideration but not necessarily be determinative in decision-making. Since divorce is a risk factor for children, it is important to ensure that steps are taken to reduce the multiple stresses that are associated with family breakdown. Protective factors such as quality time with both parents, support from family and friends, therapeutic support, minimising other changes (such as housing and schools), and competent co-parenting (without overt conflict) can ameliorate children’s difficulties (Kelly, 2007; Gollop & Taylor, 2012). There is no evidence, however, that frequency of contact is necessarily positive for children, but contact is likely to be positive if there is a good quality parent–child relationship and positive parenting. Institutional barriers, such as an adversarial legal system framing contact as a win–lose situation for parents, and traditional inflexible visitation arrangements of contact every other weekend, still remain a barrier to meaningful involvement of fathers in children’s lives, according to researcher Joan Kelly (2007). Kelly believes that contact should be much more diverse and flexible, and should take into account children’s input. She also advocates alternative dispute resolution approaches involving education and mediation, and suggests that these lead to more lasting and harmonious settlements.

Support for families

I have discussed two examples of family risk, but how can we promote resilience in the face of those risks? According to resilience theory, it is necessary to provide families with a protective environment so that they can cope with and survive adverse circumstance. One of the most important things in supporting family resilience is the presence of other people to back up the person who takes the main responsibility for parenting. Bronfenbrenner (1979b) used the metaphor of a three-legged stool, where the existence of the third leg keeps the stool upright. The capacity of parents to be self-sufficient and competent in the parental role is greatly increased by the support of others. Family connectedness and mutual emotional support help to maintain family resilience. Ex-spouses or partners, friends, grandparents, other family members, neighbours, early childhood centres and schools can all provide psychological and material support. Social support

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facilitates the parenting role and is associated with greater life satisfaction, personal growth and less distress for parents. Families can provide different kinds of help for each other – economic and emotional help, and help with childcare. Hence families who are living away from kin are likely to be most at risk when there are stresses on the family. Not all families find such support within their own families or whānau, so more formal parent support programmes, such as drop-in-centres, home-visiting programmes, information and community referral services, or institution-based support, have come to be modern-day versions of the traditional extended family (Powell, 1997; Duncan, Bowden, & Smith, 2005a). The most effective of these programmes identify and build on parent strengths and offer assistance where it is needed, provide everyday practical support and have regular intensive input (Duncan, Bowden, & Smith, 2005b; Smith, 2002). Some of these programmes struggle to change family practices and provide the sort of comprehensive help with the problems that face families with multiple risk. When professionals come from different cultural, religious and socioeconomic groups, they have difficulty connecting with families, and it is difficult for them to provide a robust enough intervention to make a difference to families. An alternative to the use of formal agencies or programmes to support families is to build support within communities. One example of an effective community approach is the Strong Communities programme in South Carolina, which has been mainly achieved through utilising skilled community outreach workers and community volunteers (Melton, 2010a). Melton writes that the rebirth of community is founded on relationships, and that loneliness and isolation cause family crises. The Strong Communities programme mobilises networks of friends and neighbours to make sure that people notice and care about what is happening to others in the community. The main goal of the programme is that, ‘Every child and every parent should know that if they have reason to celebrate, worry or grieve, someone will notice, and someone will care’ (Melton, 2010b, p. 451). There are similar initiatives in New Zealand, but the South Carolina project adopted a more large-scale multidisciplinary approach, with strong scientific backing and adequate funding support. Another useful model for supporting communities is through the use of early childhood centres as hubs for community services. The ECE Taskforce (2012) considered early childhood community hubs to be a very effective way of increasing access for children from disadvantaged groups to early childhood education and supporting their parents. The Children’s Centres in the United Kingdom, such as the Pen Green Centre, are well known as models of best practice for working with and supporting parents within the framework of integrated services (Whalley, 2001, 2006). Pen Green is located in Corby, an area of high

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unemployment and low income in Northampton. It was set up in response to the closing down of the local steelworks and the resultant unemployment and poverty. The community was characterised by poor nutrition, inadequate housing, high infant mortality rates, high levels of single parenthood (about 50 per cent), and little choice or provision of early childhood services for young children and their families. The Centre was part of the Blair government’s 2004 initiatives to reduce child and family poverty. Pen Green is a ‘one-stop shop’ for families in the local community. A central concern is to break the intergenerational cycle of long-term unemployment, depression and low income, and prevent their adverse effects on children. There are examples on a more modest scale of such projects in New Zealand, such as Wycliffe Nga Tamariki, Mana Tamariki and Te Kōpae Piripono (ECE Taskforce, 2012). Sadly, the Ministry of Education funding for supporting such Centres of Innovation was cut in 2009. Community-based approaches, as exemplified above, are an effective way to support the concept of collaboration between services and joined up services, but they require strong leadership and adequate funding. Ordinary early childhood services, however, can and do provide important support for families in New Zealand. They can enrich family life because they can provide parents and children with time away from each other, which can mean a better quality of parent–child relations when families are together. Early childhood centres of all kinds should be directed at helping families as well as focusing on cognitive and social goals for children, which have been discussed in earlier parts of this book. Here the emphasis is on how important early childhood centres are for the well-being of families, a goal which has been under-emphasised to some extent in New Zealand. One of the most beneficial roles of early childhood services is to relieve mothers of the constant care of young children, which many find to be extremely stressful, especially in cases of loneliness, isolation or poverty. Early childhood centres can act as partners with parents in the child-rearing process and help make parenting more enjoyable. This role for early childhood centres is, in my view, as important as their direct role in supporting children’s development. We carried out a qualitative study to examine how three early childhood centres in low-income areas supported families and whether families perceived that the centres were supporting them (Duncan et al., 2005a). All three centres gave support to families to help ease their financial difficulties, through caring for their children while the parents worked. They also provided information to other parents about other agencies that could help them, and assisted with form-filling and making links to the appropriate agencies. For example, parents were helped to access a childcare subsidy from Work and Income New Zealand. Parents felt that their well-being was supported by being given opportunities to

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pursue work, study and other options, and that their children were being given a sound basis for their own future educational success. Different centres were responsive to family needs in different ways, for example, through being flexible about hours and age placement. Two centres had a policy of whānau placements where siblings of different ages were able to attend the same session, which was important because the families had to travel a long way to get there. Centres were also flexible with finance, i.e. through not asking parents to pay if their children were sick. As well as providing a lot of practical help, the early childhood centres provided emotional support. Staff knew the families well and seemed to have an understanding about who needed and welcomed contact with them – and when it was appropriate or not. ... daily or ongoing interactions provided opportunities for staff to observe any immediate stresses or pressures on families. Informal conversations not only helped parents/caregivers feel welcome and demonstrated that staff took an interest in the family, but also provided opportunities for information sharing and relationship building. (Duncan et al., 2005a, p. 67)

A warm, trusting and reciprocal relationship between a parent and a teacher is illustrated by this quotation from a parent in the study: She’s [teacher] great, really supportive. Like we have rapport – you know like some people you just click with – we have a personal rapport. And I can talk to her. I imagine I can talk to her about anything and vice-a-versa. And I think that would be good. And it’s nice actually having someone that you’re close to in a sense that you know they’re caring for your child. (Parent #13, Duncan et al., 2005a, p. 77)

Partnership between parents and early childhood teachers is important for children as well as parents. Young children need to participate in a coherent world of home and early childhood centre. There needs to be understanding, sympathy and mutual respect between teachers and parents. Staff should be aware of the stresses and pressures of family life, especially for families in poverty, families headed by a single parent, or families undergoing marital change (e.g. divorce or remarriage). Staff also require understanding of and sensitivity to the cultural diversity and variety of family forms in New Zealand today. Being able to choose a quality early childhood centre for their young child is crucial for parents, while government agencies have a responsibility to give parents a choice of accessible, affordable, high-quality centres. One particular government policy that supports New Zealand families and, in particular, gender equity within the family is the provision of parental leave. Parental leave gives parents time to come to terms with parenthood, get to know

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their baby, develop secure attachments, and at the same time protect their right to re-enter the workforce and ensure the economic well-being of their family. Parental leave offers two kinds of support – job protection for a period of weeks, months or years after the birth, and financial support for parents while at home. When I wrote the last edition of this book in 1998 there was no publicly funded parental leave in New Zealand, but in 2001 a 28-week paid parental leave scheme was introduced. In a review of the parental leave policies of 21 countries (Ray, Gornick, & Schmitt, 2008), New Zealand falls in the middle on most measures of the adequacy of parental leave provisions, and is tenth out of the 21 countries when time of paid leave and job protection (or unpaid leave) are combined. France has the longest paid and unpaid combined time, and Switzerland the least. Sweden has the longest period of paid parental leave in the world by providing 47 weeks (almost a year) of paid leave. New Zealand comes 14th in the generosity of the remuneration. We could do a lot better in the provision of parental leave in both length of paid leave and the stipend, because generous, universal and flexible parental leave policies do much to ensure the health and well-being of children in families.

Summary

The family is a powerful sociocultural context that profoundly affects our development throughout life. Children have broad definitions of the family, but the most salient feature for them is caring. Early nurturance and responsiveness, followed by weaning from overt control and support, help children develop identity and independence. Effective parents demonstrate warmth and involvement, clear communications and expectations, induction and explanation; they have firm rules; they provide consistent, mainly positive consequences; and they structure situations to support appropriate behaviours. Abusive or neglectful parenting results in many problems for children, and these may be passed from one generation to the next. Most New Zealand parents use warm authoritative methods and few use authoritarian ones. In today’s Aotearoa family, there is a variety of family forms (increasingly including cohabiting couples), parenthood is delayed, families are smaller, many families experience poverty and mothers are very likely to be employed. Government policies such as welfare to work programmes have a profound effect on families. The Māori concept of the whānau is wide, with more adults involved in socialising children, acceptance of traditional values such as whakapapa, shared parenting, collective support, joint care of property and local control over ceremonials. Recent developments in Māori education have introduced Māori language, values and traditions into kōhanga reo and kura kaupapa Māori schools,

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in an attempt to prevent the alienation experienced by Māori children in Pākehā schools, and to encourage identity and pride in Māori language and culture. Ecological models of the family conceptualise the child’s interactions with immediate caregivers as influenced by stresses and supports both internal and external to the family. Resilience is the ability of individuals and families to cope with adversity and is dependent on both internal (within the individual) and external forces (within the environment). One of the most destructive external stresses for today’s families with children is the influence of growing poverty. Another risk from within the family is parental separation or divorce and especially the accompanying parental stress, conflict and economic decline. Support for families can alleviate some of these stresses and risks, including the pressures of poverty or marital transition. Family members can support each other, but support from communities and external agencies such as early childhood centres and schools is also necessary. Such support can be critical in providing a stable and safe environment for children whose families are struggling.

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Index ability global (‘g’) 245–56 abuse see child abuse access to ECE 128–29, 326–28, 330 accountability 271–73 adolescence 36–38, 98, 157, 301–2 adoption, inter-country 95 affect 23–24, 105, 124, 142–43, 215 agency 137–38, 205, 329, 340; examples 78–79, 264, 322–24; factors 38, 59; principle 16, 17, 27, 70, 121, 310, 315, 318 ages of childhood 14 aggression 119, 156–58, 163, 293, 363; and physical punishment 48–49 Ainsworth, Mary 100, 101, 102, 106 Alderson, Priscilla 20, 21, 70, 72, 73 alienation 67, 181, 201, 354, 373 appropriation 26, 207, 222 assessment: approaches 261–66; formative 256–57, 260–61; overview 241–43; policy in NZ 266–70; see also high-stakes testing asTTle (Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning) 267 attachment 100–4, 111; to teachers 124–25 attributions 57, 232 Atwool, Nicola 73, 80, 81 autobiographical memory 137, 172, 224–25 B4 School Checks 249 babies 30–32, 100, 101, 132, 214; and babbling 165; in children’s play 135; Polynesian communities 353 Bakhtin, Mikhail 139, 208 Bandura, Albert 54, 280 Barnett, Steve 116, 117, 129, 293 Barnett, William 116, 117 behavioural theory 39, 165–66 Bell Curve, The (Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray) 246, 254 belonging 18, 66 Belsky, Jay 100 Bennett, Paula 65 Bernstein, Basil 178, 179 Berryman, Mere 181 bilingualism 187–90, 202 Binet Test 274 Binet, Alfred 244 bioecological model 29–30 Bishop, Russell 62, 178–80, 181–83, 186, 187, 219, 220, 354, 355 Black, Paul 242 Blaise, Mindy 300, 304 Bloom, Lois 167 Bodrova, Elena 212 Borell, Belinda 141 Borg, Grace 75 Borke, Helene 33 Bourdieu, Pierre 58, 286 Bowlby, John 96–97, 99, 101

Bozhovich, Lydia 24 brain development 87–90 Broadfoot, Patricia 271 Bronfenbrenner, Urie 28; theories 60, 68, 100–1, 323, 340, 356, 361, 368 Bronfenbrenner’s theories 28–30 Brooker, Liz 294, 296–97, 304 Brookes-Gunn, Jeanne 358 Brown, Roger 164, 174, 175 Bruner, Jerome 25, 107 bullying 158–61, 305, 322, 337 Burr, Rachel 19 Cain, Carole 138 Carolina Abecedarian project 127 Carr, Margaret 18, 57–59, 61–62, 73–74, 113, 114–15, 119, 133, 143, 145–52, 154, 165, 195–97, 200, 205, 207, 215, 218–19, 224–28, 230–33, 235, 260, 263–66, 315 Cattell, Raymond 245 child abuse 65, 78–79, 208, 358, 359 child development: adolescence 36–38; infancy 30–32; middle childhood 35–36; preschool and early years 32–35 child labour 81–83 child poverty 128–29, 349, 357–60 childhood: constructions of 65–66; stages of 14 childhood studies theory 17–21, 64, 114, 278–79, 313 childhood, definition 14 childhood, middle 35–36 children in foster care 78–81 children in institutions 90–95; see also institutional deprivation children in kibbutzim 103–5 children in state care 73, 79, 80–81 children’s citizenship 64, 66–67, 72 children’s competence 71–72 children’s constructions of family 341 children’s language 173–75, 190–92 children’s perspectives 66–67, 69, 77–78, 182, 318 children’s rights 52, 66–67, 73–74, 306–8, 323; UNCRC 15–16, 80–81, 121, 158, 176, 204, 279, 316–17 children’s voices 61, 66–68, 318, 323 Chodorow, Nancy 284 Chomsky, Noam 166–67, 201 chronosystems 29 Church, John 157, 173 Clark, Alison 75 Clark, Andy 207 Clarke-Stewart, Alison 105, 106 classical conditioning theory 42–43, 165, 280 Claxton, Guy 143, 204, 206, 208, 231, 255 Clay, Marie 267 cognitive development 23–25 cognitive theory 39, 54, 56, 63, 167–68 collaborative learning 217–18, 234–35

Index | 413

communities of practice 26–27, 234, 239, 323 Competent Children Competent Learners study 117, 129 conflicts see divorce and separation conflicts, child 154–56 Connelly, Paul 286, 300 Connors, Clare 316, 319, 320 constructivism 59–60 contingent responsiveness 106 Corsaro, William 143, 146–47, 155 Cortisol 88–89 Cowie, Bronwen 266 Crooks, Terry 256, 266, 269 crying 31, 106, 173; conditioned 42, 44, 47 cultural capital 128 cultural clubs 208 cultural contexts 19, 141, 142, 176–78, 227–30, 254, 266 cultural deprivation 178, 179, 183 cultural identity 141, 164, 176, 202, 352 cultural tools 139, 164, 208 culturally embedded thinking 207–9 cumulative learning 41–42 Dadds, Mark 249 Dahlberg, Gunilla 121 Dalli, Carmen 89, 115, 120, 122, 124 Davie, Ronald 66, 72 Davies, Bronwyn 287, 288, 305–6 Davies, Hayler 342 Davis, John 318, 319 de Candole, Rosalind 270 Denver Developmental Screening Test 249 deprivation of care 90–99 developmental psychology 17, 28, 283 dialogue: role of 220–24; reflective 224–27 disability: labelling 311–13; legislation, policy 316–18; models 312; sociology of 313–14 disabled children 310–11, 318–24; and ECE 326–29; inclusion/exclusion 327–29, 330, 332, 333; support for 327–28, 329; teacher aides 334–35 discipline 49–54, 345; see also punishment discourse 18, 138, 168, 172, 220, 287; cultural 176, 177, 202; shifting 184, 187, 229 dispositional thinking 230–33 divorce and separation 76–78, 347, 360–8 Dixon, Glen 97 Dobbs, Terry 53 Doornenbal, Jeanette 153 Dunn, Judy 136, 152, 199 Durie, Mason 19, 71, 354 Dweck, Carol 57, 226, 232, 255 Eales, Rod 139–40 early childhood education (ECE) 110–12; care and education link 111, 126; cost effectiveness 127–29; outcomes 122, 127–29; quality of 120–25; research 115–20 ECE curriculum see Te Whāriki ecological context 28–30, 68–69, 260, 323–24, 356, 359, 360 ecological model of family 356–57 education definition 204–5 Edwards, Shane 70 Elley, Warwick 267, 268, 270

empathy see affect epistemology 20, 67–69 EPPE (Effective Provision of Preschool Education) 118, 120 Epstein, Cynthia 287 Erikson, Erik 33, 35, 37 Esping-Andersen, Gosta 128–29 ethics 72–74 ethnicity 348–49; and gender 294–95, 297, 300, 303, 304 ethnocentrism 227 ethnography 72, 75, 183–84, 294, 300, 342, 343 Evans, Gary 359 Evans, Pauline 75 exosystems 29, 359 exploration 32, 101, 106, 113, 177 exploratory talk 219, 222, 223 Fabian, Angela 346 Fagot, Beverly 283 Fairbairn-Dunlop, Peggy 188 families and disability 323–24; see also divorce and separation; funds of knowledge; Māori families family 27, 62, 69–71, 117, 341; and disability 323–26; discourses 176–80, 185–90; expectations 294–95; role of 340–41, 343–44; support 368–72 family constructs 341–43, 346–51, 356–57 family literacy practices 228–30 family support 368–72 family, role of 340–41 family/ECE relationships 114, 124, 126, 130, 186, 264 Fancy, Howard 183 Fergusson, David 97–98, 157, 158, 289, 290, 291 Fillmore, Lucy Wong 188 Fleer, Marilyn 235–37 Flewitt, Rosie 329 Flynn, James 243, 244–45, 247, 254 ‘Flynn effect’ 274 Forness, Steven 44 foster care 78–81 Fox, Sharon 88 Freud, Sigmund 133, 283–84, 285 friendships 151–54, 199 Fuller, Mary 75 funds of knowledge 62, 114, 130, 185, 188, 193, 199, 227 Gaffney, Michael 115, 159–60, 205, 314, 317, 321, 322, 334, 335 Gallimore, Ronald 25 Gammage, Philip 271 Gasson, Ruth 83 gender 278–309; and ethnicity 300; expectations 294–95; labelling 279, 281–82; role models 279, 293 gender differentiation 283–84, 293 gender equity 287–89, 297 gender essentialism 285–86, 292, 306–8 gender segregation 301, 303, 304 generational order 65 Gibbs, Anita 95 Gilligan, Carol 284 Glynn, Ted 47 Gollop, Megan 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 368 Gonzáles, Raquel 185 Goodyear, Rosemary 346

414 | Understanding Children and Childhood

Gould, Stephen Jay 242, 246, 250 Greenfield, Patricia 214 guided participation 26, 58 guided reinvention 25, 210 Guilford, Joy 245 Gunn, Alex 292

kinship 62, 79, 342, 352, 354; see also whanaungatanga Kleine Staarman, Judith 224 kōhanga reo 110, 141, 177–78, 184, 208, 354, 355 Kohlberg, Lawrence 281, 282 kura kaupapa Māori 354, 372

habitus 58, 230, 286, 292, 304 Hamburg, Beatrix 357 Hawes, David 249 Heckman, James 111–12, 113, 127 Herrnstein, Richard 246, 254 Higgins, Jane 140 high-stakes testing 241, 257, 271–73 Hindley, C.)B. 247 Hohepa, Margie 177 Holland, Dorothy 138 Holzman, Lois 21 Honzik, Marjorie 247 Horwood, John 97–98, 291 Howe, Michael 251 Howes, Carollee 103, 104, 125, 135, 150 human rights 15–16, 291, 307–8, 310–12, 316–18, 336, 341 Hyde, Janet 289

Labov, William 179 Lachicotte, William 138 Langley, John 157 language; and culture 176–78; Pasifika 183–84 language acquisition 191–95 language deficit theory 178–83 language development 173–76 language see also Pasifika; te reo Māori language theories: behavioural 165–66; cognitive 167–78; linguistic 166–67; sociocultural 168–72 language-promoting relationships 192–95, 198–201 Lave, Jean 286 league tables 270, 271, 273 learning, role of family 343–44 learning by association 42–43 learning contexts 59–62 learning dispositions 14, 58, 63, 113–14, 118–19, 230–31; see also resilience, reciprocity learning process 26–27, 40 Learning Stories 263–66, 274 Ledger, Eileen 75 Lee, Wendy 205, 228, 235, 264, 265 Leong, Deborah 212 Leyland, Jane 212 linguistic theory 166–67, 230 Linsell, Chris 83 literacy assessment: practices 189, 228–30; resource teachers 318; standards 117, 267, 271, 273 looked after children 78–81 Lucas, Bill 255 Luff, Paulette 262 Lyle, Jane 324, 325 Lynch, Robert 127 Lynskey, Michael 97

ICT (Information Communication Technology) 119 identity 139–41 imagination 58, 231 imaginative play 34, 132, 148–51, 162, 170, 199–201 impairment 312–13, 320–21 infancy 30–32, 105–8; and communication 215; and emotion 142; and gender 214, 293; and social interaction 133–34 institutional deprivation 90–95, 102, 109 intellect 23–24, 33, 36, 344; and intelligence 250 interactions, social 133–34; promoting language 195–98 internalisation 49, 139 intersubjectivity 108, 125, 215–17, 227, 239 intertextuality 62 invisible children 109, 310, 336 IQ (intelligence quotient) 243–48, 250–54; ‘g’ global 245–46; sociocultural theory 255–56; stability 247–48 Isaacs, Susan 152 IWBs (interactive whiteboards) 223, 224 Jacklin, Carol 280, 283 James, Allison 14, 15, 17–19, 64, 68, 69, 91, 278, 340 Johnstone, Jocelyn 95 joint attention 60, 107–9, 125, 134, 137, 191, 214–18, 239 Jones, Alison 183, 184, 264 Kamehameha Early Education Project (KEEP) 227–28 Karsten, Lia 303 Kehily, Mary Jane 305 Kelly, Berni 315–16, 318, 323 Kelly, Joan 368 Kershner, Ruth 224 key competencies 58, 114, 118, 230, 263–64; see also learning dispositions kibbutz childcare 103–5

MacArthur, Jude 311, 314, 317, 320, 321, 322, 326, 335 Macartney, Bernadette 330 Maccoby, Eleanor 282, 297 MacDonald, Shelley 189 MacNaughton, Glenda 280, 287, 297, 307 macrosystems 29 majority world children 18, 82, 289 Manni, Laura 222 Māori: achievement 256; assessment 266; deficit theories 179–82; learning initiatives 186–87, 202 Māori cultural identity 19–20, 141, 355 Māori families 70–71, 351–56 Māori language see te reo Māori marginalisation: of children 17, 67–68; of disabled people 310, 313, 329, 331; of Māori 71, 186; of teacher aides 334–35 Martin, Carol 282 maturation 40 Mawson, Brent 296 Maxwell, Gabrielle 365 May, Helen 96, 113 Mayall, Berry 294, 295 McDonald, Geraldine 96

Index | 415

McNaughton, Stuart 177, 189, 212, 228–30 Meade, Anne 125, 130, 141, 159, 222 Melton, Gary 8, 9, 16, 369 Meltzoff, Andrew 89, 107, 133, 137 Mercer, Neil 219, 222, 224 mesosystems 29, 361 metacognition 224–25 Metge, Joan 351, 353 microsystems 28, 323, 356, 357, 360, 361 middle childhood 35–36 mihi Māori 230–31 Miljeteig, Per 82 minority world 18–19, 82 Mitchell, Linda 119, 233 modelling 54–56, 63 monoculturalism 62, 178, 181, 202, 227 moral internalisation 143 Morris, Jan 285 Morton, Missy 330 motivation: disposition 63, 230, 256; mindset 106; self-efficacy 56–57 Munford, Robyn 74 Murphy, Kevin 153 Murray, Charles 246, 254 mutual sensitivity 102, 107, 192 Nairn, Karen 140 narrative assessment 263–66 National Education Monitoring Programme (NEMP) 106, 269, 272–73, 290–91 National Standards 268–70 Nelson, Katherine 69, 170–72 neo-Vygotskian theory 22–24 neuroscience 87–90 NICHD study 118, 123 Nind, Melanie 329 No Child Left Behind 271 noticing 78, 211, 228, 262, 265, 369 object permanence 31–32 objectivity 261 observation 261–63 observation (assessment tool) 261–63 ontology 20 operant conditioning theory 30–32, 43–45, 48, 63, 165–66 Owen, C.)F. 247 Pākehā hegemony 180–81, 274 Paley, Vivian 200, 201 parental leave 128, 371–72 parenting 50–51, 100, 344–45, 353, 362–63 Pasifika: culture 183–85, 188–90, 202; education 229, 256–57; language 181, 183–84; socioeconomic issues 347, 349, 357 Patterson, Gerald 157 Pavlov, Ivan 42 Payler, Jane 329 peer conflicts 155–56 peer culture 298–302, 328–29, 331–32, 353 peer interactions 143–48, 198–201 peer mediation 160 peer modelling 56 peers 35, 37; see also siblings Penfold, Merimeri 354

Perkins, David 230 Perry Preschool Project 116, 127 perseverance 119, 230 Phillips, Deborah 86, 87, 88, 95, 99, 101, 104, 105 Piaget, Jean 22; Piagetian theory 22, 33, 116, 133, 167, 169, 209, 255 Podmore, Val 262 Pollack, Seth 95 Pool, Ian 346, 347 post-modernist theory 120–21, 130, 288 Poulton, Richie 143 poverty 357–60; see also child poverty Powell, Mary Ann 73, 76 Powlishta, Kimberly 300 preschool and early years: overview 32–35 privacy, private space 79, 81, 303 problem-solving 36, 75, 224; examples 234–35; in ZPD 23, 211 process quality 124–25 Progressive Achievement Tests (PAT) 243, 267 Pryor, Jan 343 psychoanalytical theory 283–85 puberty 36, 87 punishment 48–49, 63, 280; physical punishment abolished 52–53; see also discipline Purdue, Kerry 327–28 Qvortrup, Jens 21 racist discourse 62, 181, 300 Ramsey, Karen 119 ratchet effect 206 Reading Recovery 267 reciprocity 60, 100, 132, 151, 154, 165, 231, 314 Reedy, Tamati 113 Reedy, Tilly 113 reflection, Reflected Dialogues 115, 186, 224, 225, 226 Reggio Emilia centres 121 reinforcers 43–47, 165, 280 relationships 96–98, 134–36; language-promoting 192–95; peer 198–99 Renold, Emma 305–6 resilience 95, 143, 232–33, 240, 325, 356, 368 Rietveld, Christine 316, 328–29, 331–32, 333 Rigg, Andrea 343 Ritchie, Jenny 19, 180, 186 Robertson, Jeremy 365 Robson, Susan 224–25 Rogoff, Barbara 26, 208 Rosenthal, Miriam 121 Rout, Bill 302 Rutherford, Gill 312, 318, 334, 335 Rutter, Michael 94, 96–97 Sahlberg, Pasi 270 Samoan culture 176, 185, 188, 189 Sanders, Jackie 74 Sanderson, Lara 320, 322, 333 Sargisson, Rebecca 270 scaffolding 25, 206, 211–12 Schaffer, Susan 99, 216 Schneider, Barry 153 Scott, Kimberly 300, 304 screening 248–49, 249, 270

416 | Understanding Children and Childhood

self-assessment 258 self-concept 35, 37, 79, 136–38, 180 self-efficacy 56–57, 63, 137 self-regulation 105, 141–43, 224–25, 344 self-review 260–61 sensorimotor activity 32 sex differences 289–91, 296, 299 sexist behaviour 299, 301, 302, 304, 307 sexuality 304–6; Freudian theory 283; same-sex partnerships 343, 347, 349, 350; see also puberty Shakespeare, Tom 312–13 shaping 46 Shonkoff, Jack 87 siblings 27, 199, 353, 354 Singer, Elly 153 Siraj-Blatchford, Iram 222 situated learning theory 61, 230 Skeels, Harold 92–94 Skerrett, Mere 20, 141, 180, 355 Skinner, Debra 138 Skinner, Frederic 43, 133 Slee, Roger 312 Smith, Graham Hingangaroa 177 Smith, J.)R. 358 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai 177 sociability 132–4 social capital 151, 162, 359 social interaction 133–34 social justice 66–67 social referencing in infants 108, 135 socialisation 97, 99–100, 344–46 socio-economic factors 346–48, 349, 355, 357 sociocultural theory 21–25, 27, 69, 139, 168–72, 209, 255–56; disability 314; gender 285–88 Solberg, Anne 72 Spearman, Charles 245 Special Education 311, 317, 318, 336 Spitz, Rene 90–92 Stainton Rogers, Wendy 18, 19, 65, 70, 278, 286 Stalker, Kirsten 316, 319, 320 standardised testing 242–43, 267, 270–74 Stanford-Binet test 244 Stanley, Peter 270 STAR (Supplementary Test of Achievement in Reading) 267 Stark, Robyn 315 stimulation 104–8; neurological 87–88 Stobart, Gordon 246 stress factors 357–60, 360–68 Strong Communities 369 support for families 368–72 Surtees, Nicola 350 sustained shared thinking 113, 126, 194, 203, 220–22, 233 syntax 34, 167–68, 174–75, 196, 202 Tagoilelagi-Leota, Fa’asaulala 189 Taylor, Nicola 49, 52, 53, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 159, 160, 220, 324, 361, 362, 368 Te Kotahitanga 62, 186–87 Te Paa, Jenny 352 Te Puawaitangi Teaching Learning Initiative 186–87 te reo Māori 20, 126, 164, 186, 235, 355 Te Whāriki 18, 112–15, 120–25, 211, 260, 263–64; strands 58, 326

ő"./ő¨%% 266 teacher roles 209–12, 332–35; assessment 259–60; mediation 316, 332–35 Terman, Lewis 251 Tharp, Roland 25 thinking 204–6, 220; culturally embedded 207–9; tools for 176, 206–7; see also sustained shared thinking Thurstone, Louis 245 tino rangatiratanga 19–20, 141, 355 Tizard, Barbara 96 Tomasello, Michael 134, 216 Tomlins-Jahnke, Huia 354 tools for thinking 176, 206–7 transfer 61–63, 114, 205, 220, 230 Trevarthen, Colwyn 214, 215 tuakana-teina relationships 27 Ulvik, D. 78 Ulvind, Stein 248 Underwood, Kathryn 331 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) 8, 14–16, 74, 83, 121, 158, 176, 204, 279, 306, 316, 317 United States National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) 118, 123 Vernon, Philip 280 Vygotsky, Lev 22; neo-Vygotskian theory 22–24; principles 22–25, 169–70; theories 60, 224, 227, 255; theories of language 205, 208, 214; theories of play 148; theories of thinking 220; ZPD 210, 211, 239; see also zone of proximal development Warming, Hanne 69 Warwick, Paul 224 Waterhouse, Stephen 217 Watson, John 42, 313 Wechsler, David 243 Wegerif, Rupert 220 Weikart, David 116 Wells, Gordon 166, 167, 170, 173–74, 190–91, 196, 197–98, 201, 204, 206, 209, 218, 219 Wenger, Etienne 26 whānau 70–71, 351–56 Whānau Ora 354 whānau placements in ECE 371 whanaungatanga, 177–78, 186, 354, 371; see also Te Kotahitanga Wiener, Judith 153 Wiliam, Dylan 242 Williams, Carl 47 Williamson-Leadley, Sandra 238 Wills, Russell 249 Winter, Karen 80, 81 Woodhead, Martin 17 Wycliffe Nga Tamariki kindergarten 189, 370 Young, John 267–68 zone of proximal development (ZPD) 23–25, 144, 212–14, 239, 254, 255, 315; see also Vygotsky