Issues in early childhood education

Abstract

This paper raises some of the key issues affecting the educational opportunities of children from birth to seven. These include: services for children under five, four‐year‐olds in primary school classes, equal opportunities, training and status of early years professionals. The paper emphasises the influence of concepts of early childhood and the need for UK policy makers to recognise babies and very young children as people, and to acknowledge their capabilities.     

Participating in action research on a health promotion project: a reflection

A manager of the Out-Patient Department at Delancey Assessment and Rehabilitation Hospital, a semi-acute/acute unit specialising in assessment and rehabilitation for patients of all ages, attended a conference which led to the opportunity to participate in an action research project. Using a ‘tool’ devised by a team from South Bank University, it was hoped to monitorthe health promotion work done in the hospital and to demonstrate how this could be developed. The tool was used with groups of nurse students as a reflection aid during their Unit 3 (mental health/psychological needs) and Unit 4 (elderly care) placements. Using the tool gave structure to the sessions, enabling shortcomings to be highlighted and future plans to be formulated. It also demonstrated the way the students were starting to think about health promotion. Participation in the action research resulted in health promotion being introduced to a planned programme for students in clinical placements, which in turn increased their awareness and raised its profile throughout the hospital. The revised planned programme will be adapted for the longer placements now part of the student nurse curriculum and will include more practical experience of health promotion. Also, the implementation of training sessions for other grades of staff plus other disciplines will continue.     

Creating a ‘third space’ in the context of a university–school partnership: supporting teacher action research and the research preparation of doctoral students

The focus of the Education Works Personalization Project was to facilitate teams of teacher action researchers whose goal was to personalize their teaching with the support of university partners including doctoral students in education. The subsequent apprentice-like research experience within this university–school partnership provided an opportunity to study the ways in which teacher action research could serve as a vehicle for bridging the culture gap between schools and universities. Both the research team experience and the development of the school–university inquiry/knowledge network were initially characterized by undefined roles accompanied by ambiguous expectations. Although the ambiguity proved difficult initially, those who persisted and engaged in new roles ultimately found these emerging inquiry communities generative and valuable. We have come to conceptualize these generative inquiry communities as third spaces and we describe how oppositional categories framed by the cultural differences between schools and universities can work together to generate new knowledge.     

A Preferred Approach to Management Education has a Learner‐Centred and Problem‐based Emphasis

It will be argued that the education of Australian managers needs to emphasise a Learner‐centred/Problem‐based (LC/PB) approach rather than a Teacher‐centred/Discipline‐based one. In the current study management students reported that they preferred such an emphasis. The results indicated that the courses had insufficient Leamer‐centred and Problem‐based elements and that the students would prefer to see more of these features in the curriculum.     

Sex and Risk: Parental Messages and Associated Safety/Risk Behavior of Adult Children

The importance of both parent–child conversations about sex and general family communication climates has been emphasized in numerous studies. This study compared general family communication via family communication patterns (FCP) to specific parental communication about sex in understanding young adults’ sexual communication/risk (avoidance, threat, and risk behavior). Results suggest that FCP were stronger predictors of adult children’s perceptions of sexual communication as threatening and overall avoidance of sexual communication with their partners compared to the frequency of and overall quality of parent–child conversations about sex. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are also discussed.     

Neural Processing of Eye Gaze and Threat‐Related Emotional Facial Expressions in Infancy

Combined with emotional expressions, eye gaze can provide essential information to indicate threat in the environment. The current study assessed the effects of eye gaze direction on infants’ neural processing of fearful and angry faces. Event‐related potentials were recorded from thirteen 7‐month‐old infants. Two face‐sensitive posterior components, the N290 and P400, as well as a frontocentral negative component (Nc), indicating attentional arousal, were sensitive to eye gaze direction and emotion. A larger Nc was observed for angry faces with direct compared to averted eye gaze. Fearful faces elicited a larger N290 than angry faces, whereas angry faces elicited a more prominent P400 regardless of eye gaze direction. The findings are discussed in terms of early social cognitive and neural development.     

Authoring “Race”: Writing Truth and Fiction after School

This article examines the process a diverse group of eighth grade students go through when charged with writing about the ways in which race might matter at their desegregated school. Students' articulations are bounded by a school culture of silence around race. The regulatory aspect of this school culture was enacted when students first make racism visible through exaggerated writing in a fictional play about school life, only to later censor themselves in an effort to more accurately portray the implicit nature of racialized relations at the school. As the students talked and wrote about their understandings of race and racism at their school, we listened carefully to what they said and also to their silences, paying attention to the erasures. The article concludes that such findings invite us to think about the value of alternative spaces for students to talk and write as well as a consideration of how the school sphere itself might be made more accepting of diverse perspectives on race outside of the dominant colorblind discourse. In addition, we suggest the power of fiction for eliciting conversation among youth. Katherine Schultz is an Associate Professor of Education, Foundations and Practices of Education Division, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania. Patricia Buck is an Assistant Professor of Education, Department of Education, Bates College and Tricia Niesz is an Assistant Professor of Qualitative Research in Education, Department of Educational Foundations and Special Services, Kent State University. All these authors have received their Ph.D from University of Pennsylvannia.     

Who's in the mirror? Self-other discrimination in specular images by four- and nine-month-old infants

This research investigated the early determinants of self-other discrimination in infancy. Ninety-six 4- and 9-month-old infants were placed facing a live image either of themselves or of another person (experimenter) mimicking them. The specular image was either contingent (on-line), or contingent with a 2-s delay. After a first 1-min presentation, the video image of either the self or the other was suddenly frozen for 1 min (still-face episode). This was followed by a last minute of live presentation. From 4 months of age, infants appeared to perceive and act differentially when facing the specular image of themselves or the mimicking other. In general, infants tended to smile more, look more, and have more protracted first-look duration toward the mimicking other compared with the self. Developmentally, 9-month-olds showed markedly more social initiatives toward the mimicking other compared with the self during the still-face episode. In all, these results indicate that infants develop self-other discrimination in specular images long before mirror self-recognition, which is typically reported by the second year. Discrimination of the self from other is interpreted as a precursory ability and a perceptual foundation of later conceptual self development.