Nursery World - Everything to Play for – The Characteristics of Effective Learning (CoEL), part 2

In part two of this series, Helen Moylett explores the role of play in the CoEL and how early years settings can make sure that play is at the centre of their practice

Being able to explore materials enables children to ask ‘What is this?’ and ‘What can I do with it?’

The Characteristics of Effective Learning (CoEL) interact with each other in children’s learning. No child thinks, ‘Right now I’m playing, in a minute I’ll be an active learner, and later I’ll be creating and thinking critically.’ Neither can an adult observer see the characteristics separated in these ways.

As Chilvers (2022) explains, ‘the reality for children (and adults) is that they are all intrinsically meshed together with connections running between them that are hard to separate out. With this in mind, adults always need to remember that the tangle of young children’s thinking, learning and development is there for a reason – it’s how they think and learn best. What the three characteristics do is help us to “untangle” what we have seenand observed in order to make sense of the complexities of children’s learning and development.’

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