Babies at birth are already able to do all sorts of things. They can gaze and track with their eyes, smell the breast, suck, make sounds and move towards the sounds of people that they love. That early awareness of the world around them is then developed and deepened through schemas - patterns of behaviour which act as learning mechanisms and so enable babies, toddlers and young children to develop and learn.
Children need the help of other children and adults in the process of using schemas to learn. Understanding these learning patterns, therefore, brings important benefits to early years practice. Practitioners can:
* understand the learning that is occurring,
* help children to learn by using what they, the children, already know and can do,
* use observations of schemas to inform their planning, and
* help parents to understand and promote their children's learning.
In short, it enables practitioners to teach (because teaching means helping young children to learn), and there is nothing more exciting than helping children to learn.
Such early learning is complex, but as neuroscientists and psychologists find out more about how the brain develops, we can gain a greater understanding of these early schemas.
Baby steps
Babies love faces and circles. They love lines, when they are still and when they move, for example when a loved person walks across the room and the baby watches, or when they are rocked from side to side.
As the baby grows, family members often sing to them and play movement games. Babies love to anticipate the spoon of food in Dad's hand coming towards their mouth, or the pop-up toy appearing and disappearing.
While this is good for social relationships, babies and toddlers are also learning through these schemas all about space and time and why things happen. They are curious, exploring ideas and thoughts through their schemas.
Early schemas are about topological space, such as inside and outside, up and down, near and far, over and under. Because babies and young children learn through their senses and movement, which give them immediate feedback, the learning is in the present. But they are beginning to go beyond the here and now, as memories develop and they anticipate, for example, the tickle under the arm in the rhyme 'Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear'.
Dual aspect
All schemas have two aspects: the configurative form and the dynamic (moving). For example, the configurative form of an enclosure is a circle, square, oblong or other shape. The dynamic form is a rotating hoop or steering wheel. Both are important for learning.
As children develop in their learning, they move beyond using their schemas entirely through the senses and movement. Even by the second year of life, many young children are developing in the complexity and co-ordination of the schemas in their brains so that they can engage in pretend play and work out why things happen.
I recently observed two-year-olds in shop play, where they transported 'shopping' in trolleys to the check-out, transferred it to the table and swiped each item using the bar coder. They exchanged money and credit cards. Some had babies in buggies with their shopping bag hooked over the handle. One had her doll on her back, another had a rucksack full of shopping. They walked to and from the shop.
All of this shows a transporting schema, so typical of this age. The schema shows that it is at the level of understanding both pretend play and why they need to transport shopping and money. Their interest in putting things in bags, purses and wallets also indicates the schema known as 'space as a container' and the topological space schema, 'inside and outside'.
Different levels
From this example, we can see the three levels of schemas:
* Sensorimotor (senses and movement)
* Symbolic representation (pretend)
* Functional dependency (exploring cause and effect).
We can see the form of schemas:
* Transporting
* Space as a container
* Inside and outside.
And we can see the content of the schemas:
* Transporting has content through going to and fro with trolleys and bags
* Containers are trolleys, bags, purses and wallets
* Inside and outside is seen in the money in purses and wallets, and the shopping in bags.
Schemas are in networks and link together in clusters. Brain scientists say 'the neurons that wire together fire together'. In the same way, schemas that cluster together will co-ordinate and develop into more complex forms of learning. Pretend play and understanding cause and effect is more advanced than learning through the senses and movement.
Human influence
Although babies begin with the same schemas, these develop and co-ordinate with each other, influenced by people, objects and cultural influences, from birth, and cause changes to the brain. This is why each human is unique.
But there are limits to the differences between humans, even when children grow up in different cultures and with different people. A simple way to think about this is to say that there are both biological and socio-cultural influences on the way that children develop. Biology, or nature, gives us schemas as learning mechanisms, but the people we live with and the cultural experiences we have reconfigure schemas. Seymour Papert, famous for his work on computers, loved connecting enclosures (cogs) from an early age. His parents encouraged the interest/schema. People influence the way our schemas develop and are used.
KEY MESSAGES ABOUT SCHEMAS
* All humans have schemas
* Schemas are patterns of brain behaviour which become increasingly co ordinated and complex with development
* Schemas develop in co-ordinated clusters based in the senses and movement, to become sophisticated concepts (such as speed, evil etc)
* Schemas do not develop without other people's influence
