I have been thinking about creativity and innovation and how important these are for our ability to fulfil the needs of the future. Both rely on being given the freedom to 'think out of the box', to take risks and to experiment with unconventional approaches.
Over the past 200 years some of the most exciting and innovative advances in early years thinking have come from such free-thinking pioneers. Some were not even originally educators, but started in very different careers.
For example, Frederick Froebel was studying architecture in Frankfurt when he was persuaded by a friend - who was fired up with enthusiasm about Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi - to take a post in a school. And Maria Montessori was a scientist and medical doctor until her work led her to explore the development of young children.
Other pioneers such as Steiner and Malaguzzi were already working as educators and only came to focus on the early years as a result of unexpected opportunities that were presented to them.
'These women were cleaning bricks near the river, so I asked them what they were doing,' Malaguzzi remembered. "We're making a school," they answered, and that's how it all got started. The women asked me to look after their children.
'"Our children are just as intelligent as the rich people's children", they said proudly, asking me to teach their children enough to give them a better chance in life,' Malaguzzi recalled with a smile.
'I told them that I had no experience, but promised to do my best. I'll learn as we go along and the children will learn everything I learn working with them, I said.' (See references.)
ADULT INTERVENTION
If we look at the work of Steiner, Montessori and Malaguzzi, all three became aware that young children had enormous capabilities and sensitivities that could be compromised by the intervention of the adults in their environments.
All three lived at a time when there was little government interest in the subject and were able to develop their theories free from external restrictions. In a way they acted more like scientists than educators because they allowed the children to follow their natural instincts rather than serve an external, adult-imposed agenda of what childhood should be.
'Instead of us teaching the children using a slow and boring step-by-step process, we try to let them begin and solve complex problems on their own,' Malaguzzi said. 'We must credit the child with enormous potential and the children must feel that trust.
'The teacher must give up all his preconceived notions and accept the child as a co-constructor.'
You need to have 'a willingness to question all your own abilities, your knowledge, to become humble. Only then will you be able to listen to the child, to set off on a common search, to educate each other together.'
Montessori wrote, 'We cannot know the consequences of suffocating a spontaneous action at the time when the child is just becoming active; perhaps we suffocate life itself.' (Discovery of the Child, chapter 3.)
STAGE OF IMPORTANCE
The early years is now recognised as being a stage of particular importance in the development of young children, and the UK has been leading the way by providing substantial and sustained investment in the sector.
The 2008 'Education at a Glance' report, produced by the Organisation for Economic Development, says, 'The UK invests more per child than other countries (except Austria, Iceland and the United States) at the pre-primary level. This is all the more impressive given the fact that, while increasing spending levels since 1998, the rate of participation of four-year-olds and under as a percentage of the three- to four-year-old population also increased from 51 per cent in 1998 to 90 per cent in 2006.'
It has also been at the forefront of core research in the area with the Effective Provision of Pre-School Education project producing rigorous and persuasive data on the powerful effects of pre-school on children's progress and development.
With this investment, however, have come measures designed to ensure that the spending has been justified, with systems to monitor and evaluate the outcomes.
Early years policy-makers now consult and quote from a wide range of government-commissioned research and statistical reports.
The EYFS has been created to assure parents that they can be confident that the services provided for their children will be inspected against government-accepted standards in care and early education.
It is now a statutory requirement that all schools and registered early years providers in the maintained, private, voluntary and independent sectors have to use the EYFS. We have the new Progress Matters to support leaders and managers in monitoring children's progress across the EYFS. The materials include a Progress Matters booklet, a Progress Matters e-learning course and a progress monitoring tool designed to help leaders and managers review how well children in their setting are developing over time.
In the same way that all advances in science come from the ability to think beyond what is currently considered possible, advances in education need the same kind of freedom.
If we constrain all settings to adhere to too rigid a norm, we run the risk of stifling pedagogical creativity and innovation. For example, many parents in the UK send their children to Steiner or Montessori schools because they feel strongly about the underpinning philosophies, and yet both are compromised by the nature of a statutory framework.
Diversity brings a richness of provision and a level of parental choice that is highly valued elsewhere in the world. In the US, the charter school movement has been very successful, with nearly 3,000 new schools launched since state legislatures began passing charter legislation in the 1990s.
More than a decade ago, Sweden reversed its long history of centralised administration to allow parents to choose the type of schooling that best suited their children.
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy said in May 2005, 'The beauty of the system is its opening up for diversity; a thousand flowers are allowed to bloom. Gone are the days when educational offerings flowed from one grand, conformist plan meant to fit all, but inevitably failing to do so.
'The current school diversity reflects the fact that children are moulded in quite different shapes. Religious schools, pedagogy-based schools and schools with different profiles have been started. Ideas that would not have otherwise been tested are now realities.'
It is wonderful that the early years are now seen to be of such importance. We need to be careful that in our pursuit of outcomes and standards, we do not create such rigid systems that we constrain the inspirational pedagogues of the future.
Wendy Ellyatt is an independent writer and researcher specialising in the early years, and a core member of the OpenEYE campaign. Contact wendyellyatt@googlemail.com
REFERENCES
- The Malaguzzi quotes appear in his obituary by Wolfgang Achtner, The Independent, 1 April 1994
- Discovery of the Child by Maria Montessori (Random House)
- Progress Matters, www.nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/node/176243
