1. The role of the adult and pedagogical approaches to the curriculum
Session 7
The role of the adult and pedagogical approaches to the curriculum
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2. Learning outcomes By the end of the session you will have;
Reflected upon your own pedagogical strategies as a professional and your own professional goals

3. So what is curriculum?
“The sum total of the experiences, activities, and events whether direct or indirect, which occur in an environment designed to foster children’s learning and development.” (New Zealand Ministry of Education, 2005, p.10)

4. So what is curriculum?
“all the opportunities for learning at school; all the behaviour that is encouraged or discouraged; the school organization and routines, the way adults, including parents, interact with the children.” (Curtis, 2006, p.15)

5. The role of the adult?
“the way adults, including parents, interact with the children”.
List do’s and don’ts for adults.

6. Essential characteristics of a practitioner
Warmth and empathy
Spontaneity
Skills of reflection and analysis
Clear principles underpinning practice
Ability to communicate with a wide range of people
An ability to take the lead
An ability to be playful and make learning fun

7. Essential characteristics of a practitioner
Imagination and creativity
In depth understanding of child development and effective learning
Conscientious record keeping
An optimistic disposition and ‘can do’ approach
(Edgington, 2007, p.8)

8. Pedagogy
Reflecting upon your own knowledge and other modules. What does it mean to you ?

9. Pedagogy
“How children are taught…all teachers have pedagogy or, more accurately, a cluster of pedagogical notions. These may be held consciously or unconsciously. During the course of a school day, different pedagogical approaches are required.”
(Athey, 2007, p.37)
Reflect on this. What does it mean?

10. Pedagogy
“While curriculum may be therefore be understood as denoting all of the knowledge, skills and values that children are meant to learn in educational establishments, pedagogy is referred to as the practice…pedagogy refers to the interactive process between teacher and learner and the learning environment.”
(Siraj Blatchford, 2002 in Anning, 2004 pp )

11. What is pedagogy?
There should be a scientific basis for the art of teaching
We should distinguish between knowledge that is general (nomothetic) and knowledge that applies to the understanding of particular events or individuals (ideographic)

12. What is pedagogy?
Argued “that teachers creatively apply their nomothetic knowledge to the ideograpic problems posed by the unique groups of children that they are faced with; with all of their specific needs, socio cultural status and cognitive and affective demands.”
Gage, 1995 (Sylva et al 2010, p.149);

13. EPPE study and effective practice
In this study pedagogy was defined to refer to “the full set of instructional techniques and strategies that enabled learning to take place in early childhood that provided opportunities for the acquisition of knowledge, skills, attitudes and dispositions.” (Sylva et al, 2010, pp )

14. A focus on pedagogy In EPPE excellent/good settings were:
found to engage in sustained shared thinking
Extending child-initiated interactions
Adult modelling of combined with periods of sustained shared thinking and open questioning associated with better cognitive achievement
Two thirds of the activities were child initiated

15. A focus on pedagogy
Highly trained staff i.e teachers provided children with more experience of academic activities
Adopted discipline/behaviour policies that involved staff in supporting children in rationalising and talking through their conflicts
Firm knowledge and understanding of ‘pedagogical content knowledge’
Shared child related information between parents and staff and parents involved in decision making
From Sylva et al (2010, pp )

16. Socio-pedagogy
In most Northern Europe contexts child-care was originally family orientated and concerned with promoting the ideology of the family which may be contrasted with more educationally oriented approaches.
central aim of social pedagogy has been to empower children as active citizens, so they can act to change their own lives.
Nurturing of children’s identity and self esteem
(Sylva et al, 2010 pp )

17. Reference list
Anning, A., J, C. & Fleer, M. (2004) Early Childhood Education. London : Paul Chapman Publishing)
Athey, C (2007) Extending Thought in Young Children. London : Routledge
Curtis, A (2006) A Curriculum for the Pre School Child. 2nd/Ed. Oxon : Routledge
New Zealand Council for Educational Research. (2005) Competent Children, Competent Learners. <http//: [accessed 21/02/2015]
Sylva, K., Melhuish, E., Sammons, P., Siraj-Blatchford, I. & Taggart, B. (2010) Early Childhood Matters. London : Routledge