Exploring Education and Childhood by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317505143
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This body of research indicates that how the brain develops means that children only gradually become able to carry out some functions effectively, including processing emotional responses and exercising conscious control. The primary years are important for improving executive function, the conscious use of inhibitory mechanisms and metacognition to regulate immediate responses, relying less on external reward or sanction. Conscious reasoning makes considerable demands on working memory (the processes used to store, organise and manipulate information temporarily) which is vital to enable abstract and generalised thinking. The ability to use working memory efficiently develops only gradually and is impaired by anxiety. So children need opportunities and encouragement to improve executive function, through discussion, reflection and practice in an unthreatening environment.

Primary classteachers spend a considerable amount of time with a class, during any week and throughout the year, and usually have to teach most subject areas. This provides the opportunity to build close relationships and a deep understanding of the class and individuals within it. Classteachers cannot have as much subject knowledge in every subject as a specialist in only one, but they are well placed to make links across the whole curriculum and to encourage, over time, the attitudes, values and dispositions for lifelong and lifewide learning (see Claxton and Carr, 2004; Claxton, 2007, for more academic; and Claxton, 2002, for practical discussion). Their expertise resides more in ensuring breadth and balance and enabling links across different subject areas, and with children’s experience outside school, which is especially significant for those least experienced in, or engaged with, school learning.

Out of school, children can usually speak and move when they want. In a class of up to 30, they are expected to wait. This can easily lead to children becoming passive and disengaged, or disruptive. It is easy to become anonymous in the crowd; or to gain attention by standing out from it. Their teachers must try to meet individual needs while catering for those of the whole group. This requires skill in interacting with the group, without wasting time and energy, if children are to be actively engaged, as in the history lesson described above. So classteachers must be attuned to children’s emotional and cognitive cues and responses – and their own. The need to respond appropriately to children with a wide variety of backgrounds and abilities means that personal/interpersonal knowledge based on relationships of mutual trust matters particularly when learners are inexperienced or unsure.

Which aspects of pedagogy are most important in the primary classroom?

Think about and write down which pedagogical approaches are most likely to help a class of primary-age children:

become ‘readers’ (as opposed to just decode written words)

think, and act, like a scientist or a historian or an artist

adopt good learning behaviours (think beforehand of three or four)

develop intrinsic motivation.

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