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Title:Teacher talk and children's queries: Communication about natural science in early childhood education Language: Swedish with a summary in English
This empirical study analyses the qualitatively different ways in which teachers approach children's learning in and about nature. The empirical data consists of video observations of children and teachers communicating with one another around natural phenomena found during excursions into a forest. Variation theory is presented as a framework for analysing the opportunities teachers provide for children's learning. The study identifies three qualitatively different ways in which teachers communicate with children: one based on the principle of opening up dimensions of variation, the second building on presumed shared previous experience as a resource for making sense of a novel observation and the third involving children through using a make-believe playful approach. The implications of these three different approaches for children's learning are discussed. IntroductionAccounts of children's learning generally indicate a preference for exploration as the mechanism of learning. A clear example of this is Piagetian theory. In contrast, more recent theoretical accounts of children's learning have increasingly emphasised and empirically shown how participation in different kinds of conversations is decisive for the child's learning. Through implication, this latter view ascribes important roles to other participants in the child's everyday life, including other children and, most importantly, the teacher. For example, as shown by Sylva and her colleagues in the Effective provision of pre-school education (EPPE) project (Sylva et al. 2010; cf. Siraj-Blatchford and Manni 2008), providing good learning opportunities for children in early childhood education involves 'sustained shared thinking' (SirajBlatchford 2007). This concept denotes that interlocutors (in this context, typically a teacher and a child) are engaged over a prolonged time in a mutual task, such as telling a story together. Rather than simply emphasising that other people and communication are important to the child's learning, recent research has made clear that the nature of this communication is decisive. In other words, how the teacher and child communicate about a phenomenon is of vital importance to the child's emerging understanding of that phenomenon (e.g.
This study concerns the relationship between learning and play. On the basis of sociocultural theory, some ideas are put forward about how this relationship can be conceptualised in the context of goal-directed practice. Empirical data from primary school with children 6-8 years old are used to illustrate and discuss this conceptualisation. It is suggested that learning and play need to be seen as intrinsically interwoven, and that children's play is contingent on their learning, more particularly the cultural tools they have appropriated or are in the midst of appropriating.
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