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Early childhood inquiry and e-learning: recontextualizing a progressive pedagogy in online school
Abstract
This is a study of progressive education in the context of virtual preschool.
The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged teachers globally to
adapt to new e-learning environments while finding creative solutions
to support child engagement and learning. In this case study, we
examined a preschool program in a progressive and multilingual
Hong Kong preschool as teachers struggled to adapt the school’s
inquiry-based pedagogy to online and at-home learning. Findings
suggest that, while teachers had some successes in maintaining the
school’s progressive philosophy, teachers and children struggled with
unmet needs for social learning.
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In the world of teacher education, the ability of teachers to adapt is associated with effective teaching. In the midst of a worldwide pandemic, however, teachers’ adaptability was put to the ultimate test. With this in mind, this article explores the journey of two preschool teachers as they embarked on the sudden move from face-to-face to online instruction alongside school administrators, parents, and young children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a tripartite model of adaptability, the authors examine the cognitive, emotional and behavioral adaptations employed by the focal teachers, as they supported the learning process in a multilingual and multicultural early childhood program under unprecedented teaching conditions. The article highlights the lessons learned during this traumatic time and the innovative ways educators partnered with families to develop new means of collaboration. The paper ends by calling attention to the socioeconomic line of division that exists among various populations both locally and globally, which shapes the educational landscape in significant ways.
Early childhood education and care (ECEC) educators’ well-being and emotional demands during COVID require careful attention. This article explores the emotional demands experienced by ECEC educators in Australia during ongoing periods of lockdown. A survey was designed to gather quantitative and qualitative data and participants were asked to participate in in-depth interviews. Thirty participants were interviewed to explore personal experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic; of these, a selected sample of six participants is presented, drawing on Honneth’s (1995) as an analytical framework. The findings show ECEC educators’ struggle for recognition and how solidarity amongst educators emerged as a key response. Implications provide impetus for the active recognition of the early childhood profession. Solidarity as a new concept in ECEC includes the recognition of the early childhood profession at a societal level, recognising the significant professional work early childhood educators accomplish, and their struggle during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
Online learning is an educational process which takes place over the Internet as a form of distance education. Distance education became ubiquitous as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020. Because of these circumstances, online teaching and learning had an indispensable role in early childhood education programs, even though debates continue on whether or not it is beneficial for young children to be exposed extensively to Information and Communication Technology (ICT). This descriptive study demonstrates how a preservice teacher education course in early childhood education was redesigned to provide student teachers with opportunities to learn and teach online. It reports experiences and reflections from a practicum course offered in the Spring Semester of 2020, in the USA. It describes three phases of the online student teachers’ experiences–Preparation, Implementation, and Reflection. Tasks accomplished in each phase are reported. Online teaching experiences provided these preservice teachers with opportunities to interact with children, as well as to encourage reflection on how best to promote young children’s development and learning with online communication tools.
This article draws out the implications for school and classroom practices of an emerging consensus about the science of learning and development, outlined in a recent synthesis of the research. Situating the review in a developmental systems framework, we synthesize evidence from the learning sciences and several branches of educational research regarding well-vetted strategies that support the kinds of relationships and learning opportunities needed to promote children’s well-being, healthy development, and transferable learning. In addition, we review research regarding practices that can help educators respond to individual variability, address adversity, and support resilience, such that schools can enable all children to find positive pathways to adulthood.
An increasing amount of attention and public funding has been dedicated in recent years to the field of Early Childhood Education and the expansion of early childhood programs in the United States. Program quality in early childhood is evaluated based on program-level structural features and instructional support (e.g. problem solving, feedback, and language modeling), but quantifiable measures of structural and process features do not necessarily equate to quality instructional interactions. Questions remain about the presence and strength of socially constructed power dynamics found in pedagogic practice. This case study seeks to illuminate interactions between children and teachers in federally funded Head Start classrooms, teachers’ views of children, and influences to novice project work using the Project Approach. The project work served as a frame for viewing interactions between teachers and children as mediated by varying degrees of power and control of teacher–child interactions at the classroom level (identified as “socio-structures”). Questions investigated were the following: (1) What are the socio-structures inside these Head Start classrooms before and during the implementation of the Project Approach? (2) How do existing socio-structures relate to teacher–child instructional language interactions during the implementation of the Project Approach?
The problematique addressed by the article is the growth of a dominant discourse in early childhood education and care, which has a strong effect on policy and practice, paralleled by an increasing number of other discourses which problematise most of the values, assumptions and understandings of the former. Yet there is very little engagement between these discourses, in large part because they are situated within different paradigms—modernity in the former case, postfoundationalism in the latter. The author argues that the absence of dialogue and debate impoverishes early childhood and weakens democratic practice. The article considers whether and in what conditions the concept of agonistic pluralism might provide a framework for political engagement among at least some on either side of the paradigmatic divide, and takes evaluation as one example of a subject for an agonistic politics of early childhood.
This study explores how early childhood teachers in a progressive private school in the Midwest adapted to changes resulting from the closing of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Employing Bourdieu’s notions of habitus, field, and illusio, we examine how educators in the school approached the move to distance learning during the early months of the pandemic, a time of crisis that led to dramatic and chaotic change. The findings from this study show how differences within a disposition toward progressive teaching greatly impact how teachers were able to adapt practice to eLearning. These findings raise questions about whether there are elements of habitus that better align with the field of progressive education.
Co-teaching provides opportunities for children that cannot be produced by a solo teacher. However, building relationships between co-teachers, particularly in a cross-cultural setting, can be difficult. This study of early years teachers in a Hong Kong international school aims to consider the elements that facilitate a strong and productive co-teaching relationship and challenges that teaching teams encounter. The study utilizes qualitative interviews of 26 teachers to capture teachers’ perceptions of co-teaching. Findings suggest, that while teachers valued their relationships, the building and maintenance of a productive co-teaching relationship takes work, flexibility, and an openness to the perspectives of one’s partner.
Inquiry-based education receives much attention in educational practice and theory, since it provides pupils and teachers with opportunities to actively engage in collaboratively answering questions. However, not only do many teachers find this approach demanding, it also remains unclear what they should do to foster this type of education in their classrooms. Our research question was: Which teaching strategies are used by K-12 teachers when promoting inquiry-based education in their classrooms and what are the reported outcomes? After searching for empirical studies on this topic, we examined 186 studies investigating different ways in which teachers can promote inquiry-based education. Analyses revealed varying teaching strategies, differing with regard to direction (teacher directed, student directed and mixed) and different perspectives of regulation (meta-cognitive, conceptual, and social regulation). Results show that important teacher strategies in metacognitive regulation are: focussing on thinking skills, developing a culture of inquiry, supporting inquiry discourse, and promoting nature of science; in conceptual regulation: providing information on the research topic and focussing on conceptual understanding; and in social regulation: bridging the gap between high and low achievers, organizing student learning in groups and focussing on collaboration processes.
Elementary teachers often struggle with how to design and implement inquiry instruction with their students. For many, just understanding what inquiry is can be difficult--let alone designing activities that support high levels of inquiry. In this article, the authors present a continuum by which to evaluate an activity's level of inquiry. Then, using a fifth-grade unit exploring sinking and floating, they describe examples of each type of inquiry from low-level structured inquiry to high-level open inquiry. (Contains 1 figure and lists 1 online resource.) (http://www.nsta.org/publications/browse_journals.aspx?action=issue&thetype=all&id=10.2505/3/sc08_046_02)
This book presents a disciplined, qualitative exploration of case study methods by drawing from naturalistic, holistic, ethnographic, phenomenological and biographic research methods. Robert E. Stake uses and annotates an actual case study to answer such questions as: How is the case selected? How do you select the case which will maximize what can be learned? How can what is learned from one case be applied to another? How can what is learned from a case be interpreted? In addition, the book covers: the differences between quantitative and qualitative approaches; data-gathering including document review; coding, sorting and pattern analysis; the roles of the researcher; triangulation; and reporting.
A project is an in-depth study of a particular topic that one or more children undertake, and consists of exploring the topic or theme such as "building a house" over a period of days or weeks. This book introduces the project approach and suggests applications and examples of this approach in action. Chapters are: (1) "Profile of the Project Approach," defining the approach and describing how project work complements other parts of the preschool curriculum; (2) "Research and Principles of Practice," discussing the conceptual basis for a project approach; (3) "Project Work in Action," illustrating the variety of project work; (4) "Features of the Project Approach," presenting guidelines for project topic selection, types of project activities, choices children make in project work, the teacher's role, and the three phases of project work; (5) "Teacher Planning," focusing on selecting a topic, making a topic web, deciding on a project's scope, and using five criteria for selecting and focusing on project topics; (6) "Getting Projects Started: Phase I," detailing ways to engage children's interest, initiate the introductory discussion, organize activities for early stages of extended projects, and involve parents; (7) "Projects in Progress: Phase II," discussing ways to maximize children's learning, interest, and motivation; (8) "Consolidating Projects: Phase III," presenting various approaches to concluding a project, such as making presentations to other classes or evaluating the project; and (9) "The Project Approach in Perspective," identifying the project approach as a complement and supplement to other aspects of the curriculum while giving teachers the opportunity to attend equally to social and intellectual development. Appendices present project descriptions, project guidelines, and a checklist for recording Missouri State Competencies applied in the course of project work. Contains about 140 references. (KDFB)
Experience and Educationis the best concise statement on education ever published by John Dewey, the man acknowledged to be the pre-eminent educational theorist of the twentieth century. Written more than two decades after Democracy and Education(Dewey's most comprehensive statement of his position in educational philosophy), this book demonstrates how Dewey reformulated his ideas as a result of his intervening experience with the progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his theories had received. Analysing both "traditional" and "progressive" education, Dr. Dewey here insists that neither the old nor the new education is adequate and that each is miseducative because neither of them applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience. Many pages of this volume illustrate Dr. Dewey's ideas for a philosophy of experience and its relation to education. He particularly urges that all teachers and educators looking for a new movement in education should think in terms of the deeped and larger issues of education rather than in terms of some divisive "ism" about education, even such an "ism" as "progressivism." His philosophy, here expressed in its most essential, most readable form, predicates an American educational system that respects all sources of experience, on that offers a true learning situation that is both historical and social, both orderly and dynamic.
• Our schools are troubled with a multiplication of studies, each in turn having its own multiplication of materials and principles. Our teachers find their tasks made heavier in that they have come to deal with pupils individually and not merely in mass. Unless these steps in advance are to end in distraction, some clew of unity, some principle that makes for simplification, must be found. This book represents the conviction that the needed steadying and centralizing factor is found in adopting as the end of endeavor that attitude of mind, that habit of thought, which we call scientific. This scientific attitude of mind might, conceivably, be quite irrelevant to teaching children and youth. But this book also represents the conviction that such is not the case; that the native and unspoiled attitude of childhood, marked by ardent curiosity, fertile imagination, and love of experimental inquiry, is near, very near, to the attitude of the scientific mind. This book examines the problem of training thought and the logical considerations for training thought. If these pages assist any to appreciate this kinship and to consider seriously how its recognition in educational practice would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste, the book will amply have served its purpose. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
• Our schools are troubled with a multiplication of studies, each in turn having its own multiplication of materials and principles. Our teachers find their tasks made heavier in that they have come to deal with pupils individually and not merely in mass. Unless these steps in advance are to end in distraction, some clew of unity, some principle that makes for simplification, must be found. This book represents the conviction that the needed steadying and centralizing factor is found in adopting as the end of endeavor that attitude of mind, that habit of thought, which we call scientific. This scientific attitude of mind might, conceivably, be quite irrelevant to teaching children and youth. But this book also represents the conviction that such is not the case; that the native and unspoiled attitude of childhood, marked by ardent curiosity, fertile imagination, and love of experimental inquiry, is near, very near, to the attitude of the scientific mind. This book examines the problem of training thought and the logical considerations for training thought. If these pages assist any to appreciate this kinship and to consider seriously how its recognition in educational practice would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste, the book will amply have served its purpose. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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