Knowledge in everyday life

1 General overview
1.1 An overview of the unit
The relationship between observation of children and educational theory is central to the teaching of this unit: the theory should help you make sense of what you observe, while your observations should help you make sense of the theory. This perspective is reflected in the activities you will find in the blocks of study material. We recommend that you keep a notebook as you work through the unit. You can use this both for the activities that you do at home and for those that involve observation of and working with children. If you keep your notebook with you as you work in your setting, you can use it to record other observations, useful discussions with colleagues and any other information that may help you with your study.

We anticipate that most students will be working in early years settings somewhere in the United Kingdom, and we make reference, where appropriate, to curriculum guidance and other relevant documents published by government for the four UK countries – England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Given the range of settings in which students of this unit are working, and the variety of curricula (according to age, type of setting, location, etc.) in which their work is framed, it would be impossible for every example used in the material to apply directly to your particular circumstances. In some ways this is a good thing: it will enable you to gain insights into the learning of children who are in older and younger age ranges than those you are used to; moreover, being able to make comparisons of your ownway of working with that of other settings can give valuable insights too. It is also more than possible that one day you will find yourself working in a context different fromyour current one. However, we have tried to make the unit as widely relevant as possible, and we encourage you to consider carefully all the arguments, case studies and examples used, to see what insights they can offer in your own situation.

Similarly, although most of the examples and case studies involve English-speaking children, we hope that it will be clear that the points we are making apply equally where the medium is Welsh, Gaelic or another language.
What the unit is about
This unit is about the ways in which we come to know and make sense of the world, in particular how we do this using the media of language, mathematics and science.

There are many possible theoretical positions which can be taken towards early years curricula. Some people, for example, think of children as ‘empty vessels’ which can be ‘filled’ with knowledge that is transmitted to them by adults. This view has been associated with a behaviourist approach to teaching and learning, in which adults are seen to have control over what is learnt and children play a passive role in receiving the knowledge transmitted. In the 1960s and 1970s, school and early years curricula were heavily influenced by the constructivist approach pioneered by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980). According to constructivist theory, learning involves the interaction of thought and experience: children, who are compared to ‘active scientists’, are led by their own curiosity to explore their environment at their own pace.

The approach favoured by the course team is a social constructivist one, a perspective associated with the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934). As with constructivism, this approach highlights the importance of learners relating their experience to their existing knowledge; however, it also emphasises the role of the child’s interaction with others. Far from being lone explorers, children are seen as learning with the collaboration and support of carers and others, usually people who are more competent in the skills and knowledge they are developing. This interactive perspective links the knowledge of all the individuals within a social grouping, and the commonly held knowledge that emerges is the culture within which the child learns. The emphasis on interaction puts a high value on language, while science, mathematics and various language practices (literacy, for example) are seen as cultural products that can be used by members of the culture as frameworks in which their knowledge can develop. As well as providing a structure in which to understand subject learning, social constructivism appeals to the course team as the model that best fits our experience of young children as active and interactive constructors of their own learning. We see children as meaning makers (Wells, 1987).

Another term you will come across quite often is sociocultural. Some writers use the terms ‘sociocultural’ and ‘social constructivist’ to mean much the same thing. For others, the difference is a matter of emphasis: they use the former when considering wider social and cultural issues (e.g. the influence of gender-biased language on the way we understand the world), and the latter in relation to smaller-scale events (such as an adult scaffolding the learning of an individual child). The title of Vygotsky’s book Mind in Society (Vygotsky, 1978) reflects the psychologist’s conception of individual minds developing through their direct and indirect contact with other members of a culture. Although it is possible to take a sociocultural position without taking a social constructivist one, in this unit the two approaches are seen as complementary. Moreover, by adopting the two perspectives, the course team does not favour either the role of local interactions or of wider cultural factors in their contribution to knowing and understanding; in reality, the two factors are inseparable.
Language, mathematics and science in the unit
Because of the schooled culture we have grown up in, we are likely to recognise language, mathematics and science as distinct ‘ways of knowing’. The words ‘language’, ‘mathematics’ and ‘science’ probably prompted you to think first of the school curriculum, where they are often treated very separately from each other. One of the intentions of the unit is to explore and develop your understandings of these three subjects, which means that, inevitably, we will spend some time dealing with them separately. However, these ways of knowing are more than just school subjects or bodies of abstract academic knowledge: they are ways used by adults and children alike to engage with and make sense of the world. In most natural contexts, people act and think in many different ways at once: for example, when considering the mathematics you use when buying a carpet, if you were to give a detailed account of your visit to the carpet shop, you would find that you simultaneously used your skills and knowledge of both language (e.g. to discuss relative merits of different fibres, or to negotiate price) and science (e.g. when considering the cloth’s durability or ease of cleaning).

For young children, the need to separate out these ways of thinking will be still less obvious, as would be attempts to consider their thinking separately fromthe context in which it takes place. For these reasons, the course team favours a holistic view of the curriculum, where the totality of children’s experience is taken into account and learning opportunities are presented in a way that makes most sense. Similarly, we believe that practitioners should at all times be alert to the breadth and complexity of the things that children do. Consequently, when you are looking at the video sequences in the audiovisual material, we would urge you, even where the focus of an activity is on just one subject, to take account of how the children concerned are making use of other ways of knowing. For example, the course team considered illustrating a mathematical point with a sequence showing two children playing with water. At the same time as identifying their mathematical learning (relating to volume and capacity) we would also expect you to notice what they are learning about the properties of water and the way their language relates to their growing understanding.

The unit is structured to reflect the way in which the three subjects are often intertwined, and how our understanding of them can offer different insights into the same experience. Initially, the course team briefly considered organising it as three completely separate sections, so that you would complete your study of, say, mathematics in the first ten weeks or so, before moving on to the next subject. However, it immediately became obvious that, as well as not reflecting reality, this approach would involve a great deal of overlap and repetition. We settled, therefore, on a pattern where a succession of aspects of language, mathematics and science are examined, using linking text to bring together points of similarity and to discuss what can be learnt more generally about thinking and knowing.
Subject knowledge
Subject knowledge is a critical factor at every point in the teaching process: in planning, assessing and diagnosing, task setting, questioning, explaining and giving feedback.

(Alexander et al., 1992, paragraph 77)

Subject knowledge, which lies at the heart of this unit, comes in different forms. One well-known typology (Shulman, 1986) identifies three kinds:

content knowledge;
curricular knowledge;
pedagogic subject knowledge.
Content knowledge, or personal subject knowledge, is what most people would perhaps think of simply as ‘knowledge’. It is the kind of knowledge that comes from textbooks and reference books, and is most commonly acquired through formal education. Teachers in primary and secondary schools are expected to have studied the subjects they teach to a high level. The subject knowledge books for this unit attempt to set out the subject knowledge needed by a primary teacher, and they are used throughout the unit to help you develop your own personal subject knowledge.

Curricular knowledge refers to what you know about the formally defined curriculum followed by your setting: for example, if you work in a nursery school in Scotland, the curricular knowledge you need will be found in A Curriculum Framework for Children 3 to 5 (SCCC, 1999) and in any supporting curriculum documents that may have been developed in your setting.

Pedagogical knowledge is the knowledge that practitioners have which helps them to teach and provide support as children develop their own personal subject knowledge. This may involve knowing particular ways of presenting knowledge so that children can relate it to what they already know; or it may be knowing common misconceptions that children may have, and how they can be led from these to more conventional understandings.
Talking, thinking and learning
One of the main points which the unit will be making is that information and knowledge are not the same thing and that, in order to learn, learners have to engage actively with new information. We hope that you will learn to apply your growing knowledge by relating it to your professional context, and that, by questioning and analysing both theory and practice, you will be able to reach your own conclusions.

One way of engaging with knowledge is to ask questions. Earlier we suggested that you discuss the unit with fellow students. Talking to colleagues in your early years setting about specific questions can give another valuable perspective. Even when you are ‘simply’ reading the unit materials or viewing a video sequence, asking questions is a valuable strategy. You may resolve them later in discussions with other adults or through your observation of children. You may simply be able to think them through. In any event, approaching the unit with a questioning attitude will make you a more active learner.

We hope that this unit will enable you to develop your own understanding of language, mathematics and science, and give you rewarding insights into children’s learning and understanding. We also hope that you enjoy studying the unit as much as we have enjoyed writing it and wish you every success with your studies.