PowerPoint to accompany my keynote to the Babcock Early Years Foundation Stage Conference 2021

1. Celebrating
Children’s Curiosity
Learning through
Experience of the
Real World
Dr Julian Grenier
@juliangrenier

2. Children are the future
protectors of our planet,
growing up as responsible
global citizens.
But who is protecting the
future protectors?

3. Climate change puts
children’s most basic
rights at risk, seriously
affecting their access to
health, food, water, clean
air, education and
protection. Around the
world, the growing
number of extreme
weather events is putting
more and more children’s
lives in danger. Every year,
environmental factors
take the lives of 1.7
million children under
five.

4. For an even greater
number of children, these
events mean a reduced
chance of a happy, healthy
future. When floods hit,
schools and health clinics
are destroyed. When
droughts occur, children
spend less time in school
because they have to walk
miles to collect water.
Rising sea levels and toxic
air pollution turn
children’s communities
into hazardous
environments to grow up
in.

5. Impact of
pollution in
the UK
‘Children living in homes
with higher levels of damp
and second-hand smoke
had higher emotional
dysregulation scores’

6. Not going
out?
6

7. Background noise generated by
the TV or radio was another
significant predictor of
emotional dysregulation
trajectories. This is in line with
findings that noise exposure
leads to diminished reading and
language ability. Studies show
that children in homes with high
levels of TV noise experience
greater instances of depression,
anxiety and aggression
(Erikson & Newman et al., 2017;
Martin et al., 2012).

8. Homes described as (1) really
disorganised, (2) a place where
parents were ‘unable to hear
themselves think’ or (3) a place
that did not have a calm
atmosphere, housed children who
had lower levels of independence
and higher levels of emotional
dysregulation.

9. 9

10. Children in East
London have up to
10 percent less
lung function due
to air pollution and
poor air quality
compared to the
national average
10

11. • We need urgent social action
• Early years educators can
make a difference: but we
need wider change, too

12. • How can we ‘foster children’s
understanding of our
culturally, socially,
technologically and
ecologically diverse world’
(EYFS Statutory Framework
2021) as they are the future
protectors of our planet,
growing up as responsible
global citizens?
• Can a focus on early science
in Understanding the World
play a part in this?

14. A different
emphasis
• Curriculum Guidance
• A focus on curriculum, and
assessment that’s fit for
purpose
• Tackling the excessive
workload associated with
tracking

15. • “I feel like I am not
living, I am existing.”
• The emphasis on
collecting evidence to
show that children are
on track is futile. As
David Dadau argues,
these types of age-
related expectations
are guesswork. He
says: “We look at what
some children can do
at a particular age and
then label this as an
expectation for what
all children should
achieve.”

16. • It doesn’t make any
sense to say that a
three-year-old is “on
track”. Reception
mustn’t be all about
single-mindedly
tracking children’s
progress towards 17
early-learning goals.

17. What’s the alternative?

18. Reflecting on how
children learn and
develop
• Smith (1999, p.86): “models of
development which emphasise the
child’s natural and spontaneous
development from within or of
development as being shaped entirely
through learning processes have been
strongly criticised.”

19. Initiation as well as
response
• Dalli et al (2011, p.4) summarise
international research as showing
“that adults have the key role in
initiating cognitively stimulating
interactions that are attuned to the
child (Jaffe, 2007; Warner, 2002).”
• Following children’s interests?

20. Two year olds outdoors – Skye

21. Watch Siren videos
through their 30-
day trial

22. What do we mean by
curriculum in the early years?
• UNESCO (2016) – a curriculum for early childhood
education can:
• interrelate development and learning processes;
• systemize and organize educational work;
• lighten the pedagogical role of the educator by providing
him/her with guidance in the learning activities;
• enable children to construct meaning based on and make
sense of their learning experiences.

24. 2 points to
bear in mind
The evidence suggests:
freely chosen play is important for
motivation.
play that’s supported by scaffolding is a
powerful way for children to learn
Balance: the planned curriculum, and responding to
children’s exploration and play
The updated Development Matters puts a stronger
emphasis on curriculum planning.

25. Principles of
curriculum design
A good curriculum is:
• Balanced
• Rigorous
• Coherent
• Vertically integrated
• Appropriate
• Focused/parsimonious
• Relevant
Source: Dylan Wiliam

26. Vertical
integration
• We don’t ‘teach science’ in
the early years. Science as a
subject begins in Key Stage
1.
• How well do science subject
leads understand early
learning and the EYFS?
• How well does the EYFS lay
firm foundations for
children’s scientific learning?
• Is the spiral curriculum a
helpful model?

27. Source: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED538282.pdf

28. Source: https://www.slideshare.net/Tansy1962/creative-curriculum-design-in-a-time-of-constraint

29. 3 young scientists reflect on their early learning

30. Ofsted’s Science Review

31. Understanding?
• A recent report from The
Ogden Trust and The University
of Manchester describes the
realities of primary pupils’
science learning.
• It shows that pupils regularly
experience ‘fun activities’
without developing a deep
understanding of the
associated scientific concepts.

32. The child as a natural
scientist
• Encouraging children to pursue their own enquiries
taps into their natural curiosity.
• Finding things out for yourself, through your own
efforts, seems natural and developmental, rather than
coercive, and may also help you to remember them
better.
• BUT: learning science is not the discovery or
construction of ideas that are new and unknown.
Rather it is making what others already know your
own.
• Adapted from Robert Miller (2004)

33. • Do we have enough scientific
knowledge ourselves to
communicate ideas and
concepts through
explorations and
investigations with children?
• Are we clear about what we
want to convey?

37. • Based on the above, high-
quality science education
may have the following
features
• In the early years, pupils are
introduced to a wide-ranging
vocabulary that categorises
and describes the natural
world. These words are not
too technical but provide the
‘seeds’ for developing
scientific concepts that will
be built on in later years.
• Ofsted Science Review

38. Onions

39. Professional development and scientific
knowledge
• Science is taught using science kits in some primary schools and early years
settings. These kits help teachers and pupils do experiments and other
enquiry activities.
• However, 2 systematic reviews suggest that using science kits is not
associated with positive achievement in science.
• This contrasts to positive effects for programmes that did not use kits but
instead provided teachers with professional development that aimed to
improve their science teaching generally. Slavin and others suggest that
this may be an unintended consequence of science kits encouraging
teachers to be too activity-based, rather than developing the underlying
scientific concepts the activities were designed to teach.

40. Early science through books
• This study examined whether children 4- and
5-years-old (N = 156) can revise a physical
science misconception from different types of
picture books. A realistic fiction book and
informational book with identical images
matched in word count and reading difficulty
level were compared to a control book about
plants. In the pre-test and post-test, children
were asked to make predictions about pairs of
objects that either had the same or different
weight.
• Source

41. • The pre-test scores showed that many children began with the
misconception that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects.
Post-test scores revealed that children revised this misconception
after reading the realistic fiction and informational picture books but
not after reading the control book. These findings provide evidence
that children as young as age 4 can acquire physical science
knowledge from picture books and that both realistic fiction and
informational books can be used effectively to expose children to
science concepts.

42. Science is everywhere
• While it is true that ‘science is everywhere’, it is important
that we take a deliberate, scientific lens to the learning
opportunities available.
• This will support children with the opportunities to develop
the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and working theories
that serve as the foundation for ongoing learning in
science, and for developing scientific literacy.
• We also have a key role in promoting children’s enjoyment
of science.

43. Our own knowledge of
science and child
development
• We need to extend children’s
thinking through science in the
curriculum. Children use their
existing working theories as a basis
for making sense of new
experiences.
• Making sense of new experiences
may involve refining existing
theories, or discarding less useful
ones, and developing new working
theories.

44. • Teachers who are confident in their subject content knowledge are
more likely to identify science learning opportunities in children’s play,
and extend on these as part of children’s incidental learning.
• When teachers introduce scientific concepts, using the correct
terminology for those concepts, they promote children’s scientific
thinking and knowledge.
• This helps children share their thinking and explore ideas.
• It helps move their thinking from ‘everyday’ concepts to ‘scientific’
concepts. Using scientific terms is likely to help children understand
that they are “doing science”.

45. Austin’s butterfly

46. Recap
• Early years educators can make a
difference: but we need wider change,
too
• We need a more scientifically informed
generation to tackle the complex
problems we face
• The seeds of science are taught in the
early years
• Children’s attitudes, confidence and
vocabulary are all key

47. Recap
• Children won’t run into early scientific
concepts through exploration alone.
• It isn’t sensible for us to imagine we could
extend multiple children’s understanding
of scientific concepts by extending on
their play, minute-by-minute
• We need a balance: independent
investigation and guided learning
• We need a curriculum plan and we need
to have the basic subject knowledge
ourselves

48. Who are the scientists?

49. Find out more
• Independently written guide to download
as a PDF and links to other free resources:
• www.development-matters.org.uk