Provision of education for children under five has recently become a political concern. At the same time, this relatively small field has been attracting increased research attention, with many early ...years practitioners seeking routes to initial and higher degrees. This book offers essential guidance for researchers and newcomers to the field, outlining opportunities in research as well as useful, sensitive and appropriate methods for researching childhood education.
Early childhood (EC) leadership literature indicates few theoretically based studies identifying and testing different models and characteristics of leadership. Objectives were thus to identify, ...describe and analyse what leadership meant to key EC participants; to consider roles, responsibilities and characteristics; to investigate core components; to capture practice and judge how it was understood and enacted. A case-study approach used 12 sites and multiple data-gathering methods: questionnaires; interviews; and in-depth ‘day in the life’ video vignettes. Participants described their organizations as hierarchical in structure and traditional in strategic decision-making, yet collaborative in culture and operational functioning. Variation in leadership, management and administration patterns across settings indicated multiple leadership roles in diverse EC settings. Principal components analysis revealed that those with postgraduate qualifications favoured ‘leaders as guides’; those with professional heritages other than teaching leaned towards ‘leaders as strategists’; those with NVQ qualifications tended towards ‘leaders as motivators’; those with postgraduate qualifications also valued ‘leaders as business oriented’. New models of leadership are thus worthy of consideration. Leaders acknowledged difficulty in standing back and reflecting, recognizing an essential aspect of leadership was ongoing thinking and decision-making, inaccessible unless they ‘talked-aloud’ whilst engaging in professional practice. This suggests a need to increase self-understanding and alternative routes to problem-solving.
This research investigated the similarities and differences between countries in young children's early numeracy skills related to age, culture, and gender. The participants were five-year-old ...children from Beijing (People's Republic of China), England, and Finland. The rationale for the cross-cultural comparison originates from research results with older children showing that Asian children outperform children from America or Europe, and from the lack of such information concerning younger children. The results showed that in all locations older children performed better than the younger children. Cultural differences were found: young children from Beijing outperformed those from England and Finland in overall early numeracy performance, as well as in sub-tests for understanding of quantities and relations (i.e. relational skills), and counting skills. Finnish children had better scores than English children in the whole early numeracy scale and in the relational scale. The results are discussed in relation to culture, instruction in preschools, and learning support at home, as well as the effects of language characteristics. The culture's appreciation of and approach to mathematics learning in early childhood is a plausible explanation for the cross-cultural differences found in this study.
Faith schools are popular with parents and feature towards the top of the annual tables of school performance in England based on the government's preferred measures of school outcomes. Academic ...studies suggest that although the observed differentials between the faith and non-faith sectors at the end of Key Stage 4 are partly explicable in demographic and similar terms, they do nonetheless represent a real phenomenon. There is little research into the causes of this. The simplest hypothesis is that pupils attending faith schools take more examinations, thus boosting their average points scores. The possible additional courses are, by inference, in Religious Education. This study examines the hypothesis and finds it wanting as an adequate explanation. Further areas of research are suggested.
There is a growing international recognition of the importance of the early years of schooling as well as an interest being shown in the relationship of early education to later achievement. This ...article focuses on a cohort of English pupils who have been tracked through primary school during the first five years of the new National Numeracy Strategy. It reports a limited longitudinal study of young children's early mathematical development, initially within three testing cycles: at the mid-point and towards the end of their reception year (at five years- of-age) and again at the mid-point of Year 1 (at six years-of age). These cycles were located within the broader context of progress through to the end of Key Stage 1 (at seven years) and Key Stage 2 (at eleven years) on the basis of national standardised assessment tests (SATs). Results showed that children who bring into school early mathematical knowledge do appear to be advantaged in terms of their mathematical progress through primary school. Numerical attainment increases in importance across the primary years and practical problem solving remains an important element of this. This finding is significant given the current emphasis on numerical calculation in the English curriculum. It is concluded that without active intervention, it is likely that children with little mathematical knowledge at the beginning of formal schooling will remain low achievers throughout their primary years and, probably, beyond. Author abstract
This paper describes a limited longitudinal study of young children's early numeracy development within three testing cycles, at the mid-point and towards the end of their reception year (at five ...years-of-age) and again at the mid-point of Year 1 (at six years-of-age), located within the broader context of progress through to Key Stage 1 SAT results (at seven years). Assessment was carried out using the Utrecht Early Mathematical Competence Test (Van Luit et al., 1994). This comprised eight sub-topics, five items in each, including comparison, classification, correspondence, seriation, counting, calculation and real-life number problem solving. Broadly, one set of sub-tests related to understanding of relations in shape, size, quantity and order, whilst a second set of sub-tests related to basic arithmetic. Three hundred pupils were selected from twenty-one schools, large and small, from rural and urban areas, with high and low concentrations of children eligible for free school meals and/or with special educational needs, as well as representing a broad range of achievements levels based on standards assessment tasks. Whilst this paper focuses upon the performance of English pupils, reference is also made to the larger European sample which involved children from Flemish-speaking Belgium, Germany, Greece, Slovenia and the Netherlands. Results showed that children's total scores at around the mid-point of reception year were indeed predictive of later achievement at the end of KS1 though the combined scores over three testing cycles which extended to the mid-point of Year 1, were more so. Discriminant analysis confirmed that a combination of a counting sub-test (one seemed sufficient) and a sub-test focusing on understanding of relations in shape, size, order or quantity (a different one at each testing cycle), together with the general number knowledge sub-test was best predictive of final SAT levels. Comparison with the international data set suggested a different trajectory for English pupils, with more of a bias towards arithmetic sub-tests than their European counter-parts who start school later. Moreover, the pattern of dependence of scores on age in which no advantage was found in including any national differences was especially interesting. These findings are discussed within the context of different school start ages and traditions of preparation for formal schooling. Perhaps what emerged most strongly is the need for young English pupils to maintain a broad and balanced early mathematics curriculum, which places appropriate emphasis on practical problem solving.
"Personalised learning" and the value of national assessment data in achieving it have been identified by the UK Secretary of State for Education and Skills as essential for raising educational ...standards. Employing multilevel analysis, this paper compares children's end of primary school (Key Stage 2) test scores with those they achieved in comparable test papers taken in each term of their first year of secondary school. The paper questions the reliability of national assessment data in respect of the performance of individual children, their predictive validity and thus their value in contributing to the provision of "personalised learning". (Contains 5 tables.)
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