TCS201 Early Childhood Learning: Mapping Theories to Practices - Case Study

Introduction

Early childhood education is marked by the debate of how children learn and what the best way to teach these young children is (Stremmel 1993). There have been many theories and viewpoints regarding the early childhood learning process and the effective methods of teaching. These theories inform and guide teachers on how the young students learn and develop. Every day, the teachers draw ideas and belief from these theoretical perspectives while operating in the early childhood settings (Nolan & Raban 2015). So, today’s educators put many of these theories into practice when they design their lessons and class activities with young children. In the Early Years Learning Framework (Australian Government n.d.), there are fundamentally 5 identified theoretical perspectives, such as the developmental, socio-cultural, socio-behaviourist, critical and post-structuralist perspectives.

This article discusses three teacher-designed class activities involving kindergarteners, to understand their learning progress during the activities. All of these three activities require group interactions, although can be performed individually by the student. These three cases are discussed in the light of three theoretical approaches to early childhood learning, connecting the theories to the practice. The three theoretical perspectives that are found to be predominantly informing the three chosen cases are: the developmental perspective, the socio-cultural perspective and the post-structuralist perspective.

Case 1: Family Ties

This case entailed a group activity, where children created a house scenario using dramatic play props such as glasses, trays and tables. Each child took on a role in the house – Ana played the mom of the house, Mila played the baby, Chloe and Clarissa were the sisters and Eva and Eryn enacted servants in the house. The servants were busy serving the family members in the house and the family members were giving out orders to the servants for items like the hot chocolate or the strawberry milkshake. 

This role-play of a house engaged the students in a positive manner and they seemed to enjoy being in the shoes of a mother, baby or a servant in that play environment. It allowed a lot of scope for interaction and conversation among the participating children, building relationships and resolving conflicts in case of disagreements. 

Evidently, this ‘Family Ties’ activity successfully achieved the 2 following learning outcomes:

• Outcome 4: Children are confident and involved learners.
• Outcome 5: Children are effective communicators.

The children bonded together, solved problems together and also negotiated together as if they are indeed a real family in a real house (observations attached to the Appendix).

This activity appears closely connected to the developmental perspectives of early childhood learning. The developmental theories of child learning are based on the fundamentals of developmental psychology, which holds that a child develops through certain stages and in a pattern. Therefore, early childhood pedagogies are built around those patterns and the stage at which the child is. 

Some of the significant developmental theorists are Jean Piaget (stage theory), Maria Montessori (planes of development), Rudolf Steiner (seven year phases), Kohlberg (stages of moral development), Erik Erikson (stages of development), etc. (Nolan & Raban 2015). Although their theories are not identical, they overlap and they look at development as a discontinuous, stage-by-stage process, where one stage ends to make way for the next. These theorists believe that young children learn by exploring and playing with concrete objects (CSU EYLF Consortium 2009). In such cases, the development is holistic – physical, social and cognitive development merge and progress together. So, educators practising these developmental theoretical approach, plan a rich classroom environment with play-based experiences suitable for each child’s unique and holistic development (CSU EYLF Consortium 2009). As the young children engage in the experiences, the educators observe them in their everyday activities in order to understand and analyse every child’s individual progress and shortcomings.