CONTRIBUTORS Be an Early Years
star thrower This month, in our ongoing collaboration with Edge Hill University curated by ALICIA BLANCO-BAYO, Early Years Lecturer and WTEY Programme Leader at the University’s Faculty of Education, we’re delighted to hear from DR LIANA BEATTIE, Associate Head of Department (Early Years Education).
Like air, leadership is both impalpable and omnipresent. It infiltrates our thoughts, our experiences, as well as the global systems of governance, politics and systems of schooling, including early years education. Over the recent years, the paradoxes and controversies of leadership exhibited themselves worldwide from the UK vote to leave the European Union to the election of Donal Trump as the president of the USA, from the rise of support for the right-wing parties in French, Italian and Hungarian elections to the establishment of authoritarian states, such as Putin’s Russia. These developments make us think not only about those who have led towards these specific goals and agendas, but also about those who followed – their followers, creating a leader-follower distinction.
The questions related to the leader-follower division are also relevant to the context of leadership in the Early Years, which is currently being faced with an unpredictable and volatile neoliberal policies associated with testing, outcomes and the “school readiness” agenda. Indeed, even a brief look into the current system of early years education in the UK enables us to witness a noticeable change from an explicit focus on babies and children’s needs to the obsessive focus on the achievement of learning goals, completing child observations, meeting OfSTED requirements and responding to new government requirements. These developments have created new dynamics in the leader-follower relationships in the field of early years education, heightening the levels of governmental control on everything that early years professionals do. Early Years leaders started doubting their own expertise and asking themselves a question: “Are we actually free to make our own decisions based on what we believe are children’s best interests?” In this climate of increasing struggles against neoliberal agendas, we need to review how we approach the position of leadership in the Early Years. Rather than blindly following government agendas, it is necessary for today’s Early Years leaders to rely more on their ‘followers’ – Early Years Practitioners, who work ‘on the ground level’ with babies and children on a daily basis. This involves Early Years leaders ‘repositioning’ themselves from seeing their roles from above to seeing it ‘from below’ - from the perspectives of those who are not sitting in government offices but working with children in Early Years settings. This will help Early Years leaders to review their leadership strategies through the perspective of not the leaders, but the followers, who can help Early Years leaders to push back the boundaries of neoliberalism and make a positive difference to children’s experiences. It is the experience and expertise of the followers that should inform how Early Years leaders lead to make a difference – to make a positive change to children’s lives.
Some time ago I remember reading Loren Eiseley’s book ‘The Star Thrower’. The story went something like this: an old man, walking along a shore covered with thousands of washed-up dying starfish, noticed a boy, who was throwing them back into the ocean. The man said to the boy that there were miles and miles of beach covered with starfish, and that he would never make a difference. As the boy threw a starfish back into the ocean, he said to the old man: “I’ve just made a difference to that one.”
Though it might remain uncertain how many children this approach is going to make a difference to, one thing is already certain - it will make a difference to at least one!
18
www.education-today.co.uk Using school trips to
motivate, engage and inspire In her regular column this month, STEMtastic! founder KIRSTY BERTENSHAW looks at school trips and offers some great ideas on
getting the best out of them. School trips are a fabulous way to motivate and engage students and take learning outside the classroom environment. It’s an opportunity to see and experience things they may not have
done before and may not be able to experience again in their near future. But school trips should have more of educational value than entertainment value. In this article I’ll use the example of a visit to a science museum, but the techniques can be applied to any school trip venue to get the most education out of a visit.
Visit the venue before the trip
This may be an in-person visit or a virtual tour of the venue. If neither option is available, an internet search will assist in finding photographs taken by recent visitors and shared across social media platforms, allowing you to see the recent displays. Beware, galleries are often updated regularly in popular venues. A visit will allow you to plan activities before going on the trip to compliment the content the students will see, or design activities for students to do while on the trip, such as an information hunt. These are much more successful than activities for after the visit when students are tired and over-stimulated. Some venues have these prepared for schools, so check with them first. It will also help to plan timings for the day, especially if there are areas where students will have to take turns.
Preparation
Students can research information before going on the trip, or complete learning tasks to prepare them to get the most out of the trip. For example, if visiting a science museum, knowing the planets in the solar system will allow them to access relevant information when on the trip.
Often, visits can be cross-curricular involving all the subjects and can potentially become a project. With the example used here, students can explore the history of the ‘space race’ or the development of theories such as the solar system being heliocentric. Students can imagine what it would be like to be the first person to discover something or see something no other human has seen. This is a great opportunity for a creative writing exercise, drama piece or artwork. The impact of discoveries on society and religion can also be examined.
Maths skills can also be included, for example standard form can be used to compare the size of the planets in our solar system, and formulae can be used to determine the density of planets or gravity on each planet.
Design and technology can explore the specific requirements for the survival of explorers in different environmental conditions, such as in space or in the deep ocean. Circuitry can be built to mimic or improve upon technology that led to scientific discoveries in the past or may lead to new discoveries in the future, or product development to solve problems such as a pen that works in space.
Activities on the visit
Use quizzes or information hunts prepared in advance to ensure students experience all parts of the venue for the school trip. Completing it can be incentivised with a prize for all questions answered. Clip boards may be useful to give a surface to lean on. Quizzes can be differentiated to the specific age range or ability of students.
Alternatively, photos can be taken by staff or students, and diary entries written to be used in a display in the classroom. This can act as a springboard for related topics throughout the following term.
January 2022
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