The
Mastery Edit
The Mastery Edit is your space to reflect on current issues, policies and practices. Below you will find articles, podcasts and videos alongside reflective discussion topics.
Pedagogy
In the first of our mastery edits we will be looking at pedagogy, please take a look at the ‘Pedagogy in early childhood education and care (ECEC): an international comparative study of approaches and policies - Research brief
Discussions
The paper found that, ‘In settings where sustained shared thinking was enacted more frequently, children have been noted to make greater developmental progress.’
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What is sustained shared thinking (SST) and do you and your colleagues engage in SST daily?
‘Scaffolding-focused learning environments, where the practitioner only attempts to help the child with tasks that are just beyond the child’s current capability, demonstrated greater overall positive effects on children’s development compared to children placed in more teacher-directed and child-centred environments.
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Is your environment scaffold-focussed and how do you implement this?
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If not, is this something you want to develop within your setting?
Loose Parts
In this edition of the mastery edit, lets discuss loose parts and loose parts play.
The term 'loose parts' was originally introduced to us by Simon Nicholson and has seen a huge resurgence in recent years, here is the original paper.
https://ojs.lboro.ac.uk/SDEC/article/download/1204/1171
Discussion
Nicholson says, ' In any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discover, are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it.'
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How flexible is your environment and routine to allow for inventiveness, creativity and discovery?