principles, pedagogy and practice in early childhood

Consultancy and Advice

Short and long term consultancy and advice can be either a ‘one off’ day to support the development of good practice or something longer to work on an identified area or aspect of the curriculum. For example The Characteristics of Learning, balancing child-led play, Talk for Reading, Talk for Maths Mastery, observation, assessment and mapping progress and Sustained Shared Thinking. It can include some or all of the following:

Bespoke, planned consultancy over a period of time, for example a day, 6 months, 12months or longer – an Extended Professional Development Initiative (EPDI). Based on the identified needs of the LA, school, nursery, children’s centre, setting or group of practitioners, managers, leaders
Following an agreed focus and using a practitioner work based action research methodology
Working as a learning community to develop thinking and good practice through shared discussion and reflection
Visiting your setting or school to undertake a review of practice with an external eye as a critical friend, working with your teams, teachers, practitioners to reflect on practice
Evaluation of progress, impact and next steps
Presentation of work in early years journals e.g. Nursery World and Early Education and at conferences – locally and nationally, e.g. European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA), British Early Childhood Education Research Association (BECERA) or Early Education

Case Studies

Di was commissioned by a Nursery School to support the development of practice.

Di spent some of the day observing the children as they played and engaged with the adults; then met with the team and used the observations to talk with the staff about their practice and how they could develop this further.

The shared discussion supported the staff as they reflected on their practice and looked at ways to ‘fine tune’ their work with the children.

This led to the Nursery School reshaping their practice particularly around observations, assessment and the enabling environment.

During the visit we discussed

How to create and use narrative Learning Stories as formative and summative assessment
101 Uses for Learning Stories
PLODS – Possible Lines of Development for supporting children’s interests
Extending children’s talking and thinking in a creative way – serve and return conversations
The Characteristics of Effective Learning

A Local Authority commissioned Di to undertake an evaluation of their two year old pilot for supporting ‘vulnerable’ children. The evaluation included gathering perspectives from parents, practitioners and the research literature.

Practitioners came together in small focus groups to reflect on their work, map their leadership of good practice during the pilot and identify what it was that successfully supported the children and families they had worked with.

During the Evaluation we looked at the following perspectives

The professionals journey
The child’s journey
The parents/families journey

What partners said

‘The opportunity to build on and improve what we started’
‘Team work – is the most effective tool we can implement’

Di worked with an LA Team of Early Years Consultants to support their leadership roles with Schools, Children’s Centres and Private and Voluntary provision. The focus of the work over a 6 month period was to consider:

The changing landscape of the Foundation Stage and continuing the leadership of high quality pedagogical practice
How current roles and responsibilities are developing
Supporting the leadership of good practice through coaching and mentoring
Forward planning, identifying next steps and on-going support
How as a collaborative group you can inform outstanding early years practice

Di worked with a group of schools over two days – with a gap task in-between to look at the following;

The way in which we assess children’s progress in the Reception year of the EYFS
How we map children’s progress using formative and summative assessments
How we interpret some key processes within the EYFSP and what they look like in practice
How we ensure that professional ‘best fit’ judgements are informed and accurate
What we mean by ‘responsible pedagogy’ and how this informs assessment practices
Sharing our thinking, reflecting on our pedagogy and practice through an action research model

It was important to take a close look at the Statutory Duty of both the EYFS and EYFSP (Foundation Stage Profile) and think about how we can make accurate, confident and fair judgements about young children’s development and progress. Judgements which respected children, based on a sound understanding of child development, how children learn best and the characteristics of effective learning.

What people said;

This was a wonderful opportunity to exchange ideas with professional colleague’s and reflect more deeply on what we do and why
Really great – very professional, approachable and informal. Such good explanations that helped me to think and challenged my thoughts
Excellent and very relevant. Carefully and thoughtfully delivered offering time for talk and input. I felt re energised after – not exhausted!