As part of our first Tapestry Education Conference (TEC 1) in July 2019 we held three table-top discussions led by members of the Early Years community. The theme was Reflective Practice and we were joined by colleagues from the Tapestry team to scribe for each workshop. Here, Lauren records the conversation led by Dr Sue Allingham, Early Years Consultant, on 'Intent, Implementation and Impact.' Sue’s original overview for the discussion was: As a result of the recent changes to the Ofsted Education Inspection Framework, the word ‘curriculum’ has now become a topic for discussion. Teachers from all backgrounds and in all age ranges across Early Childhood Education will need to be able to talk about the ‘intent, implementation and impact’ of the curriculum in their settings. But what does this actually mean? To understand this, it is important to be able to define ‘teaching and learning’ in Early Childhood Education – ‘Pedagogy is the act of teaching together with its attendant discourse. It is what one needs to know, and the skills one needs to command, in order to make and justify the many different kinds of decisions of which teaching is constituted. Curriculum is just one of its domains, albeit a central one’. (Still no pedagogy? Principle, pragmatism and compliance in primary education, Robin Alexander* University of Cambridge, UK 2004) As part of July’s Tapestry Education Conference (TEC1) I sat down with a group of experienced and obviously passionate early years practitioners, teachers, and trainers. The aim was to talk about curriculum, namely what is it in early years and how does ‘intent’ and ‘implementation’ come into it. We started off by talking about whether early years has a defined curriculum. Formally there is the EYFS statutory framework incorporating CoEL, and the Development Matters guidance document, but it’s very different to the more prescriptive curriculum of Key Stage 1 and above. That can be a real opportunity for practitioners because it gives them the autonomy to do what’s best for their specific children. It can also be quite a challenge, especially for settings with a lot of staff who are very new to the profession or who lack confidence. The consensus was that for some (probably quite a lot) of schools and settings, this has led to some topics or activities being done year after year in the exact same way simply because that is what they’ve always done, because someone higher up the school has told them to do it, or because they’ve bought into a curriculum and that’s what it says. Those aren’t bad reasons in themselves, but they become problematic when no real thought is given to the intent behind the curriculum (I’ll come back to this later) and how it ties in with the cultural capital of individual children within the cohort. Saying that, the group weren’t completely against topics or the reusing of a curriculum across the year, indeed some topics are consistently useful for things like community cohesion, e.g. ‘pets day’ (where children, their parents, and other members of the community bring in their pets). That can be a really great way to get parents who are new to the setting involved, to form bonds, and to increase a child’s understanding of the world. Topics also have the benefit of being a scaffold for new or less confident teachers. Contributors felt that whilst it would be amazing if everyone could just dive straight into ‘in the moment planning’ the reality is that even with the best intentions, that can be very stressful and may end up falling apart if you don’t take small steps to get there, especially when it comes to topics that early years teachers are traditionally less confident about. However, it’s rare for topics to be right for every early years setting in the country, or even between year groups, and that’s partially down to cultural capital. But what is ‘cultural capital’? Everyone agreed that it’s a bit of a confusing term, predominantly because how they see it is a little different to how Ofsted have defined it. For Ofsted it means the essential knowledge that children need to be educated citizens, which the group pointed out felt very similar to the previous big ideas of ‘bold beginnings’ and ‘school readiness’. For them that seemed to be quite negative though and they thought that it shouldn’t just be about what the children are missing, but also (and arguably more importantly) about what different experiences each child brings from their home life. The group picked out ‘area’ as a good starting point for teachers thinking about the cultural capital of their children and consequently what they should cover. For example, you know immediately that the experiences of children growing up in a deprived area of a city are likely to be very different to those living in a hamlet in the middle of nowhere. That is just the first step - children living in the same area can have vastly different cultural capital, which is why it is important to get to know the children and their families on an individual level. Thinking about what experiences they’ve already had, what feels familiar and safe, and which contexts they’ll understand, then trying to build on that existing knowledge can have a massive impact on how children feel and how quickly they settle in. It can also help the teachers to work out where those gaps might be. Whichever way you look at it, the group agreed that each child’s individual cultural capital does, and should, inform intent. The feeling was that 'intent' is the end goal and why that end goal is important. Generally, the group said they kept potential end goals relatively vague. At least part of the reason for that is that precise end goals can end up being limiting – they discussed the idea that some teachers might get their children to that point then just stop. That’s not what early years teaching and learning is though; it’s about an ongoing developmental journey into the child’s future, not just teaching to assess. The questions of ‘Why am I doing this?’ and ‘Does this help this child specifically?’ are important ones, and things that practitioners should be more specific about and keep coming back to. In one example a group member spoke about two different ways of looking at the same end goal – one positive, and one much more closed. In their example, the teacher wanted to improve a child’s behaviour. The first way to answer the question of ‘why am I doing this’ was because the teacher knew the child and the family, and could really see how the child would benefit inside and out of the class by having strategies to help them keep their cool a little bit. In the second way, the ‘why’ was that the child’s behaviour was annoying the teacher, and they just wanted them to stop. Although the goal remains the same, there is a clear difference in the motivation behind it and that is likely to carry through to what success looks like and how you’d go about reaching it. It’s also important that these things are discussed and agreed upon by everyone who works with that child. From the group’s experience, having everyone on the same page and promoting a culture of open reflection about what is or isn’t working is far more likely to lead to genuinely good provision as it reduces the chances of colleagues having different intents and potentially undermining each other. That doesn’t mean however, that everyone has to do the exact same activities in the same way. This led us onto ‘implementation’ – how do we get children to the end point? Whilst being consistent about where you want to get the child to developmentally, and why you want to get them there, is incredibly helpful for a setting, the group also spoke about the benefits of having staff members working in different ways to get the children there. Of course, the interests of the children should play a significant role in the activities, but they explained that it was also important to think about what each staff member will be able to bring to the table – some will be excellent at outdoor learning for example, while others will be much more excited about and interested in working with the resources inside. One of the most important things in a successful provision is the staff being confident, enthusiastic, and engaged because the children are then more likely to be too. By the end of the conversation it was becoming clear that cultural capital, intent, and implementation are all linked, and all rely on understanding the individuality of both the children and the staff. Teachers will excel at different things and different things will work for different children.
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