Think, Feel, Act & How Does Learning Happen? Ontario's Pedagogy for the Early Years

Flavour/Tone:

• the aim is to promote a common understanding of what children need in order to grow and develop holistically, and what educators, administrators and families can do to support this.

• It doesn't incorporate checklists or milestones that we feel children must accomplishment in order to exhibit growth and development; it gives us a wider understanding, beyond developmental narratives, of what it means for children to learn, what learning requires, and how it happens in multiple contexts.

• It values and incorporates the individuality of children and their families.

• It is not a measurement tool for quality in early childhood programs.

Strong Pedagogical Focus

• Provides examples of effective practices in early childhood settings

• Explains the significance of positive relationships, and how critical these relationships are for quality programs.

• Promotes deeper reflection on how educators can create environments and experiences where children, their families and educators can learn collaboratively through exploration and inquiry.

Key players

The "Gaze" of How Does Learning Happen?

Key players

• The way we view others influences how we interact with them.

• HDLH promotes a shared view of children, families, and educators that is meant to help shape all aspects of early years programs.

• Children: competent, capable of complex thinking, curious, and rich in potential, we value and build on their strengths and abilities.

• Families: experts who know their children better than anyone else and have important information to share, we value and engage them in a meaningful way.

• Educators: knowledgeable, reflective, resourceful, and rich in experience, we value the experiences and environments
• they create for children.

Foundations, Goals & Expectations

Key players

• Sets out goals for children and expectations for programs, organized around four foundations that are central to children’s learning and growth

The Four Foundations

Key players

• Visions for children's future potential, and what they should experience every single day in early childhood programs.

• Apply to all children regardless of differing abilities.

• Based on conditions that children naturally seek for themselves.

Key players

Belonging: a sense of connectedness to others, an individual’s experiences of being valued, of forming relationships with others and making contributions as part of a group, a community, the natural world.

Well-being: the importance of physical and mental health and wellness. It incorporates capacities such as self-care, sense of self, and self-regulation skills.

Engagement: a state of being involved and focused. When children are able to explore the world around them with their natural curiosity and exuberance, they are fully engaged. Through this type of play and inquiry, they develop skills such as problem solving, creative thinking, and innovating, which are essential for learning and success in school and beyond.

Expression: Through their bodies, words, and use of materials, children develop capacities for increasingly complex communication. Opportunities to explore materials support creativity, problem solving, and mathematical behaviours. Language-rich environments support growing communication skills, which are

foundational for literacy.

Goals for Children

Key players

• The goals for children provide a basis for thinking about and creating the kinds of environments and experiences that are meaningful for children.

• They are not meant to measure children’s development but rather to guide practice.

• They are intended to be used by educators in planning and creating environments, experiences, and contexts for children’s learning and development across all domains.

• They are also intended to guide the process of observing, documenting, studying, and discussing children’s experiences with families.

Expectations for Programs

Key players

The expectations for programs provide ideas and examples of ways in which programs can move towards realizing the goals for children.

How Do These Connect?

Key players

Reflection

• Provides questions that help guide educators' reflection about their practice, whether individually or in collaboration with a colleague, a staff team, or the children and their families.

• These questions serve as a starting point for challenging existing practices and acting on the goals for children and expectations for programs.

Key players

The Power of Positive Adult Child Relationships: Connection Is The Key Dr. Jean Clinton

Terms:

• C:D:C Correcting and Directing and Connecting when there is more connection there is less need for correction and directing

• Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

What can children do when they are connected?

• He never asked for help... how did he know?

• “If we think that our job is to teach children all we can, so that they learn their numbers and letters and how to behave, then we may feel that kids need to do lots of things to learn and keep busy.”

• “adult -led emphasis on literacy and numeracy means other things need to be left out and what too often gets left out are the opportunities for learning through play”

• environment managers (rule keeper vs relationship partners )

• Beware of the praise trap

The Environment Is a Teacher Karyn Callaghan

• Thinking of “aesthetic” as being the opposite of “anaesthetic”, a shutting down of the senses, may help with appraising the environment in a richer way.

• Think of safety, diversity, time (no clocks)

A pedagogy where: Dispositions such as curiosity, openness, resiliency and purposefulness help to create a culture where there there is less focus on teaching and more on how learning takes place for both the child and the adult.

4 principles to help pedagogical leaders build an intentional culture where reflection and inquiry form the foundation for transforming patience:

1. Use a Protocol to Support Reflective Thinking Inquiry (visit and study each other’s learning environments)

2. Set up professional learning communities (article study)

3. Allow time (study photographs)

4. Parallelling Practice (play like the child)

• This research brief explores ‘self-regulation’ including what it is, how it’s developed, possible hindrances to its development

• It also includes steps to help a child develop self-regulation.

Address Misconceptions about Self-Regulation:

• ‘Self-regulation’ does not equate to ‘compliance’

• Compliance = a child behaving the way we want because of a fear of punishment, or to obtain a reward

• Self-regulation has nothing to do with being strong or weak

• Punishing a child for a ‘lack of self-discipline’ risks making the self-regulatory problems worse

• Rather, self-regulation focuses on the causes of a problematic behaviour, and trying to “mitigate those causes, rather than simply trying to extinguish the behaviour” (p. 22)

• A reason for decreased self-regulation and problematic behaviours may be an excess of stressors.

• “It is by being regulated that these robustly growing systems are wired to support self-regulation” (p. 22)

• Both self-regulation and pedagogical documentation holds an image of the child as competent and self-motivated (to learn and regulate oneself)

• Rather than focusing on results and behaviours, there is a focus on the process

• We are asked to look and see deeper than our perhaps initial response to assess children’s behaviours

• “Pedagogical documentation inserts a new phase of thinking and wondering together between the act of observation and the act of planning a response” (p. 28)

• This brief explores ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care), as it pertains to inclusive education, and supporting all children to participate in their communities

• It discusses equitable access, as “In order for all children to fully participate in education, care and community, they must have equitable access to programs” (p. 31).

Parallels to Pedagogical Documentation

• The importance of collaboration

• “The relationships across services and professionals should be coordinated and collaborative. The service sectors that provide these supports include health, education, social services, and care services” (p. 32).

• The importance of materials and environment

• “Physical resources that are important for inclusive practice include an accessible environment that provides adaptive materials, specialized equipment and a well-planned layout” (p. 32).

• Documenting and Monitoring

• “As children grow and develop, and as the group of children in the community changes, the program must adapt. Therefore, ECEC programs need to monitor the changing needs of children, their families, and communities, as well as new information they gain through monitoring both the children and the program” (p. 34)