Professional Development Articles

Our aim as professionals is to achieve better outcomes for children, families and the community. We want to provide effective learning experiences for the children in our care, and strive for continuous quality improvement, but also want to ensure personal and professional development. With this shared understanding and vision of the early years, reflection, through adopting certain thinking approaches, is the tool that supports us to achieve this. Ruksana Mohammed, Lecturer in Early Childhood Studies at the University of East London identifies some effective processes we can adopt to develop our skills of reflection.

When I say to most EYPs that it’s a really good idea to do yet another piece of paperwork, they usually look at me as if I was mad. However, I firmly believe that this is one piece of paperwork that will change the whole of your practice. I've known about the idea of reflective journals for some time, but it wasn’t until I did my Masters that the real benefits became obvious.

Helen Edwards attended the recent govnet event, featuring Sarah Teather, Liz Bayram, Ann Gross, Sue Robb, Liz Elsom, Cathy Nutbrown, and Dame Clare Tickell. Here is a summary of the main issues discussed.

As infants and children move through the early years the aim is for them to become more independent. This article looks at the different areas in which children can become more self-sufficient and how practitioners can support their blossoming independence.

Being able to make a decision is an important life skill. We begin to learn how to do it as infants, and continue to learn through childhood and even as adults, when some of the decisions can be bigger and more complicated. Whether an adult or a child, the decisions we make say something about who we are. We are showing a preference and taking control of a situation. Children who learn that their decisions are listened to and respected will gain confidence in their own abilities. They will be more self-aware, develop their own style, and experience trust and responsibility.

Rory McDowall Clark, Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Early Childhood at the University of Worcester, discusses how each child develops and learns in individual and distinct ways, and how we must use our knowledge of each unique child as the starting point for our planning. A particularly useful article for EYPs and EYPS candidates unpicking standard 2.

Principal lecturer in the School of Education and Continuing Studies at the University of Portsmouth, Joy Chalke discusses the relationship between language and thought in young children.

In an ever changing world, problem solving is a very necessary skill. It is an extremely useful and positive way of looking at everything we do. Young children display a natural curiosity that lends itself to thinking and doing, and facilitating this skill early on in children's lives needs to be a priority for practitioners.

Childhood should be a time of safety and security. But it is also a time of curiosity, exploration and adventure. Most adults can remember their stomach flipping over when they swung a bit too high on the swings at the park, or the thrill of climbing a tree. They might also recall the sense of achievement afterwards. There are a growing number of researchers and childhood specialists who believe that as a society we are denying the current generation of children the delights and benefits of taking a risk and rising to a challenge. Those in the early years propose managing possible risks rather than removing them altogether so that young children can still be given the opportunity to take small risks that are unique to them in a safe and supervised environment. However, in the face of increasing public intolerance of any perceived 'danger', it can be a difficult approach to implement.

Child-initiated learning is primarily learning that stems from activities that are generated by the child. It is not governed by the achievement of an end product, but by the ownership of the child over the process of their learning. However, child-initiated learning can be seen as an enormous challenge to practitioners, lacking the definition and structure of tightly planned, adult-led, activities. Learning to let go a little, to appreciate the valuable learning that starts from the child's ideas, and to play a supportive role in that learning are rewarding and necessary skills in an early years setting.