Are Early Years settings in England likely to be better able to develop young children’s communicative competence?
Melanie Wilde
University of Leicester
This paper is based on a paper presented at the British Educational Research Association New Researchers/Student Conference, University of Warwick, 6 September 2006
Abstract
There are two main aims of this paper. Firstly, to reflect on the argument of a previous article and to consider whether the conditions for learning in Early Years settings identified by it in England are likely to have changed as a result of government policy initiatives in recent years. A second aim is to propose a follow-up piece of research to the original pilot study that would explore how current practice in early years settings encourages communicative competence in children. Another aspect of the proposed research would be to investigate teacher perceptions of changes in ‘pedagogical culture’ and how these may or may not enable them to foster communicative competence in primary children.
Key Words
Communicative competence, early years, pedagogical culture, government initiatives, teacher perceptions.
Introduction
How slow the process between doing research and getting it published can be! Reflection on my own recent experience of getting an article accepted for publication in 2007 about a research project I actually undertook in 2001 has highlighted for me the historical nature of research. The actual fieldwork, in small scale studies, may seem necessarily like a ‘snapshot in time’. It can, therefore, be argued that it is already pertinent to examine the argument of this paper and question whether the conditions for learning in early years settings identified in by it in England are likely to have changed as a result of government policy initiatives in recent years and, if so, to propose some follow-up research. The scope of the paper is limited to England as other constituents of the UK have had the freedom to go their own way. An example of this is when Wales most notably changed the law in 2004 and made Standard Assessment Tests (SATs) for 11 year olds voluntary, which is arguably likely to have a significant impact on their ‘pedagogical culture’.
The gist of the argument put forward by Wilde and Sage (2007) was that In England, in recent years, there has been a set of particular challenges in promoting an understanding of how to foster ‘communicative competence’ in early years and primary teachers’ practice. What they meant by ‘communicative competence’ is Brigman et al’s (1999) useful analysis that the competences that contribute to communicative competence, such as being able to listen, attend, follow directions, and use cognitive strategies, along with crucial social skills such as working and playing cooperatively with others as well as forming and maintaining friendships, are essential for school success. Wilde and Sage (ibid) put the perceived difficulties to fostering this type of ‘communicative competence’ down to a lack of awareness amongst many practitioners of what ‘communicative competence’ is (although the practitioner strongly committed to early years practice was, perhaps, less likely to be in this category) and also the ‘pedagogical culture’ in which children had been taught. They concluded that as a result children have been exposed to a more formal approach to learning earlier, which has emphasised teacher questioning and explanation at the expense of active and interactive learning and as a consequence has provided a limited environment conducive for developing narrative skills. Narrative, here, is not a reference to a particular genre, but instead refers to the ability of communicator to take account of the listener’s perspective and plan a coherent and comprehensible speech sequence (Wood, 1998).
What I want to consider particularly is whether the ‘pedagogical culture’ is likely to have changed significantly since the research was done. By this I mean is there a greater recognition of the importance of ‘communicative competence’ at policy level. If this is so, it can be argued that this is likely to lead to a greater attention to how ‘communicative competence’ can be ‘fostered’ in teachers’ continuing professional development. Furthermore, a shift of this kind is likely to precipitate a more active and interactive approach to teaching and learning.
What has changed?
Is there evidence that a more active and interactive, topic based approach to learning is now valued at policy level? A brief comparison of policy in 2001 context, when the research was done and the current context in 2007 can be summed up in the following way. In 2001, the Foundation Stage curriculum (DfEE, 2000), which puts a high value on communication as part of one of the Early Learning Goals was still at a very early stage of embedment. Meanwhile, the downward effect of the Standard Assessment Tests (SATs) at KS1 meant that Foundation Stage teachers at both stage 1 and stage 2 were increasingly under pressure to serve the perceived needs of their KS1 colleagues, which in many cases meant moving to a more formal curriculum earlier (Adams et al, 2004). This more formal approach to literacy tended to mirror the prevalent pedagogical culture in KS1 and KS2, which was highly influenced in many schools at the time by the National Literacy Strategy (DfEE, 1998). The adoption of this approach was supported by a high level of funding and support from Ofsted. The effect of the strategy was that literacy was taught in a highly prescriptive, single subject based way, which had the distorting effect of focusing almost exclusively on reading and writing learning objectives at the expense of speaking and listening objectives, despite the equal weighting given to them in the National Curriculum. The shift back to whole class teaching and the focus on teaching rather than learning led to a diminution of interactive pedagogical strategies (English, 2002). Consequently, an increase in teacher talk and a decrease in children’s opportunity to verbalise their ideas inevitably followed. By contrast, in 2007, the Foundation Stage (ibid) curriculum is now very well established and the development of the Foundation Stage Profile has enabled a more accurate assessment of children’s progress through teacher assessment. Since 2003, with the emergence of the Primary National Strategy, the policy makers appear to have been critiquing themselves further up the age range. This began with the Speaking, Listening and Learning materials (DfES, 2003), which belatedly remembered the importance of oracy for underpinning children’s progress in literacy. Also, the Excellence and Enjoyment document (DfES, 2003), which stressed the importance of creativity in the curriculum, suggested that in order for this to happen teachers should have the freedom to take a more flexible approach to the curriculum.
More recently, these documents have been followed up and the NLS superseded by the Primary Framework for teaching literacy and mathematics (DfES, 2006), which stresses the importance of speaking and listening and a broad and rich language curriculum for literacy learning as well as a clearer integration of literacy teaching with ICT. With the high profile now given to formative assessment and personalised learning there has been a return to a greater concern with children’s learning. Along with the renewed framework of literacy the Early Years Foundation Stage materials (DfES, 2007) have been developed to chart progression from birth to five. A key question here is whether the hiatus, commented on by Wilde and Sage (ibid), between the Foundation Stage curricular and that of Key Stage 1, which was caused by a leap from the developmental stepping stones in the former to the term by term ‘target’ like objectives of the of the NLS (DfEE, 1998) and NNS (DfEE, 1999), now been sufficiently bridged? It can be argued that this is unlikely to be such a problem as the renewed literacy strategy, for example, now lists less objectives to be covered over all and they are yearly rather than termly, so it is now left to the teacher’s discretion with reference to the development of their children to decide on appropriate work. Therefore, it can be argued that there certainly appear to be a range of policy shifts since the original research was done, which emphasise the importance of communicative competence at policy level. How this has affected practice in schools is a very important question. Anecdotally, from visiting students in schools in Leicester and Leicestershire, it has been very noticeable recently that a number of schools have taken advantage of the opportunity to apply the curriculum more flexibly. This has manifested in two main ways. Firstly, some have experimented with making the KS1 curriculum less formal by taking the 6 areas of development, associated with the Foundation Stage, into year 1 and in some instances Year 2. Interestingly, this is very much in line with a recommendation by Sanders et al, (2005) that more play-based activities should be extended to five year olds in the first year of compulsory schooling. Secondly, a more cross-curricular approach is being taken with the curriculum in general and literacy in particular, which it can be argued is important for enabling children to make more sense of their learning and see connections between ideas.
With these perceived changes at policy level and, anecdotally, in practice, it seems timely to propose further research. Firstly, it seems appropriate to begin to assess the extent that practice is encouraging communicative competence in early years settings. Secondly, it would be of interest to investigate if teachers perceive that changes in pedagogical culture are enabling them to develop communicative competence across the 3 to 11 age range.
Previous Research
Previous research reported on the progress of a group of FS2 and FS1 children that took part in an intervention called the Communication Opportunity Group Scheme (Wilde and Sage, 2007). Progress was measured using pre and post intervention tests. Children were then observed in their usual settings. During the observations a protocol derived from the main learning objectives of the intervention was completed by the researcher. The aim of this was to see whether the children were getting similar learning opportunities to the intervention that would benefit the development of communicative competence and narrative thinking. A key finding of the research was that the progress made by children in their communicative competence and narrative thinking was more likely to have been due to the intervention, as the same opportunities were not observed everyday settings.
Proposed research
Aims of proposed research
The aims of any proposed follow-up research would be to:
· Investigate whether the practice in 3 case study schools is as likely as the intervention to enable progress in communicative competence and narrative thinking;
· investigate the pedagogical culture of 3 case study schools as it is now and how it may have changed over the past 5 years, across the 3 to 11 age range;
· investigate the representativeness of the findings about pedagogical culture from the case study schools by conducting a wider survey.
It can be argued that an understanding of the pedagogical culture across the 3 to 11 age range is not only of interest in itself, but of relevance to understanding if early years practitioners may be under to conform to the pedagogical culture further up the school.
Research Questions
The main research questions of the study would be:
1. To what extent does practice in Foundation Stage 2 classes enable progress in communicative competence and narrative thinking?
2. What are the teacher perceptions of the changes to pedagogical culture in recent years?
Research design
The research proposed would use a mixture of approaches including survey, experimental and case study and a range of methods that are associated with the two main research paradigms.
Addressing research question 1
To ascertain the extent to which practice in Foundation Stage 2 (FS2) classes enable progress in communicative competence and narrative thinking the aim would be to work with a total of 48 FS2 children from 3 schools (16 per school). This contrasts with the first study, which only involved 13 children from one school. Furthermore, this sample of 13 included a mixture of Foundation Stage 1 (FS1) children and Foundation Stage 2(FS2) children. In this study I would argue that using just Foundation Stage 2 children is preferable. This is firstly, because in the pilot study the FS1 children made little quantifiable progress and, secondly, it is easier to teach the intervention to larger numbers of FS2 children at a time, which will enable the overall sample size to be larger. In the previous research, no control groups were available so only a quasi-experimental approach was possible. One main sample was tested pre and post intervention and a one-tailed T test was applied to the results, which indicated that the change in scores were significant enough to indicate that this was more likely to be due to the intervention than, for example, natural maturation. The absence of a control group was a clear limitation to any claim that the progress the children made was due solely to the intervention. For this research it is proposed that the research design is significantly strengthened so that a strong experimental design is applied and that in each of the three schools there are two matched groups, one which would be a control group and another group which would take part in the intervention. Then both the control and experimental groups would be tested pre and post the intervention, using the two Sage Assessments for Language and Thinking (SALT 1 and 2)(Sage, 2000).