Wellbeing and Involvement in the Early Years - Transcript

Wellbeing and Involvement in the early years - Transcript

Interview

Justin Shortal talks with Professor Doctor Ferre Laevers.

Part One

Justin Shortal

Well welcome to Victoria Professor Laevers, Ferre. It’s a great pleasure to have you here to talk to us about children’s wellbeing and involvement which both are key parts of the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework for all children from birth to eight years.

And I’d like to begin with a question about, well what is wellbeing and involvement?

Ferre Laevers

Wellbeing means that you are at ease in a setting, you feel okay, you can totally be yourself, you don’t feel threatened, you radiate. That’s what we seek.

The sight of a human being, of a child that is really okay– like fish in water – as we say.And when wellbeing goes down we know that we have really to pay attention to observe the child, and to find out where it goes wrong.

If low levels of wellbeing continue, gradually that will cause the damage.But that’s not enough. We know that wellbeing covers an important part of development of a child but we need another quality in the experience of a child, which is involvement.

And that has to do with how much the child can engage in an activity and be concentrated.When the child is totally focused in an activity, and the mental activity so intense, this is a condition. In fact, the only condition where deep level learning can occur.

So if we want sustainable development there is no shortcut. You need to go through involvement.

Justin Shortal

Okay, well imagine I’m at a childcare centre and I’m a parent, what am I looking for?

Ferre Laevers

Well I think for both wellbeing and involvement, the observation of that is something that any person can easily pick up. And the signs that you see for wellbeing have to do with this element of being relaxed, enjoying, that’s the point. Does the child enjoy the context where it is, and feels secure?

That’s also an element. The self confidence thatshines through the child. Spontaneity is indeed a very important element.

You feel the child can fully be himself here and now in this context. For involvement – pick up how concentrated a child is,being really focused by the activity itself.

Totally engrossed by the activity. Forgetting about time, persistence. These are the elements everyone can spot in the behaviour of children.

Justin Shortal

How about observing and measuring?

Ferre Leavers

Practitioners would reflect on how children are doing over some period.

So what we do is invite them to at least three times a year, make a kind of profile of the child and looking back at the last two or three weeks, try to figure out for each of the children on their list, how is this child doing? how much wellbeing and involvement have I seen over all when I look back and when all these images pop up.

Once you concentrate on one child you see that you have observed a lot. And we use the same five point scale, for babies and toddlers, for early years children, for primary education, secondary education and adult.

Low wellbeing level one, means that the person has a very difficult time, very difficult time at that moment. We would say that’s the same for a child.

And it can happen to us all, when we encounter a very painful experience like losing someone, someone who passes away that we are well connected with. It can bring us into that state of almost shock…indeed where you don’t function. That’s a Level one.

Level five, I suppose that’s easy to spot and fine, and all the rest is just a scale, that goes from one to that five.

For involvement, it’s obvious that a Level one would mean that the child would not be able to engage in any activity.So most of the time there wouldn’t be anything that we would call ‘this is an activity’.

While a Level three means that the child is doing something that we can say or is reading a book, or taking a book, is making construction there.

But we would miss an element of concentration in all that, and the more that comes in you get to a Level four.

Five is the child is totally away in the activity. Totally implicated in the activity.

Justin Shortal

What are the elements in the learning environment?

Part Two

Ferre Laevers

There are ten elements but I will just pick out two or three of them that have shown and proven to be very critical.

Indeed a ‘rich environment’, everyone one would see that. You cannot engage if the environment is poor and you have no material at all.

That goes together with enough security and rules, that together you make with the children so that you have a smooth organisation in which every child can take initiatives and develop his own or her own day, with other children because it’s a social thing.

So it’s a kind of decentralisation. If we go back to traditional approaches, it’s the adult that would arrange and plan everything, and that is not what we want. So we want an open framework where that happens.

Secondly, or thirdly the relation and in fact the interaction with the adult is critical, especially what we call the adult style.

First element in that is sensitivity. The child has to feel accepted and understood and supported emotionally.

Secondly in the style we have stimulation. That’s so criticalthat an adult would spot children that are low in involvement and would start doing things like, giving information that is really fascinating for children giving open impulses.

Maybe just easy to add some liquid soap to the water table to make it an exciting event for weeks for children. But also asking thought provoking questions.

I think with these elements, we are already very far.

The last one I want to mention is ‘group climate.’ If it goes wrong in the group and the group is hectic and you have a lot of conflicts in the group that’s very problematic not only for early years but for primary, secondary as well.

You have to feel that you belong and that you can feel secure and appreciated by the other…and the group climate is really fundamental.

Justin Shortal

Professor, what’s your reflection on the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework, and the Early Years Framework Nationally and the ‘My Time, Our Place’ Framework?

Ferre Laevers

I must say that I have seen a lot of elements in all those documents that really refer to a new way to approach the reality of an educational system.

And I don’t say that just to be friendly. I can document that.One of the elements that we found was certainly wellbeing and involvement or engagement, are part of the game,clearly and explicitly.

Another thing as well, we see that everything that links with the social- emotional parts have a place in the system.

And what is for me, if you look at all the elements, the most…important part is that empowerment is part of the approach.

Meaning, that all stakeholders – the adults, the practitioners themselves, the children indeed, but the parents as well and the community around the settings all have a role and are implicated in creating the best possible learning network we need for our children for the future.

So I think with that, I think all who are working in education, especially in early years, must have a kind of natural pride about what they do.

And be aware that ‘yes we deserve appreciation etc.’ but the real thing that we get comes from the children isn’t it?Where we see them prosper.

Justin Shortal

Absolutely, Dr Laevers, Professor Laevers, thank you.

VCAA Early Years Exchange No. 11 2013Page 1