LEARNING INTENTIONS
In this chapter we will examine the:
• links between observation and planning in the curriculum
• importance of observation to early childhood practice
• role of different environments and settings on curriculum planning
• role of the Zone of Proximal Development in assessment
• importance of play
• issues associated with transitions
• importance of key informants in curriculum planning.
This chapter will outline the relationship between observation, planning and content in early childhood curriculum. The role of relationships, transitions, environments and play as informants to observations, planning and content selection will be examined. These constructs will be analysed in the context of international research about the role of relationships, transitions and play in children's learning and development and the implications for how they shape curriculum.
observation the process of watching and interpreting, in this context, children's actions
Linking observation to planning in the curriculum
CASE STUDY 7.1: OBSERVING WHAT CHILDREN CAN DO
Jacob: I guess that's part of the curriculum design stuff, isn't it? That you work out what it is that you want children to be able to do and therefore you plan activities and work out in advance what you think they will achieve, so that you can assess whether or not it worked.
In Case study 7.1 (Observing what children can do), Jacob has articulated a particular model of assessment. Assessment is a way of finding out if what a teacher has organised for children to learn actually worked. He sees an important link between planning for teaching and what children do.
Graue and Walsh (1998) note that the process of ‘finding it out’ is particularly fraught with difficulty when it involves children:
Finding it out about children is exceptionally difficult – intellectually, physically, and emotionally. Physical, social, cognitive and political distances between the adult and the child make their relationship very different from the relationships among adults. In doing research with children, one never becomes a child. One remains a very definite and readily identifiable ‘other’ (p. xiv).
Warren (2000) considers it impossible to separate interpretation fromobservation: ‘What is “seen”, then, is not the real, in the sense of an experience distinct from interpretation.’ He argues that ‘reality is always a moving target, always in the process of becoming, always already interpreted’ (p. 132).
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