Assessment in Early Childhood Settings - Learning Stories (2001)
Assessment in Early Childhood Settings - Learning Stories (2001)
Assessment in Early
Childhood Settings
Learning Stories
Margaret Carr
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Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or
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Inquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Contents
Preface ix
1 A folk model of assessment – and an alternative 1
2 Learning dispositions 21
3 Interest and involvement 48
4 Persisting with difficulty and uncertainty 64
5 Communicating with others and taking responsibility 77
6 Learning stories 92
7 Describing 106
8 Discussing 125
9 Documenting 137
10 Deciding 158
11 The learning story journey 175
References 189
Index 198
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Preface
ix
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Preface xi
world with the very consultative and thoughtful editors at Paul Chap-
man and Sage. Additional data for Chapter 3 was provided by the family
of two-year-old Moses. I am grateful to his parents for their collection of
stories. Thank you too to Andrew Barclay, now aged thirteen, and his
mother Margaret Barclay for permission to use in Chapter 2 the transcript
about mathematics that Margaret taped when he was two years old. This
transcript, together with the transcript of Joe and Mark trying to make
sense of pirates and masters of the universe, in Chapter 1, first appeared
in the Australian Journal of Early Childhood, Volume 19, Number 2, 1994.
Darryn’s mother’s Parent’s Voice in Chapter 9 first appeared in R.E.A.L.
magazine, Issue 3, October/November 1999. Assessment data from early
childhood centres collected since the two research projects (the one on
assessment and the one on technological practice) includes, with permis-
sion, the children’s and the practitioners’ real names.
Learning stories from early childhood centres not involved in the
original projects have been mostly collected by professional develop-
ment facilitators. I am especially grateful to Wendy Lee for her assid-
uous and enthusiastic collections, and to the parents, children and
practitioners who have given permission for these to be included in
the book. Many thanks too to the University of Waikato Professional
Development team who have kept me up to date on progress in their
centres as well. I regret that I did not have space to include all the
wonderful assessment stories that came my way. Helen May, Anne
Smith, Val Podmore, Pam Cubey, Anne Hatherly, Bernadette Mac-
artney and Bronwen Cowie have all provided ideas and support dur-
ing joint projects that link to this book; at Harvard in the fall of 1995
David Perkins and Shari Tishman helped me to sharpen my ideas
about dispositions. The writing of the book began in the UK in 1999,
thanks to the leave programme at the University of Waikato and to the
hospitality and friendship of Nomi Rowe Rakovsky, Tina Bruce, Mar-
gie Whalley, Iram Siraj-Blatchford and Guy Claxton; Guy’s contribu-
tion began with our joint paper on the ‘costs of calculation’ in 1989 and
the ideas in the book owe much to our many (southern) summers of
conversations about learning. My colleagues at the University of
Waikato Department of Early Childhood Studies are owed special
thanks too: many of them began this journey with me on the national
Early Childhood Curriculum Development team. And I warmly thank
Malcolm Carr for wise counsel and superb editorial assistance.
Although working with a new curriculum highlighted the challenge
of assessing it, the ideas about learning and assessment that underpin
this book do not depend on any one curriculum. Hermine Marshall
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Preface xiii
1
A Folk Model of Assessment – and
an Alternative
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Purpose
An assumption that I was making twenty years ago was that assess-
ment sums up the child’s knowledge or skill from a predetermined
list. Harry Torrance and John Pryor have described this assumption as
‘convergent’ assessment. The alternative is ‘divergent’ assessment,
which emphasises the learner’s understanding and is jointly accom-
plished by the teacher and the learner. These ideas reflect not only
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Outcomes of Interest
My folk model of documented assessment viewed learning as individ-
ual and independent of the context. Learner outcomes of interest were
fragmented and context-free school-oriented skills. The alternative
model says that learning always takes some of its context with it, and
that, as James Wertsch has suggested, the learner is a ‘learner-in-
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LEARNING OUTCOMES
(i) Skills and knowledge
(ii) Skills and knowledge + intent = learning strategies
(iii) Learning strategies + social partners and practices + tools = situated
learning strategies
(iv) Situated learning strategies + motivation = learning dispositions
for more complex units later on. In B. F. Skinner’s words (1954, p. 94,
in Shepard, 1991): ‘The whole process of becoming competent in any
field must be divided into a very large number of very small steps,
and reinforcement must be contingent upon the accomplishment of
each step.’
Reporting on the implicit learning theories of 50 school district test
directors in the USA, Lorrie Shepard noted that one persistent view-
point seemed to be widely shared by these professionals. She called it
the ‘criterion-referenced-testing learning theory’. It included two key
beliefs. Firstly, tests and the curriculum are synonymous. Shepard
interviewed the test directors, and one of them commented (1991, p.
4): ‘We have a locally developed criterion referenced testing program,
and these are the skills that we have identified as being absolutely
essential, and we test and retest until students show mastery.’
Secondly, learning is linear and sequential. Complex understand-
ings can occur only by adding together simpler, prerequisite units of
knowledge. Measurement-driven basic-skills instruction is based on a
model of learning which holds that ‘basic skills should be taught and
mastered before going on to higher-order problems’ (Shepard, 1991,
pp. 2–3). Shepard asks (p. 7): ‘What if learning is not linear and is not
acquired by assembling bits of simpler learning?’ Guy Claxton and I
have called this model of learning ‘calculated education’ in which ‘the
intelligence of the child is decomposed into its LEGO-like ingredients,
and the teacher aims to stick them together, piece by piece’ (Carr and
Claxton, 1989 p. 133). We pointed out that this model of learning
encourages didactic adult-controlled teaching strategies which ignore
the particular, the situational and the social dimensions of learning.
This model does not serve us well as we try to understand the learning
of Emily, Moses, Jason and Nell.
This basic skills model of learning is often used to predict children’s
prospects at school. The literature on ‘school readiness’ does not,
however, persuade us that particular items of skills and knowledge,
unattached to meaningful activities, predict achievement at school.
Keith Crnic and Gontran Lamberty, reviewing two decades of re-
search on ‘school readiness’ in 1994, commented on ‘the false notion
that we have a basic knowledge regarding the critical skills for school
success’. They added:
While there have been attempts to identify individual developmental
or skill correlates of readiness, we currently have no theory or credible
empirical base from which to judge what the most critical skills for
readiness may be. In this respect, assessing a number of preacademic
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● learning dispositions
● being ready, willing and able
● inclination, sensitivity to occasion, and ability
● participation repertoires
● habitus.
He says that using this word we are reminded that it refers to some-
thing historically determined rather than ‘essentialist’, like the notion
of competence. As Michael Cole has commented (1996, p. 139), a hab-
itus constitutes a usually unexamined background set of assumptions
about the world. It includes a learner’s assumptions about what is
expected in early childhood settings and schools, and, reciprocally, it
includes the early childhood setting and school’s assumptions about
what is expected of a learner or a student. In this book, the terms
‘dispositional milieu’ and ‘learning place’ will also be used to refer to
participation repertoires that have become attached to, privileged in,
an activity or a place or a social community. They owe much to the
notion of habitus, but for me they more readily allow the possibility of
resistance and change. Chapter 2 discusses learning dispositions, and
dispositional milieux, in more detail.
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Notions of Validity
The notion that an external ‘objective’ measure or standard exists for
all outcomes (if only we can find it) was another feature of my folk
model of assessment. I looked for performances that could be scored
independently by people who had no additional knowledge about the
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Mark’s logic is as follows. Premise one: All ships have to have water.
Premise two: All pirates have to have ships. Premise three: There’s no
water here. Therefore, no water implies no ships and no ships implies
no pirates. Joe introduces a narrative that includes the notion of swim-
ming horses, an idea that is firmly rejected by Mark. They are each
practising and hearing different modes or genres of persuasion.
A second challenge to the idea of progress as development through
a series of cognitive stages has been the integration of affect with
cognition, to emphasise relationships as a valued domain of know-
ledge. Nel Noddings, for instance, writes about an ethic of ‘respon-
sibility’ and ‘care’ in which relations with others are a primary aim in
education rather than a means to an end. It is interesting that at the
same time as the concept ‘care’ was being edged out of early child-
hood rhetoric by the Piagetians, and ‘early childhood care and educa-
tion’ was becoming ‘early childhood education’, care was re-entering
educational discourse from another direction. Thus, a writer on
science education in schools (Peter Taylor, in 1998) would comment
that:
an ethic of care helps to avoid self-serving relations of domination by
focusing a primary concern on the need for the teacher to nurture an
empathic, honest, interdependent and trustful relationship with the
student. . . . In the absence of an ethic of care, which celebrates feel-
ings, values and emotionality in communicative relationships, the
threads of knowing and being are likely to be woven into a cultural
fabric of ephemeral value. (pp. 1120, 1121)
Procedures
It seems, then, that my checklist was not the only, or the best, way to
document learning in early childhood. One of the advantages of a
checklist is that it takes little time, whereas qualitative and interpretive
methods using narrative methods – learning stories – are time-
consuming. Practitioners using storied approaches of assessment,
however, become part of a rich tradition of ethnographic and case
study observations in early childhood. Susan Isaacs’ observations in
the 1930s are, in Mary Jane Drummond’s words (1999, p. 4), ‘trans-
formed into a geography of learning, as she charts the children’s ex-
plorations of both their inner and outer worlds’. More recently, in the
UK, Andrew Pollard and Ann Filer have used case studies to analyse
pupil identity and progress, while in the USA and Australia, narrative
methods have frequently been used to study children becoming stu-
dents, becoming literate, and (Vivian Gussin Paley, 1986) exploring
‘the three Fs: fantasy, fairness and friendship’. However, although I
commented earlier that a teacher is like an action researcher, assess-
ment of ongoing learning in an early childhood centre by practitioners
is rather different from observations by a visiting researcher. Staff
have had to develop ways in which these more story-like methods can
be manageable. The practitioners whose experience is documented in
this book have had to become increasingly skilled at recognising ‘crit-
ical’ moments and memorising the events while jotting down the
conversations, and assessment has become less likely to take them
away from the ‘real’ action of teaching and enjoying working with
children. Situated frameworks call for the adult to be included in the
observations as well, and for many practitioners this is unusual and
difficult. Chapters 7, 8, 9 and 10 tell the ‘teachers’ stories’ as practi-
tioners in early childhood settings trialled qualitative approaches to
assessment that included writing learning stories about the children.
Value to Practitioners
Twenty years ago I saw documented assessment as only valuable to
me when my reputation with outside agencies was at stake. It was as if
in my mind I had a ‘league table’ of early childhood centres, and I
wanted to be reassured that my children were achieving up there with
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the others from the early childhood centre down the road. Also, I did
not want to be blamed by the school and the families for any child’s
low level of preparation for school. However, as I have worked to-
gether with practitioners on different ways of doing assessment that
have linked more closely to curriculum implementation, a number of
more valuable reasons for documented assessment have emerged.
Value for practitioners has included: (i) to understand, get to know, be
‘in tune’ with individual children, (ii) to understand children by using
the documentation as a catalyst for discussion with others, (iii) to
share information with others in this setting, (iv) to reflect on practice,
and (v) to plan for individuals and groups. Other values included
involving the children in self-assessment, discussing the programme
with families, and sharing experiences with families. These values can
to a certain extent be grouped in terms of the immediate audience: the
children, families, other staff, and the self.
Concluding Comments
This chapter has outlined a shift in my views of assessment, along
seven dimensions, from a ‘folk’ model of twenty years ago, to my
current understanding of what the much more complex parameters of
an alternative model might look like. That model is elaborated in this
book. I have come around to Mary Jane Drummond’s definition of
assessment. She says that assessment is: ‘the ways in which, in our
everyday practice, we observe children’s learning, strive to under-
stand it, and then put our understanding to good use’ (1993, p. 13).
Assessment then has four characteristics: it is about everyday practice
(in this place), it is observation-based (including talking to children), it
requires an interpretation, and it points the way to better learning and
teaching.
It is ironic that in the latter part of the twentieth century, and at the
dawn of the twenty-first, at the same time as we are becoming aware
that a key feature of children’s learning is that it is situated in activity
and social practice, governments are requiring national curricula and
universal measures of individual achievement. In many countries, this
‘gaze’ or surveillance (terms used by Michel Foucault and Nikolas
Rose to refer to assessment of various kinds) has been focused on
children in early childhood centres. Early childhood programmes are
often besieged by school curricula and school entry assessments as
well. At the beginning of this chapter I asked whether assessing
learning in early childhood is any of our business. It has become our
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2
Learning Dispositions
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Learning Dispositions 23
● taking an interest
● being involved
● persisting with difficulty or uncertainty
● communicating with others
● taking responsibility.
The domains are analysed in Table 2.1 as three parts: being ready,
being willing and being able. The table provides general descriptions,
empty of context, within each table cell to illustrate the different parts.
Being ready is a primary (foregrounded) focus of interest in this book,
but it must be supported by being willing (an evaluation of local oppor-
tunities and a sensitivity by the learner to those local opportunities)
and being able (funds of knowledge and abilities that support the in-
clination). In essence, being ready is about seeing the self as a particip-
ating learner, being willing is recognising that this place is (or is not) a
place for learning, and being able is having the abilities and funds of
knowledge that will contribute to being ready and being willing. In
Chapter 7 the three parts will be linked to real contexts in the analysis
of a project in a kindergarten, and to an episode of learning for four-
year-old Chata. These particular domains have emerged from re-
search, observations and discussions in early childhood settings in a
small country in the South Pacific, New Zealand, which has a bi-
cultural and socio-culturally conceived national early childhood cur-
riculum. Learning outcomes in that curriculum are set out in five
broad strands: belonging, well-being, exploration, communication
and contribution. The curriculum emphasises a weaving metaphor for
local programme development (New Zealand Ministry of Education,
1996a): early childhood settings ‘weave’ their programmes from
national and local strands. This array of learning dispositions there-
fore derives from a particular place at a particular time. Nevertheless
it serves as a case study of a framework of situated and dispositional
learning outcomes and the assessment that followed. The following
sections elaborate on the five domains of learning disposition.
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Learning Dispositions 25
Taking an interest
Taking an interest is the first domain of learning dispositions. Here is
Andrew’s mother talking to two-year-old Andrew while he is finish-
ing his dinner. Margaret B. (Andrew’s mother) was tape recording the
occasional interaction at home for me, and she knew that I was doing
some research on mathematics learning in early childhood. Note how
the interest level of both Margaret and Andrew appears to shift when
Margaret (perhaps) forgets her academic purpose and remembers
Kylie’s birthday.
Mother: How many ducks on your bib?
Andrew: A two duck.
Mother: Look and see. You tell me. One. . . .
Andrew: Free.
Mother: Two.
Andrew: Free.
Mother: Three.
Andrew: Four.
Mother: Good boy. Four. That’s how old Kylie’s going to be. Four. In
ten days’ time. She’s going to have a birthday.
Andrew: I’m sick? I’m tick?
Mother: No. Daniel’ll be six. You have to be a big school person to be
six.
Andrew: I’m two.
Mother: That’s right. You’re two.
Andrew: I’m a scoo- boy . . . I’m a goo- boy?
Mother: (misunderstanding) You are a good boy, eaten all your din-
ner up.
Andrew: I’m a goo- boy? I’m a goo- boy?
Mother: A school boy? Oh, a school boy. No, you can’t be a school
boy until you’re five.
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Learning Dispositions 27
eager to learn and ‘see themselves as learners’. They will call on the
available models of what ‘learners’ do, just as Dyson’s children called
on models of what ‘readers’ do.
Taking an interest can be dependent on self-categorisation and
group identity, on criteria of social belonging. Carol Goodenow in
1992 described two research projects with urban high-school students.
In one project, the researcher identified several different ‘selves’
prominent in the lives of his study participants. Other people re-
sponded to the adolescent as friend, sexual being, parent, but never as
student or future worker, so there were few opportunities to gain an
elaborated and realistic understanding of themselves as students or
future workers. In the second project, the researchers described an
‘oppositional social identity’ through which children or adolescents
took pride in not being like the majority or dominant group. For
instance, for some minority groups this meant the perceived psycho-
logical and social necessity to disown the goals perceived as majority
prerogatives, in particular open academic striving and success. Good-
enow has argued that academic motivation and engagement may
need to be enhanced in ways that are not perceived as compromising
these important social dimensions of identity. She added that:
research in educational psychology may benefit from exploring more
explicitly the links between students’ self-categorizations and group
identities, on the one hand, and their behavior, motivation, and learn-
ing, on the other. (1992, p. 182)
meant that you sought and persevered with technical difficulty. These
social identities or social intents overlapped and competed with each
other in complex ways. We will meet some of the children in that
study – Nell, Jason, Meg and Danny – in the next three chapters.
So far in this section, I have emphasised social intent or social iden-
tity as interest. There is a growing literature on the motivational role of
other aspects of ‘interest’ and, following the work of teachers engaged
in documenting this domain of disposition, I have included artefacts
and activities as well. Further examples of these three kinds of interest
are in Chapter 3. An early childhood assessment format that high-
lights the relationship with artefacts and materials is Project Spectrum,
designed at Harvard to assess learning style and domains of interest
or talent based on Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (Gardner, 1983).
Features of the ‘play’ in seven domains (with seven tasks or artefacts
some of which are open-ended and some of which are structured) are
observed and recorded. Of interest to the topic of domains of learning
dispositions is the assessment of ‘working style’ to describe a child’s
interactions with the tasks and materials from various content areas.
These working styles are intended to reflect the ‘process’ dimension of
a child’s work or play, rather than the type of product that results.
They address indices of affect, motivation, and interaction with mater-
ials, as well as more stylistic features like tempo of work and orienta-
tion toward auditory, visual, or kinesthetic cues. (Krechevsky, 1994, p.
203)
Being involved
The second domain of learning dispositions is being involved. Research
on evaluating early childhood programmes in Belgium by Ferre
Laevers, and in the UK by Chris Pascal and Tony Bertram, described
‘involvement’ as a central feature of a learning environment (Pascal et
al., 1995; Laevers, Vandenbussche, Kog and Depondt, no date;
Laevers, 1994). Laevers and colleagues have developed a ‘process-
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Learning Dispositions 29
Learning Dispositions 31
past completed a screen print ‘that looked really good’, but was not
going to do another because it was too hard. She was quite firm that
she did not want to risk making a mistake ‘ever again’. She appeared
to be becoming oriented towards performance goals, at least as far as
screen printing was concerned.
Susie: (asked what difficult things she does here) I do some drawings,
some paintings. But I don’t know how to do a screen print.
Me: Don’t you know how to do screen prints? (Susie shakes her
head) No. Right. Are you going to have a go at that? Or not?
Susie: No.
Me: You’re not going to have a go at that? (Rachel interrupts: ‘I
know how to do it.’) Why not?
Susie: ’Cos. (Further interruption from Rachel or Wendy) . . .
Me: (brings focus back to Susie) Why, Susie? Why don’t you want to
have a go at screen printing?
Susie: It’s too hard. I don’t know how to cut out things. I don’t know
what to cut out.
Me: Right.
Susie: But I’ve done one when Alison (a teacher) was here. But I can’t
remember how I wanted to do it.
Me: Right.
Susie: I did a girl with two (pause) eyes. And Alison cut out the eyes. It
looked really good but I don’t know how to do it any more.
Me: Right. Right. So you don’t want to have another go at it?
Susie: No.
Me: Mmhm.
Susie: ’Cos I might make a mis a mistake.
Me: You might make a mistake. And then what would happen?
Susie: It, um, ‘cos sometimes when somebody can put the paint on I
actually even put too much on. So I don’t want to do that ever
again.
Me: Right. So you don’t want to do that ever again.
things I know how to do’; and Trevor advised his friend that if you
make a mistake you should ‘just leave it’. Hermine Marshall summed
up as follows: ‘In brief, these lines of research demonstrate that stu-
dents enter school with goals that have potential consequences for the
type of learner students become’ (1992, p. 16).
This domain of learning dispositions is explored further in
Chapter 4.
Learning Dispositions 33
Taking responsibility
The fifth and final domain of learning dispositions is taking respon-
sibility. Taking responsibility includes contributing to shared activities
or episodes of joint attention. Longitudinal studies in the USA and in
Sweden have indicated that early positive relationships with peers
and with adults are the forerunners of positive relationships with first
teachers at school and are correlated with verbal abilities at eight years
(Howes, Matheson and Hamilton, 1994; Broberg, Wessels, Lamb and
Hwang, 1997). Numerous studies have documented the learning po-
tential of contexts of reciprocal and responsive relationships with oth-
ers: episodes of joint attention (Moore and Dunham, 1992; Smith,
1999) where, as Bronfenbrenner put it (1979, p. 163), ‘the balance of
power gradually shifts in favour of the developing person’, or where
the balance of power was always with the learner. Barbara Rogoff and
colleagues (1993) researched the way in which toddlers and their care-
givers from four cultural communities collaborated in shared ac-
tivities. They found that there were two aspects that occurred across
all four communities: bridging, in which the adults and the children
shared their understanding, and structuring, in which they each struc-
tured the other’s participation in the problem-solving tasks that the
researchers had set. These processes of shared responsibility enabled
successful collaborative problem-solving. Participation repertoires in-
clude capacities for interdependence and joint responsibility with
adults and peers. Elizabeth Jones and Gretchen Reynolds in 1992 ana-
lysed responsibility relationships between adults and children in
terms of power on, power with and power for. Power with is characterised
by negotiation, collaboration and transaction. Power for is charac-
terised by scaffolding as it is usually conceived; the agenda usually
belongs with the adult. Power on is in the nature of a tutorial. Harry
Torrance and John Pryor (1998, p. 82) cite a similar distinction between
power over and power with.
Children can take responsibility for assessment as well as curricu-
lum. Timothy was an example. Over a number of days, the teachers in
the story stones early childhood centre had noticed Timothy watching
other children abseiling up the slide using a knotted rope attached to
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Learning Dispositions 39
that they did not involve technical difficulty. She used the screen print-
ing equipment to screen paint onto collage, avoiding the tedious and
difficult preparation of a template, and she made hats for babies and
absent people, apparently to avoid the difficulty of measurement.
Linda had privileged being good and seeking adult approval, and she
avoided any activity that might display her as being unable. Emily,
also anxious not to be ‘wrong’, avoided the construction area and
spent most of her time in sociodramatic play, where she could be in
charge of the script. Collaborative narratives and skills developed in
dramatic or pretend play did not appear to be necessarily transferred
to construction activities. Children involved themselves in collabora-
tive scripts in sociodramatic play, and the same children worked indi-
vidually in the construction area. Nick, whom we will meet in Chapter
5, was an exception. Many of the children chose those activities that
provided a niche for their dispositions, or altered activities to create a
match.
Default settings
I commented earlier that children appeared to be seeking a balance
between belonging and exploration. Belonging frequently wins the day.
Hermine Marshall has commented (1992, p. 16) that ‘What type of
learner (children) actually become is influenced in large part by the
classroom environment’ and suggested that the classroom environ-
ments that encourage learning goals will be characterised by: challeng-
ing tasks that require active involvement, use of diverse processes,
provision of options, and establishing opportunities for shared respon-
sibility. Danny, Meg and Jason’s early childhood centre had these fea-
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Learning Dispositions 41
Learning Dispositions 43
Learning Dispositions 45
the finger paint and choose the colours was just the entry point that
allowed Robert to make a judgement that this environment was safe
and trustworthy. He became involved with finger-painting in a num-
ber of sustained and absorbed episodes of play. Clearly we cannot
expect to find young children taking responsibility in a setting where
the adults control the agenda, and one aspect of the validity of an
assessment is whether the outcome (disposition) of interest is locally
available. Staff can evaluate their learning place using this chapter’s
five-domain framework in a number of ways.1
Learning Dispositions 47
the novice watching and having a go without direct tuition; but it also
includes experts teaching the novice relevant knowledge and abilities
at the appropriate time.
Concluding Comment
This chapter has emphasised that, although the notion of dispositions
originally comes from psychology, where it was seen as the posses-
sion of an individual, like temperament, the approach in this book is
that a learning disposition is situated in and interwoven with action
and activity. I have argued that learning dispositions are worthwhile
outcomes for early childhood, using the definition of learning disposi-
tions as participation repertoires from which a learner recognises,
selects, edits, responds to, resists, searches for and constructs learning
opportunities. Supporting this idea, Barbara Comber concluded (2000,
p. 46) from her research on children going to school that: ‘Our close
analysis of the 20 case-study children suggested that school literacy
learning in the early months of school is contingent on selective reper-
toires of participative practices and forms of studentship.’
I have listed five possible candidates for domains of learning dis-
position, drawing on my experience in early childhood settings in
New Zealand, and I have suggested that in utilising a framework of
learning dispositions for setting goals in early childhood, the three
parts of a learning disposition – being ready, being willing, and being
able – will be variously foregrounded and backgrounded. On the
whole, however, we are not familiar with foregrounding the inclina-
tion through a fundamentally credit model of assessment. Chapter 6
outlines just such a model, and Chapters 7 to 10 outline how practi-
tioners have implemented it. The next three chapters bring us back to
the real experience of children, to elaborate on the five domains of
disposition. I have paired the first two as taking an interest and being
involved (Chapter 3), Chapter 4 considers persisting with difficulty or
uncertainty, and the last two domains, communicating with others and
taking responsibility are developed together in Chapter 5.
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3
Interest and Involvement
48
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knowledge and value relative to the other objects and events with
which the individual is involved (1992, p. 434). They differentiate
between individual interest and situational interest. Individual inter-
est is often seen as a relatively enduring psychological state, almost
like temperament. Situational interest, on the other hand, is elicited by
interesting features in the environment.
This book’s focus on learning as mediated action and concern with
the question ‘How will assessment enhance that learning?’ implies
that ‘interest’ will be about the mediational means and/or the action.
James Wertsch, who has argued for a focus on the learner-in-action
rather than the individual alone, has said that: ‘The most central claim
I wish to pursue is that human action typically employs ‘mediational
means’ such as tools and language, and that these mediational means
shape the action in essential ways’ (1991, p. 12). Interest, when the
learner is described in this way, might be described as ‘mediational
means’. I suggest the following three-part interest and involvement
system: artefacts (objects, languages, and story-lines that cultural sto-
ries and myths have provided), activities (ways of employing the
artefacts for a range of purposes; routines and practices) and social
communities. It may well be that fear or grief (as in Paley’s obser-
vations of Frederick, or Kathy’s observations of Sally, described be-
low) underlie these interests, but while we can observe the artefacts
and activities and social communities that children pay attention to,
we can only guess at their metaphorical or psychological significance.
Using the three-part system, we can say that deep involvement in an
interest occurs when a person, using the artefacts of the culture (such
as objects, tools and stories), is engaged in an activity, and when this
activity is valued and supported by a social community (see Figure
3.1). ‘Interest’ may initially reside in one or more of the parts of the
system.
Figure 3.1. The Interest and Involvement System: artefacts, activities and social
communities
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Moses
Moses is a two-year-old, and his absorbed interest in animals has
lasted for as long as his parents can remember. When he was one, he
had a small box of zoo animals which he would carefully stand up in a
number of different arrays, making the appropriate noises. He had a
number of favourite books that provided him with pictures of animals
that he would name or ask ‘What’s that?’ The first observation is
typical for that time.
Observation 1
Aged one year, three months.
Moses takes his small animal set (about ten animals) out of their box,
and carefully sets them upright on the floor, lying flat on his tummy.
He makes appropriate noises for each one.
By the age of two, his repertoire of scripts has extended, together with
the list of animals that he can name. He has become familiar with three
zoos, and knows where to find his favourites: antelopes and giraffes.
His scripts now include acting the part.
Observation 2
Mother: Mosie, tell Pop who you saw at the supermarket.
Moses (on all fours): I’m being a goat.
Mother: Goat, tell Pop who you saw at the supermarket.
Moses: Maa maa.
Observation 3
At a children’s farm enclosure set up in the middle of town, photos of
Moses show him carefully investigating the animals’ hooves and their
bottoms, and crawling around near them with his fingers curled in a
‘hoof’-like manner.
He has a particularly evocative galloping gait, and is especially fond
of the sandals that he has acquired from his older cousin:
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By the age of two years and eight months he continues to love books
about animals, especially more technical books that label, for instance,
the different kinds of horse. He now makes animals out of playdough,
and draws animals (although he prefers his parents to draw them). He
is absorbed for sustained periods setting up arrays of animals, often in
pairs (he is very fond of Noah’s Ark stories) and in lines, and has
begun to build elaborate block structures to which he adds animals.
These appear all over the house. He sees objects as similar to animals:
a mop is like a sheep, a shadow is like a pig, a rock is like a pig; and he
sees people as looking like animals (he describes one of his friend’s
parents as ‘looks like a lion’). He does animal dances to rhythmic
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music, and when his father takes him to a National Equestrian Centre,
he (the father) tells the following story:
Observation 8
I took Mosie to the National Equestrian Centre, and he was over-
whelmed by all the horses. He went up to one horse and put his hand
out slowly and patted it on the nose. He approached a man saddling
up a horse and asked lots of questions, adding remarks like ‘Very big
hooves, aren’t they’. When I commented to him about how beautifully
one of the horses was galloping, he said ‘It’s like music’.
By now he has a repertoire of songs about animals that he has learned
at the childcare centre, and is beginning to act out scenarios using his
(considerable) collection of animals as actors, and providing them
with different voices. The script sometimes includes exchanges like:
Goat: ‘Time for a sleep.’ Horse: ‘I don’t want to have a sleep.’ Goat:
‘How about a rest then?’ Horse: ‘No. No rest.’ He sets up small groups
of animals to watch him sleep, dance, eat and watch TV, and his
parents report that he will often take on the role of an animal in order
not to listen to them (for instance, to injunctions about bedtime).
Sally
At a conference in 1999 I heard Kathy Hunt talk about Sally, a three-
year-old whose mother, her sole parent, had died. At nursery school,
Sally:
was in a state of complete despair and we found her pain unbearable.
. . . Sally was exhibiting all the identified behaviours associated with
mourning, the panic, the crying out loud, searching in places over and
over again. Wandering, unable to settle, very little able to concentrate.
She was unable to play, uninterested in being with other children,
uninterested in mark-making or books or stories.
Kathy describes how Sally slowly began to take part in the life of the
nursery, creating and calling on metaphors that expressed the mean-
ing she intended. One of her early play actions at this time, repeated
over and over, was to walk two toy polar bears, an adult and a baby,
along a path around the water trough. ‘Every so often she would drop
the baby into the water and let it sink to the bottom then she would
exclaim, with a deep intake of breath, ‘‘Oh no!’’ With this, the game
would begin again.’ Sally later became very interested in the Ray-
mond Briggs story The Snowman (Briggs, 1978) and would ask for it to
be read to her repeatedly. Some years later, Kathy learned that this
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Alan
Alan attends a sessional kindergarten programme which implements
a project approach. The project that particularly captured Alan’s imag-
ination was when the staff and children decided to design and make a
gate for a gap in the fence that divided the kindergarten playground
into a front and back yard. When the builder had built the fence he
had discussed with the children the need for a sturdy gate to keep the
younger children safe: the back yard was difficult to supervise, and
the incinerator for burning rubbish was sited there. Before the project
began, Alan was a reluctant attender; once he became involved in the
project, however, he began attending with enthusiasm. On one occa-
sion after a spell at home with chicken pox, Alan decided he did not
want to go to kindergarten. When his mother reminded him that this
was the day when the builder was coming to consult the children
about the design of the final gate, he changed his mind, and was
centrally involved in the planning discussions. Observations on Alan
are as follows.
15 August – 28 August
Alan drew his first simple gate plan on 15 August, a square with three
diagonal lines running across it, and a small knob on the side that
might have been a hinge or a latch. On 26 August Alan made his first
gate in wood, following his plan. He brought hinges from home, and
persevered with the difficulty of attaching them with screws: drilling a
hole first. He discovered the difference between Phillips screws and
ordinary screws. With adult help he drilled holes first then chose
Phillips screws because he had a Phillips screwdriver. The next day he
was keen to keep working: ‘I want to go out and finish my gate.’ He
and another child, Sean, try his gate in the gap in the fence; it is clearly
too narrow. Alan: ‘I’ll have to make three more gates.’
On 28 August he completed this first wooden model gate and in
spite of its width he wanted to attach it to the fence. After discussion
with a teacher he decided it was not long enough either: it won’t ‘reach
from the top of the fence to the ground’. He said he would make a big
one next ‘the same size as the fence’. He tried various places inside to
put his small gate up, and decided on a flat-sided log in the nature
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corner. ‘I’ll have to measure it.’ He measured a gate post. ‘It goes six-
oh-oh.’ Then he measured the log. ‘No, it’s not the same. It’s meant to
be six-oh-oh. It’s not the right height.’ He went outside to saw his gate
post smaller. He measured and then drew a line on the gate post.
Barbara (another four-year-old) asked him ‘What are you doing?’
Alan: ‘I’ve got to chop where this line is.’ He nailed his gate to the log.
Bev (one of the children) helped him hold it upright while he nailed.
He tried shutting the gate three times, and it swung open. He pointed
out to Bev. ‘You have to put a lock on here Bev.’ Bev fetched the level
and placed it across the top of the gate. ‘It’s nearly in the middle’ said
Alan. They don’t, however, make a lock.
29 August – 2 September
His second plan, 29/8, was a crisscross design and had clearly drawn
hinges – ‘These join onto the fence’ – and round holes for screws. He
indicated that a nail would be needed in the centre to hold all the
pieces of wood together. This time he had measured the gap, and
included the written measurements on his plan: the comment on the
plan, written by the teacher, said ‘Alan has measured the gap in the
fence to get the right size for his gate.’
5–6 September
Alan describes his third plan: ‘The lines on the gate go down. You need
three hinges. There is a lock.’ He describes the lines on the fence as going
‘diagonally’, and explains the measurements to the teacher: ‘the numbers
on the top show one metre wide’ and ‘it’s the same high as the fence.’
The next day he made his third and largest gate: ‘I’m going to build my
biggest gate today.’ He used very large pieces of wood to make the
crisscross pieces for the centre of the gate. He didn’t start with a frame and
he didn’t complete it: the nailing was very difficult into the hard wood,
and he might have run out of long pieces of wood.
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Interest and Involvement 55
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9 September
On 9/9 the children were looking at photos of wrought iron gates.
Johnny made two models inspired by the photos: one out of wire, and
one a wire and paper model. Cara made a wire and paper model ‘like
the one in the photo’. (Mikey turned his wire model into glasses.) Alan
made a fourth model, with wire.
15 October – 22 October
On 12/9 Alan is away with chicken pox, and the kindergarten is closed
for two weeks’ term break from 23/9 to 7/10. His final plan is drawn
on 15/10 for the builder who has come to select the final design. This
model combines his first two designs: it includes three vertical sup-
ports, and two crisscross supports. On 22/10 the builder comes to
build the gate. Alan helps. The final design is close to Alan’s: vertical
boards on the front, and a diagonal board for support across the back
(not a crisscross, however). Next day he goes to school.
Alan remained interested in the project throughout, and appeared to
be particularly interested in hinges and measuring. Early in the project
he brought hinges from home, enough for the other children as well.
When the children at mat (circle) time were discussing making a gate
out of Hinuera (a local) stone he commented: ‘You’ll need really big
hinges for a stone gate.’ He used the measuring tape to read the
numbers accurately and write them onto his plans.
Nell
In Nell’s early childhood centre, a group of children were developing
and practising a range of social and linguistic strategies which served
to support her interest in making and maintaining friends: playing
together and being helpful to each other, talking about being friends
and about playing at each other’s houses, and talk that indicated an
awareness of the other’s needs, understandings and beliefs (a particu-
lar prerogative of the girls). Both of the following observations are
about inclusion in and exclusion from a community of friends. In the
first observation, Nell (aged four) provides Lisa with a defining char-
acteristic of a friend: ‘Only friends are allowed to look at the other
friends.’
Observation 1
Nell and Jinny were finger painting in the marble-painting box and
Lisa was screen printing nearby, watching them carefully.
Nell: (to Lisa) Don’t watch my friend Lisa. It’s rude.
Jinny: Yeah.
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Assessment
These observations illuminate the definition of assessment that we
have chosen: ‘The ways in which, in our everyday practice, we ob-
serve children’s learning, strive to understand it, and then put our
understanding to good use (Drummond, 1993, p. 13).
What guidance do these examples of interest and involvement give
us about assessment? They suggest the following: assessment will
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4
Persisting with Difficulty and
Uncertainty
64
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Jason
Jason, a nearly-five-year-old in Nell’s kindergarten, was one child
who appeared always to relish and persevere with difficulty, although
I only met him when he was about to go to school. Here are three
examples of what I perceived as Jason’s perseverance in very different
circumstances.
Observation 1
Marble painting.
Jason decides to do a marble painting, where the ‘painting’ results
from the movement of a painted marble over paper in the base of a
cardboard box. He elicits the help of the observer to look for the mar-
bling box, which we can’t find. Jason: ‘I could just get another box!’
He cuts the side and then the end flap off a muesli bar box. Now he
has a tray with one side cut off. He tucks some paper into one end,
spoons in the painted marble, and rolls it about. The marble rolls onto
the table. He controls the marble by pushing it around with the spoon,
instead of tilting the box. Then he tilts the box again, catching the
marble with his hand. He explains the problem to the observer: ‘It
needs one up there’ (another side to the tray), and he curls the paper
insert up to form a fourth side and a curved edge for the marble to roll
up onto and back down.
and curling the painting paper up to form a fourth side to the box. Later
(Observation 2) he will advise Nell not to make the same mistake.
Observation 2
Marble painting.
A few minutes later Nell arrives and decides to make a marble-
painting tray just as Jason has done. She finds a cereal packet and says
to Jason ‘D’you know how you can cut it? Cos I don’t.’ Jason replies,
pointing to parts of Nell’s packet: ‘You just. And this pulls out there.
You need to cut the top off. Don’t cut the end off.’
Alison was teaching Jason to write John’s name and they were inter-
rupted by Rachel who complained that someone was chasing her.
Rachel: Alison.
Alison: Yep.
Rachel: Somebody want to chase us.
Alison: Ooh. What do you need to do about that?
Rachel: I don’t know.
Jason: Run quickly and get away. (referring to his name writing) I
done it.
Alison: Is there anything you can say to them?
Rachel: Go away!
Jason: I, I, I trip, I trip them up. I trip them up and run.
Alison: There’s another, there’s something else you can do instead.
You can tell them. You can tell them to stop it and go away.
That’s another way.
Jason: Yep.
The teachers were encouraging the children to be in charge when
other children were mean to them. The instruction for children was
‘You say ‘‘stop it I don’t like it’’ when someone does something you
don’t like.’ Jason, about to leave for school, took a light-heartedly
flexible view of kindergarten rules.
On another occasion, Jason made a hat that was different from
everyone else’s: he made a cylindrical hat (the same design as all the
hats made at his early childhood centre) but he then added a fringe of
perforated edges from computer paper, taking some time to attach
them with sellotape so that they were evenly spaced and long enough
to bounce and wave about as he ran around wearing it. Jason’s dis-
position to persist with difficulty and to take an imaginative stance has
ranged across the boundaries between artefact, activity and social
community: the artefacts and activities associated with hat making,
marble painting and writing, and his taking on the role of a kinder-
garten adviser on behaviour management.
Meg
Another four-year-old, Meg, also illustrates this capacity to persist
with (and to choose) difficulty, but on the first occasion it is swamped
by a more conservative and non-challenging dispositional milieu. I
have already, in Chapter 2, commented on the possibility that this
conservatism is a ‘default setting’ in group enterprises which are de-
signed and initiated by the teacher and not sufficiently taken on as an
interest by the children.
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Observation 1
A group of children are working on a large collage/painting of a
butterfly. In this observation, Meg twice tries to shift the topic to tack-
ling difficulty, suggesting that they make the model a more accurate
one by constructing antennae on the wall hanging of the butterfly.
Meg’s ‘upping the ante’ of the activity is italicised in the following.
Both initiatives are buried by a ‘whose friend is whose’ discourse.
– That’s the middle. That’s the butterfly’s middle.
– Yeah. Body.
Meg: You forgot about those you forgot you forgot the things what go up
like that.
Linda: Meg I’m going to your place today.
Meg: I know. (takes on a funny voice) My friend’s going to my place
today. (ordinary voice) That’s my friend.
Linda: She always does that when I go to her place.
Meg: Now two more things what stick up. Those things what stick up.
(Amy, a teacher, and a child came past, saying ‘beep beep’
(excuse me)).
Valerie: Do you know what, did you tell your mother I’m coming over?
(10.22 a.m.) Meg is stapling two strips together to make a longer strip.
Tries to measure her own head. (10.30) Meg has made her hat but it’s
too big, she takes a pleat out of the back and staples it. It is still too big.
Helps Linda by gluing her templates to a sheet of paper. (10.35) Cuts
three blue sheets of A4 sized paper in half lengthwise, staples three of
them into a strip, tries it around her head. Not long enough. (N.B.
Linda copies the use of blue paper, cuts strips widthwise, goes on to
make a paper chain; Peter copies Linda’s loops, makes handcuffs.)
Staples two more strips together, and then sellotapes and staples them
all together in one long strip. She tries it on again, it slips around and
she can’t hold it in position to staple when it comes off her head. (10.43)
Takes her cardigan off and takes it to her locker. Returns, tries again,
then goes off with the strip and a stapler (presumably to ask an adult).
Returns with it stapled. Sellotapes a circle of blue cellophane on. Puts
the hat on, adjusting it so that the cellophane hangs down in front of
one eye. Takes hat off and goes to look in the decorative paper box for
more cellophane. Finds another piece of cellophane, cuts it to a similar
size and shape, and by a process of sellotaping and putting hat on to
adjust it, attaches the second piece of cellophane to eye level. (10.49)
Distracted by Emily talking about birthday party in the family corner.
Returns to sellotape blue lids onto the hat, in ‘ear’ positions. Meg and
Linda distracted by Emily screeching in the family corner. Amy calls
out for her to be quiet. They stop work for this. Then they resume. Meg
draws down the centre (‘nose’ position) and then paints across the
back. She hangs it up to dry. (10.55 a.m.)
This hat with built-in sun visor may have had its beginnings eight
days earlier when she and Linda made telescopes by sellotaping col-
oured cellophane across the ends of cardboard tubes (they may have
been alerted to the qualities of cellophane during the group butterfly
mural construction on the same day).
Danny
Danny is very interested in small animals: in particular, bugs, spiders,
ants, butterflies and rabbits. At home he draws them frequently, en-
joys books on the topic, and is becoming very knowledgeable about
them. At kindergarten he is introduced to screen printing, and a series
of observations document his increasing expertise at this expressive
medium. Although most children only made one screen print, and
frequently kept the painted template and threw away the print (as
Danny did at first), over a period of six weeks there were five episodes
when he made screen prints, and by the fourth and fifth he was
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Observation 3
In the third episode, he drew and cut out a whale. This was not his
choice of subject, and the initiative to make a screen print was the
teacher’s. Danny and Bridget were together and Amy (one of the
teachers) said ‘Do you want to make something to take home today?
Danny. Danny and Bridget. What about a screen print Bridget?’ She
suggested a screen print of a whale (a topic introduced at mat time)
and when Bridget said ‘I don’t know how to’ she said ‘Well I can help
you.’ They got the book, and Danny joined in too. Amy reminded him
that if he didn’t cut out the eye it wouldn’t appear on the screen.
Amy: ‘Hey, look at this. He’s beautiful. Good cutting Danny. Well
done. You stuck it out and you finished it. Excellent. Cut the eyes out,
‘cos that’s all you’re going to see, you see. Oh he’s beautiful. So you
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fold it over. And you just cut in here. Like that. So you can see it the eyes
on the screen print. Isn’t that neat Bridget. There, see there’s one eye. You
may need to do the same the other . . . now. It’s coming to the inside.
There you go. Let’s have a look. Oh. That’s what you’re going to see on
the screen. He’s beautiful. (Raises her voice) Have a look at this whale
everybody. Look at Danny’s whale.’ She hangs up his print to dry.
Although it was not initially his choice of occupation and topic, and
Danny did not need the public praise (as Observation 4 indicates), he
was learning more of the craft of screen printing.
Observation 4
In the fourth episode, with no teacher present, he put his drawing
upside down on the screen, and indicated that he was exploiting the
silhouette-forming affordance (potential) of a screen print. His friend
Joan notes that he put the drawing upside down onto the screen.
Joan: You putted that on the wrong way.
Danny: Going to do the shadow of it. Oooaah.
He hangs up the print to dry.
Observation 5
In the fifth episode, assisted by a teacher, he also did the ‘shadow of it’,
a screen print of a rabbit. He carefully ensures that the paint covers the
paper beyond the template, saves the print, and hangs it up to dry.
of writing was mentioned several times (writing ‘a’ and ‘e’, said one of
the children; writing my name, said another); Samuel said he liked
doing hard 100-piece jigsaw puzzles. Many of the children cited jump-
ing, doing handstands, forward flips and cartwheels as difficult ac-
tivities, and one child told me he was learning to whistle (‘Dad is
teaching me’); Freda told me that she was finding it difficult to draw
noses. In the social field, Matt said he was looking forward to being
old enough to ‘go up the street and get the eggs, by myself’, Rita said
she wanted to be able to ‘do the vacuum’, and Laura said that she
found it difficult to tell Emily that she didn’t want to play with her.
Assessment
The previous chapter set out four guidelines for assessment from the
examples about interest and involvement. The examples in this chap-
ter suggest two further guidelines for informal feedback and formal,
documented assessment: many tasks will provide their own assess-
ment, and assessment will itself contribute to the children’s learning
dispositions.
Jinny (four years old, writing a card): How do you write ‘love’?
Alison (teacher): If I say the letters, can you write them down? Do
you know them if I say them? If I say ‘L’?
Jinny: Yep. There’s an L in Nell’s name.
Alison: (to Nathan: Look at that) Yes Nell’s got an ‘L’. (to Nathan: OK
Can you hang that up Nathan?) L.O. (Jinny: O, yeah) V. Yes. E.
(Video notes: she writes the letters in the air) That’s it. Do you
want to do the word ‘from’?
Jinny: Yeah.
The teacher did not add praise. Later, someone in her family will read
this back to Jinny and this will provide for Jinny the assessment of
successful achievement. It was often those activities in which children
could readily perceive success (and failure) which provided practi-
tioners with stories of persistence with difficulty: mastering tools like
scissors and carpentry equipment, riding a bike, completing a jigsaw,
writing a name.
5
Communicating with Others and
Taking Responsibility
Chapter 2 set out five domains of learning disposition, and the pre-
vious two chapters have provided examples of the first three of these
in action. The final two domains are communicating with others and
taking responsibility. They have been combined together to illustrate
episodes of joint attention, where children express a point of view or a
feeling, and take on the point of view of others. These episodes are
examples of reciprocal and responsive relationships with people that
weave together the affective, the cognitive and the social into rich
fabrics of learning. In each case the children have been able to find
or construct places in which the tasks of interest work best within
responsive and reciprocal relationships. The stories of Rosie,
Kiriwaitutu, Nick, Myra and Molly are told and analysed, followed by
an implication for assessment from these examples.
Rosie
The routines and props at Rosie’s childcare centre allow plenty of time
and opportunity for elaborated sociodramatic play, and the centre
provides a programme where events and plans are as often as possible
negotiated, and reasons for rules given. Rosie is a four-year-old with
an apparent interest in the ambiguous territory between the binaries
of scary–friendly, good–mean and real–pretend (concerns and inter-
ests also the subject of commentary by Vivian Paley and Kieran Egan).
Rosie has a number of fantasy story-lines which she negotiates and
adapts, and she structures the participation of others in enterprises
that elaborate on the topics she finds to be of interest. These processes
of shared responsibility enable successful collaborative problem-
solving. Her strategies of ‘bridging’ (sharing understanding) and
‘structuring’ (directing or negotiating each other’s participation)
77
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Observation 1
Directing the sequence of events, offering an alternative and giving a reason.
Rosie and Anna are inside at the childcare centre, ‘fishing’ with sticks
and ribbons. They have a box of ‘bait’ (pieces of jigsaw from the table
nearby) beside them. It is 9.20 a.m. Rosie resists Anna’s attempt to
negotiate the story-line, giving a reason. She also has a light-hearted
negotiation with Dan (If you’re my friend. . . only if you’re mean).
Later during this episode the adult too offers an alternative and gives a
reason.
Rosie: We can fish from our home ’cos our home is by the river.
Anna: We’re going home now.
Rosie: No, our home is here.
(Dan comes over and treads on the fishing lines, and Anna
shouts at him)
Rosie (to Dan): If you’re my friend I’ll let you come to my house and
play with my cat Cato.
Dan: He might scratch me.
Rosie: Only if you’re mean to him.
The adult asks Rosie to return the jigsaw pieces they have put into a
cardboard box as ‘bait’ and explains that the other children cannot
complete their jigsaws. She suggests shells as an alternative, and they
replace the jigsaw pieces with shells.
Observation 2
Directing the sequence of events. Rosie is playing inside at the childcare
centre; Rosie has devised a ‘Going to Pizza Hut’ script. She has made
one of the staff a pretend pizza and poured her some pretend
lemonade. Louise arrives and attempts to take on a leading role: the
Mum, and then the cashier. Both are rejected by Rosie, on each occa-
sion using as rationale a re-statement (or rapid reconstruction) of her
script.
Louise (who has just arrived): I’ll be the Mum OK?
Rosie: No, we’re at the Pizza Hut. (Gives adult an empty plate) Want
chocolate on this? We took our pizzas home eh?
Adult: Did we remember to pay for our pizzas? (Rosie nods) How
much was it?
Louise: Two dollars.
Adult: That was cheap, two dollars each.
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Observation 3
Negotiating the story-line. The ‘dress-ups’ have been taken outside; at
the beginning of the play Rosie is Dad and Anna is a puppy. Rosie
finally gives way on the sequence of events, and once again a staff
member (a different staff member from in Observation 1 or 2) gives
explanations.
Rosie: Thanks Puppy. I’m the Dad.
(They hang up the camera on the clothes hangers that are part
of outside equipment for dress-up play)
I’m going to take a photo of you.
(Anna asks staff member to make the swings available. Adult
explains why she can’t:)
Adult: There aren’t enough adults at the moment. I know it’s really
hard to understand, but if the swings are down I have to watch
them, and I need to watch the whole area.
Anna: (to Rosie) That’s my camera. (They argue about whose camera
it is)
Rosie: I buyed it.
Anna: No, you didn’t buy it. I’ll take this away if you didn’t buy it.
(She snatches an item of clothing that Rosie has been taking on
and off)
Rosie: OK. I didn’t buy it.
Observation 4
Acknowledging another’s interest to try to persuade. Rosie is playing Cap-
tain Hook and Peter Pan, and Louise arrives. Louise’s favourite role is
a mermaid. Rosie tries to persuade Louise to join in on her Peter Pan
script.
Rosie: There are mermaids in it.
Louise: No there aren’t.
Rosie: Yes there are.
Louise: No there aren’t.
Rosie: (putting her face up close to Louise’s) Yes there are. ’Cos I got
the video and I saw mermaids on it.
Louise: I didn’t see it.
(Louise is not convinced and sets herself up as a mermaid in a
nearby enclosure. Rosie takes up a role in both her own and in
Louise’s stories, alternately moving from one place to the
other.)
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Observation 5
Negotiating the story-line. In this episode, Rosie and Anna are playing
outside. Anna has some say in the story-line and the allocation of roles,
and Rosie tries to script Anna’s thoughts (‘You say to yourself, I love
Belle eh?’), seeing these as central to the story-line. She tries to get
Anna to elaborate on the Beast’s planned behaviour (‘Who’re you
gonna kill?’). Even Jeanie, who is not yet four, is willing to negotiate a
turn with the doll.
Anna: You be Belle and I’ll be the Beast.
Rosie: You say to yourself, I love Belle, eh?
(A toddler comes over to tell Rosie about a helicopter
overhead)
Rosie: Go away.
(Anna makes beast-like noises and talks about killing)
Rosie: Who’re you gonna kill? (Anna doesn’t reply)
(Jeanie comes over and wants the doll baby that Rosie has.
Rosie won’t give it to her)
Jeanie: When you go home, you give it to me OK? (No reply from
Rosie)
Observation 6
Persevering towards a negotiated settlement. The children are outside,
riding around on tricycles. Rosie doesn’t have one. Another child fends
off negotiation (or makes it difficult) by using an ambiguous but
powerful timing mechanism for sharing (holding up her fingers: ‘this
many minutes’); the same child later arranges the environment so
things are fair for everyone. Rosie perseveres.
Rosie (to Amy): Please can I have one of those?
Amy: I haven’t finished. (Rosie follows her around) This much min-
utes (she holds up the fingers on both hands) when I’ve
finished.
Rosie: Can I have the bike soon, can I have it when you’ve finished
please?
Amy: Yes.
Rosie (turning it into a story): OK. ‘Bye.
. . . (a few minutes later)
Rosie (tearful, to adult): She said this many minutes (holds up her
fingers).
Amy: But I’m not getting off.
(The adult assists Rosie onto a rather too big trike)
. . . (a few minutes later)
Amy to Gina (who is tall): You have the big bike.
(Gina gets onto the biggest trike, Amy then gets onto Gina’s
trike, and Rosie onto Amy’s. They ride around, following a
chalk line drawn on the concrete by the adult).
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Observation 7
Communicating ideas to an adult. An example in which the activity is
not sociodramatic or social play, but drawing. Rosie draws her family
at the zoo, with animals that are either friendly or scary. She talks to
an adult about her drawing as she draws: Mum, ‘me’, Dad, a friendly
dinosaur (‘even though that spiky bit is sharp’), a friendly lion, a
scary tiger, a coconut, a ‘little kitty’ (shall I do the claws? Yes), the
grass, a flower (‘the stalk, the circle, the pollen, and the petals’) and
the sun.
Observation 8
Having a conversation. Rosie is sitting having morning tea and chatting
to me about what she likes doing, and what she will be able to do when
she’s older (drink tea and eat fish) and what she likes doing now that’s
really difficult (head rolls, and hopping).
Me: What about your drawing? What do you draw that’s difficult?
Rosie: Dragons.
Me: Mmm. Is it the tongue and the eyes that’s difficult?
Rosie: Dragons look like this (mimes a dragon face) and they have
prickles down their back and claws on their feet. And you
know the cupboard where the television is (gestures, whis-
pers) there’s a dragon in there, behind the television.
Me: Oh, no. And does it peep out?
Rosie: (whispering) Oh no. It’s not a good one. It eats you.
Me: (whispering) Eats children and grown-ups?
Rosie: Yep. Eats children and grown-ups.
Me: What colour is it?
Rosie: Green and orange. It has an orange tongue and green skin.
(A toddler comes over)
Me: Mm hm.
(Rosie and adult nod to each other in tacit agreement not to
frighten the little ones)
Rosie struggles with language skills at the top end of her range: she
strings sequential ideas, provides reasons, describes imaginative
events, and discusses thought. Her pretend play, her drawing, and her
conversations all reflect these increasingly elaborated topics or story-
lines. At singing time, one of Rosie’s favourite song routines is ‘We’re
going on a Bear Hunt, I’m not scared’, which she joins in with great
gusto, helps decide on the script, and jumps into the adult’s lap in
mock terror. On another occasion, she announces that she is a cowboy.
An adult asks if she is not a cowgirl? She replies that she is a cowboy,
mean to monsters and nice to people.
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Kiriwaitutu
A good example of the close connection between these two disposi-
tional domains – communication and taking responsibility – and the
mediational means (artefacts, activities and social community) comes
from a total immersion Maori language early childhood centre or
kohanga reo (the literal meaning is language nest). Kiriwaitutu is a
four-year-old who attends an urban Maori language centre, and the
observations here come from the write-up of the children’s learning
by their kaiako (teacher), Mere Skerrett-White. The observations focus
on Kiriwaitutu’s language experiences in context. Mere refers to
Rogoff’s work when she reminds us (Rogoff, 1990, p. 79) that context
is ‘an interwoven web of relations which form the ‘‘fabric of mean-
ing’’.’ Reflecting the culture of the centre, these examples include a
number of ways in which Kiriwaitutu communicates with and takes
responsibility for the other children: turning painting into a joint con-
versational activity, using a different language genre for the younger
children, and correcting an adult who uses the wrong name; as well,
she is using increasingly complex and precise linguistic functions.
Observation 1
Turning painting into a joint conversational activity. Kiriwaitutu and an-
other, younger, child are both painting alongside each other. The two
children discuss what Kiriwaitutu is going to be painting on her page.
Kiriwaitutu says ‘Ka penei . . .’ (Like this . . . ), demonstrating her
technique. They both carry on working for a while looking at one
another’s work and discussing what they are doing. Kiriwaitutu is
painting vertical strokes with black paint. Her companion is painting
horizontal strokes with green paint. He checks to see what stage
Kiriwaitutu is at. He then looks around for some more black paint,
returns and adds some black vertical strokes to his painting. They
continue their conversation about the work. Their paintings are in a
sense another conversation, exchanging design and colour.
Observation 2
Using a different language genre for the younger children. Kiriwaitutu and
four other children are all playing in the sandpit. The children work
together on a construction. Meanwhile one of the babies has come over
to ‘help’ with the construction. Kiriwaitutu says, in a sing-song (baby)
voice:
‘Kao . . . kao. I te mahi matou enei – a-a-a i-o-u.’
‘No . . . no. We all (excluding you) have created this.’ She finishes with
a little vowel ditty.
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Observation 3
Correcting an adult who uses the wrong name, using increasingly complex
and precise linguistic functions. Kiriwaitutu has taken on the respon-
sibility of assisting a newly arrived adult who is having difficulty with
a name. Some of the children were working at the collage table when
they were approached by an adult on her first day in the centre. Whilst
working with one of the children, the adult uses the wrong name.
Kiriwaitutu, who is looking on, corrects her, and supplies the correct
name (K . . .)
Kiriwaitutu: ‘Ko K . . . tena, ko K . . .’
(This is K . . .)
Mere comments on the linguistics, in particular:
Firstly her use of ‘ko’ as a particle designating a proper noun, and
secondly the correct use of ‘tena’, (as opposed to tenei or tera) as a
locative denoting a case of ‘the person there next to you’. This latter is a
concept that many adults have difficulty with when learning Maori as
a second language.
Nick
Communicating with others and taking responsibility have been com-
bined together in this chapter to illustrate episodes of joint attention.
Rosie and Kiriwaitutu provided examples of these reciprocal inter-
changes, in sociodramatic play (Rosie), and in the general running
of the programme and caring for others (Kiriwaitutu). The following
are further examples of peer collaboration (in an art activity and in
sociodramatic play) that involve four-year-old Nick. The children are
bridging and structuring. The first episode is primarily about bridging,
in which the children share their understanding of the task at hand:
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Observation 2
Structuring the others’ participation. Nick negotiates a compromise that
is satisfactory to all parties. He is in the ‘family’ corner with Rachel and
Tony. Nick and Rachel are getting ready to go to a party. Rachel tells
Tony he’s not playing. When Tony doesn’t go away she gets (mildly)
cross and reiterates that he’s ‘not coming to our party’; Nick combines
the two viewpoints by suggesting that when they prepare the party
food they prepare something for his (Tony’s) dinner: Tony can be part
of the play, although he cannot go to the party.
Nick: . . . some yummy meat balls for the party tonight.
Tony: And I’m making some.
Rachel: No, you’re not playing this game with us.
Tony: Uh?
Nick: ’Cos these are just for us for the party.
Tony: I’m making something as well for the party.
Rachel: No, you’re not coming to our party.
Nick: No, he’s just making something for us to take eh?
Tony: And I’m coming as well, eh?
Nick: No.
Rachel: No.
Nick: You’re just making something for us to take. And you can.
And we can cut a bit in half for you to have for dinner tonight,
OK?
Tony: Because I’m.
Nick: Because you won’t have any dinner left, will he Rachel?
Rachel: No.
Nick: So we we’re going to cut him a bit.
Tony: I’m cutting.
Nick: ’K. Now go and put that bit in the fridge. That bit. That bit of
pizza. It’s a bit of pizza. OK?
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Gonna turn the shining light on. Look at the shiny light Molly.
Look at that gold in the middle.
Molly: Mine’s even prettier ’n yours Myra. Got more stuff on it. This
little bit’s going to be the light.
Myra: Look at the golden light flashing on. The golden light goes on
so I can see in the night. You should have a golden light to see
in the night. Here’s your flashing light. I’ll get a little flashing.
Myra (to another child): You can make a hat if you like. I’m making.
What are you making? (Molly: I’m making a princess hat) I’m
not. I’m making my Dad, a hat for George.
Molly: Mine’s pretty isn’t it?
Another child: Where are you going to stick that though?
When Molly said ‘Mine’s pretty isn’t it?’ Myra did not reply, perhaps
because Molly had already said that hers was ‘even prettier ‘n yours’;
this transcript had a competitive edge, but the children still helped
each other, and Myra later saved some of her precious gold paper for
Molly.
Observation 3
Explaining the process (The ball’s making me do that. See the squiggles
that it made? Purple and yellow), giving instructions (perhaps to her-
self: then we put it back. Show me), questioning (Where’s yours?
Where? Why’re you doing it again?). Myra had just completed a mar-
ble painting and Molly was in the middle of making one. When Myra
made her marble painting the marble for the yellow paint was lost, and
she had to make do with the purple only. Alison (the teacher) then
found the yellow marble, and Molly then made a painting with the two
marbles and two colours.
Molly: Yuk. Hey the ball’s making me do that. (laughs) Now. Now we
take it out and put some more paint, then we put it back.
Myra: Mine is purple as the.
Molly: Where’s yours?
Myra: Just in there.
Molly: Where? Show me.
Myra: (from a distance) Here.
Molly: Oh yeah. Come on ball. Ah see. (laughs) . . .
Myra: Why’re you doing it again Molly?
Molly: ’Cos I want to.
Myra: Now you’ll be able to do the yellow, won’t you Molly?
Molly: (to Myra and Alison, a teacher) See what squiggles that made?
Alison (teacher): Oh, look at that.
Molly: There. Purple and yellow (explanation of process).
Alison: Oh, what’s it (. . .).
Molly: Look. Colour (explanation of process).
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Assessment
The learning place, the dispositional milieu, was central to the learning
disposition exemplified in this chapter. These examples provide a
further assessment guideline: assessment will protect and enhance the
early childhood setting as a learning community.
6
Learning Stories
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Learning Stories 93
Learning Stories 95
Learning Stories
In the last three chapters, when I wanted to illustrate the domains of
learning disposition in action, I called on stories about a number of
children. The stories included the context, they often included the
relationship with adults and peers, they highlighted the activity or
task at hand, and they included an interpretation from a story-teller
who knew the child well and focused on evidence of new or sustained
interest, involvement, challenge, communication and responsibility.
In some cases the evidence could be listed: the examples of taking
responsibility in an episode of joint attention, for instance, had many
common features of bridging and structuring. In some cases the inter-
pretation was much more to do with knowing the child very well, and
of acknowledging the ‘underground’ and unknowable nature of the
development: Sally coping with grief was an example. Many of these
stories were part of a sequence over time, and in many of them a
number of story-tellers had collaborated with the author in the inter-
pretation (Moses’ parents, the staff in Rosie’s childcare centre and
Alan’s teachers, for example). Stories can capture the complexity of
situated learning strategies plus motivation. The research on chil-
dren’s relationships by Judy Dunn (1993) highlights the way in which
stories integrate the social with the cognitive and the affective. And
stories can incorporate the child’s voice, as the work of Sue Lyle (2000)
has illustrated. They emphasise participation and culture, and their
use as a framework for understanding learning owes much to the
discussions of narrative in the work of Jerome Bruner. Mary Beattie
quotes the poem ‘Among School Children’ by W. B. Yeats (from a 1958
collection, p. 242) to highlight the connectedness of a story approach:
O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
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Learning Stories 97
Learning Stories 99
that he didn’t hit her (Amy). [Both Milly and another teacher gave
positive feedback.]
This was one of the first times that Bruce appeared to be deliberately
taking control of his own behaviour: taking on the kind of respon-
sibility expected of him here. Teacher feedback included a comment
on their recognition of this.
Learning Story 3
Bruce asks Annie to look after his block and animal construction, and
she attempts to do so. At one stage he says: ‘Annie, it’s okay, it looked
after itself!’
Bruce is beginning to call out or goes to an adult to demand attention
instead of creating an unacceptable incident.
Learning Story 4
This morning Bruce announces: ‘I’m a good pirate.’ ‘And I save people.’
Although the adults were still spending a lot of time protecting other
children from disruption and disturbance, and paying attention to Bruce,
they now notice the stories in which he communicates with others in
acceptable ways and takes responsibility for his actions. They discuss
these at staff meetings and plan to try to maximise these occasions by
encouraging play with Louise (monitoring her comfort with this, and
adding extra players where possible), and by continuing to help him to
reframe his pirate stories (saving people and finding treasure, rather than
killing and taking hostages at the point of a sword). On especially flexible
days, adults are on hand to give him a cuddle when he retreats into baby-
like behaviour. They also remind him that indeed he is big: he shows
Vera (one of the teachers) his sand construction: Hey Kimi made a little
one and I made a big one. [Vera: well, she’s little and you’re big.]
Adults explain clearly why they cannot always guard his con-
structions, incorporating their respect for him with their responsibility
to be with other children: i.e. this is a place where everyone takes
responsibility for everyone else. Interestingly, other children share
some of the responsibility for Bruce’s curriculum. Rosie tells me (a
visitor) to ‘Say don’t do that Bruce. I don’t like it’ when Bruce hits me
on the cheek with a piece of jigsaw. Andy takes on the role of encour-
aging Bruce’s sociable behaviour. Andy to adult, with Bruce listening:
‘Lucky (that) Bruce shifted the truck (to let me make the road).’ Adult:
‘Yes, lucky that Bruce shifted the truck.’ (Mind you, later when Bruce
jumps on Gina and makes her cry, Andy says ‘That was funny,
Bruce.’) Later Andy moves little Paul away from Bruce’s vigorous
sand throwing: ‘Look out Paulie in case you get sand in your eyes.’
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enjoyed playing out for reasons we could only guess at. He appeared to
be coming to view the environment as safe enough to get involved in
and to talk about his feelings. He was starting to see that he could take
responsibility in group settings in the childcare centre in acceptable and
satisfying ways. The Learning Stories were focusing the staff’s atten-
tion, providing a basis for teaching, contributing to Bruce’s learning and
highlighting these actions for Bruce and his family. In doing that assess-
ment, the staff were interpreting the learning in four ways. They were
describing Bruce’s interest, involvement, challenge, communication and
responsibility in terms of the local opportunities to learn as well as in
terms specific to Bruce. They were documenting some of his actions, but
not all, and during discussions at staff meetings they were reminding
each other of other relevant – congruent and alternative – stories. The
Learning Stories were providing guidance for their interactions: they
were both formally and informally deciding what to do next. These are
judgements by the adults (although the children will be included in as
many of them as possible). I have called these the ‘four Ds’ of assess-
ment: Describing, Documenting, Discussing and Deciding.
Concluding Comment
This chapter has picked up the theoretical analysis of learning from
the earlier chapters and has begun to answer the question about
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7
Describing
106
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Describing 107
● moving to a focus on giving credit for what the children were doing
and away from reference to what they were not doing;
● developing structured observations that reflected local oppor-
tunities and programmes;
● foregrounding and backgrounding being ready, being willing and
being able.
Focusing on credit
Learning Stories describe episodes of achievement: taking an interest,
being involved, persisting with difficulty and uncertainty, expressing
an idea or a feeling, and taking responsibility. I have already com-
mented that a credit focus is appropriate for formative assessment of
domains of disposition because the framework has foregrounded in-
clinations, or being ready. An inclination becomes part of the child’s
participation repertoires, integrated into the way they see themselves
as learners. By the time he went to school, Jason’s view of himself as a
learner was as a competent problem-solver (persisting with and rel-
ishing difficulty) who tutored others in his fields of expertise. As more
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Describing 109
sideways or round in a circle’ and I found that, with the same sort of
thing (with a Learning Story) you might think to yourself, well that
child hasn’t done very many circles in the past, it’s just done up and
down, you could just say ‘well look, you know, this child is starting to
move it in circles, realising that the paint can go in different ways.’
Yeah, it’s quite good . . . the concentration too.
Finding an interest
Some children moved rapidly from one activity to another, or
watched but were reluctant to move to the next step: involvement. At
this point staff were trying to detect topics or activities (including
people) of interest. They looked for:
● Things of interest. Five Learning Stories all indicated that James was
particularly interested in trucks and trailers, attaching trailers, and
filling trucks, trailers and trolleys.
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Describing 111
Being involved
These early categories (taking an interest and being involved), fre-
quently part of settling in, were often a feature of describing the chil-
dren’s experience when they first arrived in either the under-twos or
the over-twos programme. ‘When they’re new they stand back and
don’t want to get involved,’ commented one of the staff. Even some of
the ‘old hands’ needed frequent reassurance that the environment
could be trusted, and children recently promoted to the over-twos
were frequently invited back into the familiar environment of the
under-twos. Staff looked for:
● Constraints to involvement. Both Robert and Rangi appeared inter-
ested in messy play, but reluctant to get messy.
● Special clothes or toys or rituals that signified safety. Terry, nearly two,
had to wear his raincoat or have it nearby to feel safe. Learning
Stories documented his increasing ability to manage without it.
Ada, one of the staff, commented that ‘if someone even touched his
coat, he’s got a thing about his little raincoat, he’s either got to wear
it or he tucks it under his arm . . . and if anybody touches it he
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screams. . . . But he’s even got kind of, you know, he’s even not too
bad about things like that now. So, I mean, it’s showing that he feels
safe enough to (indistinct) . . . and he nearly doesn’t worry.’
● The characteristics of those activities where children appeared to be most
involved. Shelley’s involvement at water play – was it the water, was it a
familiar adult nearby, was it a special friend? Some children did not
enjoy large groups. Discussing the Learning Stories on Ray, one of the
staff said: ‘So, I think big groups aren’t a very good thing. . . . That’s
like adults. I mean adults don’t like it (being in big groups) do they? So.’
● Challenges that keep children going (the transition to the next step of
the Learning Story). Robert is prepared to be involved in the
challenge of cutting with scissors: it is a ‘transparent’ activity in
which success is readily apparent. Billy will remain involved for
long periods in technical activities (carving and carpentry) that are a
little bit ‘dangerous’.
● Special people. Tania may have needed the reassurance of Fern (a
staff member) nearby to encourage her sustained involvement with
bicycle play. The following Learning Story, written by Fern, covers
all five domains of disposition the sequence of Taking an interest
→Being involved→Persisting with difficulty→Expressing her ideas
→Taking responsibility.
Tania
Tania is playing outside with older children on bikes. She sees a bike
that is unused and runs to get it. Before she gets to it another child gets
on and rides off. Tania looks at me, wanting me to get it for her. I tell her
to wait and soon it will be her turn and to find another bike. She gets on
another bike and follows the other child closely, watching her every
move. The other child finally stops and gets off. Tania hops off her bike
and gets on the other bike. She looks at me and smiles and rides away.
Describing 113
Gets out half-circle blocks, puts two together to make a circle. Gets out
longer curved block and tries to add it, then tries to add small half
circle. Later returns, puts two half circles together, claps her hands.
Piles up small blocks, laughs when they fall. Later, building, carefully
fits blocks into a rectangular pattern.
Taking responsibility
In the childcare centre this domain was extended to include not only
episodes of joint attention and shared responsibility, but also episodes
where children took responsibility as part of belonging to the
childcare community. There were few Learning Stories of joint adult–
child enterprises from this centre, some discussion of peer collabora-
tion episodes (a discussion about Joseph at a staff meeting included
the comment ‘He doesn’t have the skills to negotiate with anybody
about how he’s going to [get a turn] and a lot . . . of the other two-
year-olds know how to do it’), and many occasions when children
took responsibility for each other’s well-being and comfort. Staff de-
scribed ‘taking responsibility’ in the following way, and they looked
for the contexts that encouraged these Learning Stories:
● Adult–child collaboration on joint tasks.
● Peer collaboration on joint tasks. Examples included: Kate and James
are jointly ‘driver’ in a bus that they have jointly constructed out of
chairs, cooperation in the sandpit, pushing each other on the swing,
examining a ladybird together.
● Children taking responsibility for other children’s well-being. Shari takes
Billy off to get him a plaster for his sore finger, he in turn explains
the importance of washing the wound to her; Freddie helps Mike
with his lunch; sensitive understanding of a friend who has been
away and whose mother has been ill; helping the littlies; comforting
sad children.
Shari
Concerned about Billy screaming, she asks him: ‘Did Cameron hit you
with the hammer?’ I explained: No, he had hurt himself with the saw.
She said ‘I’ll get Billy a plaster.’ They walk off together, Billy explaining
to her that he would need to wash it first and then put the plaster on.
● Children taking responsibility for the programme. Shari introduces chil-
dren to visitors, children take responsibility for their own toileting,
Flora organises a painting activity, Erica gets a team together to
water the plants, Kate runs an exercise session.
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Describing 115
One aspect of the project was that the children were solving the same
or similar problems (designing a gate that would fit the gap in the
fence). The children were therefore often looking to each other for
ideas, and one way to analyse the project is as a collaborative web of
joint attention, collaborative problem-solving, and discussion. As in
the childcare centre, the description of taking responsibility, taking an-
other point of view, shifted because of the nature of the early child-
hood programme.
In the parent cooperative, ‘persisting’ was described as ‘having an-
other go’. At one of the parents’ meetings a parent told the following
story:
Everyone was dancing . . . she was having a go . . . trying hard. She
(had) reached beyond the stage of just watching and (was) having a try
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now. . . . And there was a group of them and they were holding their
waists . . . and she was just watching them for ages and then all of a
sudden she actually (got) closer to them . . . she got the courage to go
over right by them . . . and she actually hopped in a circle with them
and started clapping her hands, because they were clapping. . . . Hav-
ing another go, that’s persisting isn’t it?
Describing 117
each day. Required entries for children older than babies are (i) medical
information and accidents (these records are also kept in a Record of
Medication and a Carer’s Record of Accidents), (ii) day-to-day informa-
tion: (a) a brief record of food and drink taken during the period of care,
(b) a record of sleep time and duration, if appropriate, and (c) any ac-
tivities or events that happened during the day that would interest
parents/guardians. This last requirement was of interest to the assess-
ment project. Georgie, the home-based caregiver in the case study setting,
wrote up activities each day; the following are excerpts from entries in
their Record Books for Matthew (aged 3 years 10 months at the beginning
of the study) and Jill (aged 2 years 11 months at the beginning of the
study). In this home-based setting, persisting with difficulty was de-
scribed in terms of activities where the goals were clear, and it was also
illustrated by stories about the children that referred to:
● Puzzling about things: asking a lot of questions.
Matthew 16/5
(At the Rose Gardens) he asked me a lot of questions about the Little
Bull statue, ‘how was it made?’, ‘did they put the concrete down first?’,
he was intrigued by it and spent a lot of time at it.
Matthew 20/5
Matthew asked, ‘How old will Dad be when I am 40?’ ‘77’ ‘How old
will Jill be when I’m 40?’ With discussion he worked it out, 39.
Matthew 27/5
Driving out to Riverlea – ‘Why did the dinosaurs die Georgie?’ Com-
pletely out of the blue – Help! I replied ‘It got too cold – there was no
food for them.’ Jill: ‘So they won’t come back again.’ ‘No. Only in
pictures and videos and movies.’
● Puzzling: predicting, figuring it out, using one story or episode as an
analogy for answering an adult’s questions.
Jill 11/8
After lunch cuddled on the couch for some stories – new books from
the library, one about waiting for a baby. ‘My Auntie she’s got a
tummy like that and the baby will be . . . (couldn’t find the right
word).’ So we went through ‘boy’ ‘no’ ‘girl’ ‘no’ ‘You know Georgie.
It’s Lara’s baby but my . . . ’ ‘Oh, cousin,’ I managed. ‘Yes. Yes.’ She is
doing well with her relationships – nearly got ‘Who’s nana’s son and
daughter?‘ Once I said ‘twins,’ she replied: ‘My Dad.’
● Coping with uncertainty: there are a number of stories about Matthew
starting kindergarten, and the settling-in process; the following two
stories are about Jill and her concerns.
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Jill 28/5
Lovely puppet show everyone had a go at leading – just lovely. Jill
wore the mouse mask, amazing for a girl who was very scared of it up
until a month or so ago – would look at it but as soon as it was put on
her anxiety level rose quickly.
Jill 19/5
[Jill puzzles over an uncertain situation when she meets a baby with the
same name] Took baby (8-week-old) Jill her hat we knitted. Our Jill
[nearly three] has been very mystified ‘It’s not me is it?’ ‘Will she get big
like me?’ ‘Does she have a Mum and Dad like me – but not mine are she?’
In the parent cooperative there was some discussion about how to de-
scribe ‘expressing a point of view’ for younger children whose expres-
sion was mostly non-verbal. Facial expressions which convey messages
were acknowledged as relevant. ‘When they have discovered something
their faces just light up, they smile and they, you know, they know. They
look at you as if to say ‘‘oh’’. You know, it’s all in their face.’ Gina: ‘Some
of them (the children that don’t communicate as much) have come out in
the open since last term and I’ve found it really nice. I’ve written a few
stories about them and their speech. . . . I thought well after doing a few
stories on the older children, I’ll try some of the younger ones and I did
two stories on the younger ones . . . And some of their expressions and
the way they express themselves, it is a learning curve.’
In the home-based setting, the description of expressing their ideas
and taking responsibility was often set in imaginary and sociodrama-
tic activity, a feature of the play here of Matthew, Jill and Sarah
(Georgie’s daughter, aged two).
13/5
An amazing session of imaginary play. I just puddled in the sewing
cupboard, no adult was needed. There was cooperation. Moved from one
theme to the next – Doctors, Easter Bunny, Mothers and Fathers, baking,
birthdays, shopping, video watching, all pretend. No one was leader.
27/6
Peter Pan the thread for most of the play – We read Matthew’s Peter
Pan books, flew here and there – dined at a restaurant with Chef P/Pan
and Tinkerbell (S.) and Wendy (J.) and Captain Hook (me) the lucky
eaters – gelato – pizza and cappuccinos – the best in town – then
Captain Hook was admitted to hospital.
29/7
Matthew and Adam (another child) were playing ten pin bowling – Jill
left her baby for me to look after while she went to work. Her work is
watching the bowling. ‘How much do you get paid?’ J.: ‘$7 a minute.’
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Describing 119
erect the new sails in the pirate ships and put up a sign: ‘Everyone is
allowed on the pirate ship.’) The next day the teacher writes: I noticed
today there were fewer episodes of exclusion – and none involving
Davie that I am aware of. Davie played happily on the ship.
Being ready
For Chata and her sister (recent immigrants) the notion that if the
children (‘our people’) fall off the gate they will drown appeared to be
of great significance and the children were working at a complex level
of imagination, developing the idea of making a gate in personal,
unusual and elaborated ways.
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Describing 121
● Persisting with difficulty. Chata had not made a gate before (she had
designed an earlier, more traditional-looking gate, but decided not
to make it); this was not a routine activity, it was self-chosen, spon-
taneous, and unusual.
● Communication and taking responsibility. Three of the children had
frequently worked together, but Jenny was a new member of the
team, and Chata welcomed her and gave her a role.
Being willing
There were two events going on: an imaginative story-line, and a
complex construction.
Being able
● Communication. The teachers were also documenting Chata’s increasing
skill in her second language, as well as in mathematics – in this task, the
measuring and patterning – technology, drawing, sociodramatic play
and story-telling. We have no notes from the observation about the
level of negotiation and group planning during this activity.
Concluding Comments
What these Learning Stories reveal is that the description of critical
features of a dispositional domain will be different in different learning
places or dispositional milieux. This was very evident in the descrip-
tions of ‘taking responsibility’. In the childcare centre looking after the
well-being of others and taking responsibility for the programme were
highly valued features of the programme. In the kindergarten the
teachers were particularly interested in the children sharing ideas and
activities, and in group projects. The parents in the cooperative noted
episodes of cooperative play; and in the home-based setting those
episodes were frequently within elaborate sociodramatic scenarios. One
aspect of both communication and taking responsibility of interest to
the kaiako in the kohanga was the different language genre, or
‘motherese’, that the older children were using as they cared for the
younger ones. In the home-based setting, stories about the wider net-
work of friends and family featured strongly, building a community of
reference that was wider than the home-based setting. The assessment
examples described participation in rather different learning places. At
the same time, the children were doing their own describing, as the
creative and different gate enterprises (many of which were in no way
appropriate for the kindergarten fence) illustrated.
Practitioners were describing learning in credit terms. Children’s
achievements in the five domains of dispositions were described (and
documented) because the staff wanted these episodes to occur fre-
quently enough to become inclinations and assumptions about learn-
ing. On the whole, being ready was foregrounded, but the adults were
also appraising the supporting context as well as funds of knowledge
and skills, as the example of Chata building a party gate indicated.
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Describing 123
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124 Assessment in Early Childhood Settings
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8
Discussing
125
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‘He has more confidence to join in, he makes his own choices.’
‘He still is, he looks for Julie (one of the staff) always for that first
contact. He feels really comfortable with you, eh?’
The staff discussed who were the several staff that Robert liked to
check in with when he arrived. ‘. . . and once he’s touched base with
one of them he’s okay.’ A story was told by a member of staff who in
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Discussing 127
the past felt she had not been able to communicate with Robert, but on
a more recent occasion he ‘chatted away quite happily’. As well as the
action of joining in, involvement for Robert meant making his own
choices, looking for Julie as a safe starting-off point, and widening his
circle of safe adults. This was, implicitly, a discussion of a ‘safe’ en-
vironment for Robert, one in which he felt he could get involved. At
the same meeting a side discussion began about the interest of one of
the two-year-olds: ‘She was funny today, wasn’t she?’ A story was
told, with much laughter, about how at sleep time she wanted to put
her shoes on and off, a new skill.
Another staff member completes the story: ‘She got the cold flannel
for him and she put it on his face and . . .’ A third staff member adds,
‘Yeah, they stopped by the meal table and spoke to me about what
had happened.’ This story of Rosie taking responsibility for looking
after Billy was not written down, but it had now become part of the
shared body of stories about the children at the centre, and the staff’s
shared understanding about ‘taking responsibility’ here.
Discussing 129
(It is for you, it is for you to do it, what are your thoughts? (pause) . . .
It is for you to do it.)
Part way through the making of his vehicle Piki realises that when he
stands it up on its wheel-base, he has stuck the wheels on one side in
the correct position, down the bottom, but that the wheels on the other
side are in the wrong position, on the top. He spends a short time
examining this. He then pulls one set of wheels off from one side,
selects new wheels and re-glues them (firmly, with a glue gun, care-
fully watched by Tahu) so that his vehicle has two sets of wheels
which are positioned correctly. Piki then completes the task and
stands his vehicle up. At this point Tahu acknowledges the amount of
effort that has gone into this Learning Story when he turns to ask
other adults to observe.
One of the other adults: Ae, e rua nga taha.
(Yes, it is two-sided.)
Another adult: Pera i te waka ne?
(Just like a vehicle, isn’t that so?)
Piki then drives his vehicle over to the other end of the carpentry table
where he sets about painting it.
Harry: Well. Alan decided to make a big one but I don’t reckon big as
big as that.
Me: Not as big as Alan’s?
Harry: No. He made one a bigger one than my than my big one.
Me: Right. Did he have any difficulty with that?
Harry: Well he didn’t he didn’t put any ah sides on it. (pause)
Perhaps he forgot.
Me: Perhaps he forgot.
Harry: Must of forgot . . .
(Harry draws Alan’s gate to illustrate, then draws some sides to it.)
Me: Right. So you’re using the ruler down the side to put the sides
on. If you built it what would you do first? Would you do the
crisscross parts first?
Harry: Well um well I make well I would, well, when I did that
(gestures to a gate that he made)
Me: Yes, the other one.
Harry: When I did that one (M: Yes) I ah I did the sides first.
Me: Oh, did you. Yes. And was, do you think that was the best
way?
Harry: It was the best way. Well, it wasn’t the hardest well it wasn’t
the hardest bit but the other bit was the hardest (M: Mmhm)
When I did the nailing.
Me: The nailing was the hardest part. Mm. Mm.
On another occasion, Harry drew his second design for a gate, with a
curved top. It included a catch, a diagonal bracing board, and two
hinges. He made this second gate at home, bringing it to the kinder-
garten to try it in the gap in the fence. He described the difficulty of
putting the hinges on, and said that if he made another one he ‘could
make a little one and do it today’ (the other gate took several days),
and ‘I’d decide to put a flat bit like this’ (points to a flat-topped gate) ‘a
bit like Sean’s other one . . . the one that he did first’. A further plan is
drawn, this time a plan for a wire model. He begins a wire model, but
can’t figure out how to include the squiggles in the plan: ‘I’m fed up.
I’ll finish it tomorrow.’ He does.
Seeking children’s perspectives on their learning was particularly
apparent when children dictated assessments. Harry and Alan, for
instance, had dictated annotation to the photos and designs in their
portfolios (see Alan’s comments in Chapter 9). In the home-based
programme, Jill one day dictated the day’s childcare events for her
Record Book, highlighting the events as she saw them:
The day according to Jill.
[dictated to mother]
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Discussing 131
12/6
We went to the gym. We played there. Got some balloons – put them
up (she shows me). Threw them up (waving arms above head) hitting
and Rabbits’ dance, balloon for tail. Georgie blew my balloon up at the
gym.
We did lots and lots and lots and lots . . . (the mother has written dots
in here to indicate more ‘lots and lots’) before we went out.
We went to Chartwell [shopping centre] to get some milk. Matthew
and me were being sensible but Sarah, Sarah was being like a silly little
person and her Mum was getting upset. Matthew and me – we’re big
sensible people.
We played Teddy Bear games at Georgie’s.
[Response from Georgie in the book next day: Not a bad summary.]
Jill has described four events here: one episode at the gym, one at
home (‘We did lots and lots and lots’), a third at the shopping centre,
and a fourth back at Georgie’s (‘We played Teddy Bear games’). The
third story was particularly intriguing. The topic is ‘Matthew and me
being sensible and grown-up’ in comparison with Sarah (Georgie’s
two-year-old daughter) being ‘silly’ and ‘little’. Georgie is referred to
here as ‘her Mum’ whereas in the other stories she is ‘Georgie’, incor-
porating into her story new knowledge that had come up in conversa-
tion in the van on the previous day when Matthew had commented
‘You’ve got two names, Georgie and Mum’ and they had chatted
about sons, grandsons, daughters. Finally, Jill has commented that the
adult was ‘getting upset’ rather than ‘getting cross’, revealing the
capacity that Judy Dunn’s research has described of a very young
child (Jill was not quite three years old when she dictated this story) to
take another’s point of view in familiar circumstances. It cannot be
discounted that this ability has been developed by the Record Book,
i.e. by the documentation itself, which often commented not only on
the children’s feelings but also on the adult’s (in one entry Georgie
mentions that the gym teacher Mary is ‘sad’ that they cannot keep
going). The comment by Katherine Nelson about the role of social
sharing of events in cognitive and language development (‘it is only in
the light of social sharing that both the enduring form of narrative
organization, and the perceived value to self and others become ap-
parent’), quoted in Chapter 2, would support such a conclusion. Seek-
ing children’s perspectives about their learning, making the goals
clear, can run the risk of children becoming self-conscious: that per-
sisting with difficulty, for instance, can become a ‘performance’ goal
(rather than one in which motivation is intrinsic). For Jill, however, the
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Discussing 133
confirm for me that staff are thinking about holistic learning situations,
and that there are programmes in place to monitor my son’s progress.
They are also a good catalyst for conferencing on the child’s progress
between parents and staff. I like them. I know they are time-consuming
but I think they are very important and worthwhile.
Another parent commented:
Highlighting his strengths and interests to me has allowed me to let him
be more independent at home. Allows more conversation at home about
what’s been happening. Being able to extend at home on what has been
happening at the centre. Gives us a sense that we ‘belong’ here.
The assessment was establishing the wider community of centre and
family, even though most of these parents worked full time and had
little time to stop for discussion at the beginning or the end of the day.
At the parent cooperative, several of the parents commented that
they enjoyed reading other people’s stories about their child. Greta,
although she wanted to emphasise her view that adults should not
intervene in children’s development, was valuing the progress her
daughter was making in her capacity to discuss things with other
adults:
Greta: I think you can actually see what your child’s been doing and
how they’re interacting with others. . . . I think, from a parent’s
perspective it’s really good because . . . you feel it’s sort of
helping the children, not really developing the children, but,
just sort of working with them in their play. . . . It’s quite inter-
esting. I’ve sort of seen, even in the last term how much Lea
(her daughter)’s progressed in discussing things with other
parents, which is good.
Another parent, Gina, is not specific but she appears to have a re-
newed respect for her daughter’s learning:
Gina: I honestly thought that Lou (her daughter) had outgrown the
centre. Um, when I read some of the stories that had been done
about her I found out that she is actually learning quite a bit
more than I had actually thought.
Rae enjoys the Learning Stories because they value what she values:
Rae: I enjoy it as a parent, reading Learning Stories about my own
child. I know my child, but don’t know how others see her. As a
mother I enjoy reading how other parents see my child. My son
at school gets school reports that are achievement orientated,
but if I can read a Learning Story about how my three-year-old
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Discussing 135
21/7 Note from Jill’s mother. J. is a bit reluctant to share her bike so I
hope this doesn’t cause more problems than it solves.
22/7 Note from G. Thanks for the lovely bike. They all had a quick
ride before kindergarten. Such lovely sharing Jill.
11/8 [Jill’s book] Note from mother. Land agents due tomorrow. Jill
has started carrying her purse (with money) around in case we
see a nice house for us to buy. She was getting upset that some-
one else may sleep in her bedroom. Note from Georgie: Interest-
ing. Jill only talks about the Lovely Old Troll (Jill’s nickname for
her grandfather) in nana’s new house. Even when I subtly ques-
tioned her today, no mention about her house – changed the
subject in fact. Thanks for the info. We can chat with her and help
her through the sale.
The Record Book was an affectionate and often funny record of a
child’s two families working and discussing together to provide early
childhood care and education, to celebrate achievements and
milestones, and to encourage learning. The discussing was very much
part of that care and education.
Concluding Comments
This chapter has highlighted the Learning Story process of staff, chil-
dren and families discussing learning together. This social sharing
enriched educators’ understanding of learning, of learning disposi-
tions, and of their own interactions with the children. My field notes
after attending one of the childcare staff meetings recorded that:
It is difficult to do justice to the quality and warmth of these discus-
sions. These staff arrived at evening staff meetings, often very tired
after a day with young children. Then they began to review and plan
with the children’s Learning Stories, amusing anecdotes were told to
supplement the written stories, side stories were shared, and the ex-
changes became lively, funny and affectionate. Negative stories were
also told, and positive interpretations often given to them by others.
The discussing was collaboratively establishing a learning place in
which taking an interest, being involved, persisting with difficulty,
expressing your ideas and feelings, and taking responsibility were key
features, uniquely defined for this setting. This chapter also outlined
how children were finding out what learning is valued here, and the
ways in which their perspectives were being sought. The family was
getting to know much more about what their child was learning, and
in the home-based setting and the parent cooperative they were
having a say in this. In other settings, the staff were beginning to
puzzle over how families could be more involved in the assessment
process. In all the settings, families were enthusiastically reading, and
often contributing to, Learning Stories about their children.
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9
Documenting
Documenting, the third of the four Ds, is the writing down or record-
ing in some way of learning and assessments. It may include anno-
tated collections of the children’s work. This chapter will argue that
attention paid to the documenting of Learning Stories sharpens the
focus on important features of the children’s learning, and provides a
powerful support for the authentic assessment of that learning. The
documentation provides exemplars for practitioners refining their as-
sessment formats and constructs. A significant issue for practitioners
is that documenting takes time, and the time it takes will be balanced
against the perceived educational value. This chapter includes some of
the practitioners’ responses to this issue, noting that when document-
ing is enjoyable, integrated into everyday practice, useful in contribut-
ing to children’s learning and in providing feedback for families, then
the time required is seen as worthwhile.
When assessments are documented, they become not only public,
but permanent, and a number of different audiences now have access
to them. There are four potentially different audiences: the children,
the practitioners, the family and community agencies. Assessments
collected for one audience may be interpreted or judged by another,
while the secondary interpreters may not have access to the contextual
information or discussion that accompanied the original assessment.
Print has a status that cannot easily be altered by discussion. Further-
more, assessments may be accessible to others well beyond their use-
by date. At the family and community level, school assessment has
137
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Documenting 139
Table 9.1. Assessment for four audiences: why document and why not
document.
Documenting 141
which Learning Stories were introduced well after the case study
settings, a story about Maddie and Akira is a great favourite. Here it is
(abridged). It was accompanied by photographs.
Maddie spied an orange ‘egg’ on top of the roof of an outdoor hut at
the kindergarten. She rushed off to tell the teacher. She was desperate
to get the egg down from the roof. Akira overheard the conversation
and joined in, trying to get the egg down from the roof. First they tried
to jump and reach it. No luck. Then they climbed onto the wooden seat
and tried. The egg was out of reach. Other children came and gave
them lots of ideas. Maddie and Akira decided to get a ladder – the egg
was still out of reach. More discussion, and they tried the longest plank
with cleats on. Again, much discussion and an unsuccessful attempt.
At mat time Maddie explained to the children exactly the processes
they had gone through to try to rescue the egg. She was passionate
about her subject.
The next day, Akira arrived early and successfully managed to get the
‘egg’ down (the story does not tell how). The ‘egg’ turned out to be an
orange plastic ladle. When Maddie arrived Akira rushed up to her and
proclaimed his success. Maddie absolutely refused to believe it was a
ladle. She declared that the egg had hatched and the bird had flown
away.
As time goes by, it has become an open question as to whether it was
really a large orange egg or a plastic ladle, and if the former, what
kind of a bird would have hatched from it.
In the kindergarten, the home-based setting and the Maori language
centre case study settings the documentation had also become part of
the learner-in-action. At the Maori language centre many photographs
were taken, to be annotated with short stories and turned into books
about each child. The photographs were also mounted on the wall.
They provided a language resource, something for the children to talk
about, in a setting in which communicating with others in Maori was a
primary aim. Similarly, the kindergarten mounted displays of Learn-
ing Stories on the wall: children used them to discuss other children’s
and their own work, and to get ideas for new constructions. Being
involved, planning, tackling and persisting with difficulty, and work-
ing together were emphasised. These wall displays of the children’s
work were also a way of outlining the programme for families as they
came in to drop off and pick up their children. One of the teachers
commented:
I often see them (the parents) looking at the photos . . . I look up and I
think, ooh, that’s good. And I think they think it’s not just play. Do you
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Documenting 143
know what I mean? I think they (the parents) feel that they’re (the
children) actually doing something and learning something. . . . Some
of the children, I. and P., they’ve come in and made a point of showing
their parents what they’ve made.
The children often asked if they could take the photocopy home rather
than the original. At a team meeting one of the teachers said:
Today, I wanted to keep Harry’s plan, but he wanted to take it home.
So I said OK we’ll photocopy it so if you come with me I’ll show you,
so he came and saw it all happening. We had to do two copies because
we had to join it up, and then I asked him if he could join it up and he
did and I said I’ll keep this copy and you can take this one home. And
he said after all of that ‘no, I want the photocopy.’ (Laughter)
28/8 Photo of Alan’s gate in the nature corner. Comment: Alan tried
his gate in the gap in the fence and decided that his gate won’t
‘reach from the top of the fence to the ground’. He is thinking
about making a big one ‘the same size as the fence’. He attached
it to a post in the nature corner, carefully measuring the gate
post first and then sawing it smaller. Bev helped him.
29/8 Photocopy of second plan, with measurements. Comment:
‘Alan has measured the gap in the fence to get the right size for
his gate.’
2/9 Note: Alan made a cardboard gate model. He worked quietly
and independently although there were children all around
him. One of the problems was getting the cardboard strips the
right length. Another was making and attaching the four
hinges.
15/10 Final plan for gate, with measurement. Comment: Alan: ‘The
lines on the gate go down. You need three hinges. Fence diago-
nally. There is a lock. The numbers on the top show one metre
wide. It’s the same high as the fence.’
15/10 Plan for builder with the three hinges and the lock.
Before the project, the teachers had focused their attention on ‘need’:
they shifted this focus to Learning Stories about interest, involvement,
challenge (‘puzzlement’) and collaboration. Because the project often
included drawing, the children were included in the documenting.
Documenting 145
Documenting 147
Questions:
How might we encourage this interest, ability, strategy, disposition,
story to
● Be more complex.
● Appear in different areas or activities in the programme.
Documenting 149
Documenting 151
Documenting 153
Figure 9.9 Darryn’s mother has taken a photograph (not included here)
of Darryn standing beside the letterbox he made at the early childhood
centre. It was set up at the end of the driveway beside the family’s
letterbox. She adds some comments about it.
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Documenting 155
Figure 9.8. The Child’s Voice: Marshall tells Glenys about the puzzle
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Documenting 157
Concluding Comments
When the practitioners were developing educational reasons for docu-
menting, ways in which documenting could become an integral part
of the learner-in-action, and diverse assessment formats, they were
shifting their model of assessment from one in which assessment sits
outside learning (Figure 9.10a) to one in which assessment is integral
to the enhancement of learning (Figure 9.10b). In Figure 9.10a, assess-
ment happens after an episode of learning and teaching. In Figure
9.10b, on the other hand, assessment is (as David Pratt says at the
beginning of this chapter) ‘woven into the fabric of classroom activity
and interaction’.
curriculum development
assessment
This chapter has illustrated the value for the practitioners of docu-
menting Learning Stories. The documentation had become integral to
the wider process whereby practitioners got to know the children,
planned for their learning, and established a learning community with
shared values. Children were included as active participants, and the
documenting also provided feedback for families about their chil-
dren’s well-being and learning. This chapter has outlined some of the
ways in which assessment formats have been changed to incorporate
‘What next?’ The next chapter considers more fully that fourth process
of assessment: deciding what to do next.
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10
Deciding
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Deciding 159
Deciding 161
The action moves along the sequence in the Learning Story framework
The Learning Stories lengthen. Given a particular interest, the child’s
action moves on to the next step in the learning story sequence.
Rosie’s sociodramatic play scripts cover all five of the ‘steps’ in the
Learning Story framework: she is taking an interest, being involved,
persevering with difficulty, communicating her ideas and taking on
another’s point of view. There are, however, some stories in which she
is taking responsibility in this place, assisting the victims of (scary?)
aggression. One of them was me: when I visited the centre and Bruce
hit me with a piece of jigsaw, Rosie became the teacher, instructing me
to say ‘Don’t do that Bruce. I don’t like it.’ In Chapter 8 the staff told a
story about Rosie taking responsibility for Billy after he had appar-
ently been hurt by another child. ‘She got the cold flannel for him and
she put it on his face . . .’ She frequently requested the ‘scary’ Bear
Hunt chant as part of the programme.
Rosie: deciding
How were the staff deciding what to do next for Rosie? In this case, a
key strategy was to establish a dispositional milieu and to ensure, by
assessment, that Rosie was participating. The staff allowed time for
interests in sociodramatic play to develop, for story-lines to be played
out and scripts established. They introduced stories that might en-
courage role play (although Beauty and the Beast I think came from
home). They provided resources and dress-ups, and occasionally they
would take these outside to vary the circumstances and to encourage
new players who appeared to be more comfortable with outside play.
The adults modelled giving explanations and negotiating (with the
children and with each other); they entered the play when they
thought it was appropriate and this gave value to imaginative play;
they asked questions and made suggestions to make it more complex;
they wrote stories about Rosie’s participation.
Hugo: deciding
During this period, a number of activities were planned by the
teachers.
(i) For the whole group: painting and teaching the children sign
language at group time, a feature of the many communication
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Deciding 163
Deciding in Responding
Deciding what to do next is not always documented. Indeed, the
processes of describing, discussing and deciding what to do next are
usually spontaneous and informal. In the under-twos programme at
the childcare centre, for instance, I had observed one of the staff,
Jacky, interacting with four children and recorded her responses. In
the first five minutes she made the following comments:
(1) (T. screams when D. approaches his post box) Oh, no
screaming.
(2 & 3) (C. at the top of the slide, looking uncertain) Are you going
to go down the slide C.? (asked twice)
(4) (C. slides down. Looks at Jacky) Oh, well done. Going to go
back the other way?
(5) Here’s a few more, T. (gives T. some more pieces for the post
box)
(6) (D. tries to lift a large box) Shall we lift that up and see
what’s under it? (She helps) Didah! Nothing.
(7) (D. claps his hands) Yeah: pakipaki! (‘clapping’)
(8) (D. approaches T., takes a post box piece. T. squeals) Using
your words.
(9) (D. makes a sound in greeting to Helen who had just ar-
rived) That’s Helen.
(10) (Adult comes in, and T. tries to say her name) That’s Jodie.
(11) (D. climbing up to the slide) Shall I help you? (He shakes his
head in reply)
(12) (C. sings) Happy birthday to you. Is that what you’re sing-
ing C.?
(13) (D. at the top of the slide. Looks at Jacky) Are you going to
go down there D.?
Deciding 165
Deciding 167
Up until early September their records indicated that the boys were
much more involved than the girls; in particular the boys were edging
the girls out of the carpentry equipment. They decided to take the
children on short walks near the kindergarten to draw and discuss
gates, including girls (and boys) who had not been involved in the
project so far. They also provided more rulers and measuring tapes,
and specifically encouraged the girls to persevere when the boys ques-
tioned their right to belong in the carpentry area. By mid-September,
30 children (out of the 44 on the roll, 25 boys and 19 girls) had particip-
ated in the project: 17 boys and 13 girls. The teachers estimated that
nine out of ten of the older, four-and-a-half-year-olds, were involved.
The following notes come from the teachers’ journal and from notes
taken by the researcher during weekly discussions:
gone wrong. Children work on their own thing and talk about it with
you. [Team meeting 12/9]
At this meeting the teachers expressed disappointment that the chil-
dren’s level of questioning did not appear to have increased. When we
discussed whether persevering with difficulty had to include asking
questions, the teachers decided that they were interested in evidence
of ‘puzzlement’, and this might not necessarily be reflected in asking
questions verbally. At the same time, when they were alert to docu-
menting questions they heard more of them:
We thought at the beginning that maybe that was something that we
were doing wrong [asking too many questions]. The kids weren’t able
to ask their own questions. We were asking too many questions, but
we don’t feel that now. Well now I think that, the other day I wrote
some down and they were lovely puzzling questions. [Team meeting
12/9]
At the beginning of the project the research team (researcher and
teachers) had decided that the gate project had the capacity to raise the
following questions:
Fitting a door/gate to a doorway/gateway (will it fit?)
Making it swing (will it swing? how are gates hinged?)
Designing it to fit its purpose (will it do? be strong? keep children out?)
Latching it firmly (will it hold? how are gates latched?)
The purpose of gates (why are gates designed the way they are?)
In mid-September the teachers listed the difficulties found and tackled
so far:
Translating plans into gates.
The rectangular carpenters’ pencils provided a problem: they couldn’t
be sharpened in the usual way. (Tommy 13/8: ‘You need to get a
rectangle pencil sharpener.’)
The triangular wood provided a problem: difficult to hammer nails
into it.
Designing and attaching hinges.
Joining (with nails or tape).
Planning ahead: measuring the nail in relation to the depth of the
wood.
In May the next year, after a second project, they listed the following
difficult skills:
Drawing a plan and thinking about it.
Adding extra pieces on and labelling them (verbally).
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Deciding 169
Many children involved the tools that the teachers had introduced for
the making of gates in a range of enterprises. Mel made an airport, put
the blocks flat on the ground and then checked with the spirit level:
‘It’s level Annette’ he tells the teacher. The introduction of clay inter-
ested but did not involve the children; but the introduction of fine
wire involved a number of the children for sustained periods, making
intricate designs for models of wrought iron gates, and extending this
to making jewellery and designs. Two-dimensional wire work
photocopied particularly well, and children’s work could be accu-
rately recorded for their portfolios. The children devised a number of
different kinds of gates: a railway gate, an electrified gate, a party gate.
Wall displays were planned to encourage and illustrate the value of
discussion. One photo of a child and teacher discussing a plan has the
comment:
Here Sue (the teacher) is discussing with Daisy her plan that she has
drawn. Discussions are an important process in our project so children
can convey their ideas and feelings and adults can facilitate children’s
learning, sharing knowledge.
Deciding 171
Planning for co-construction of ideas and enterprises
Although the teachers had planned a project that would encourage the
children to collaborate on joint enterprises, it was the co-construction
of ideas that characterised the activities that emerged from this project,
although four girls did collaborate on the ‘party gate’ (an episode
described in Chapter 7). The children were, however, listening and
watching each other, discussing each other’s ideas (as Harry did when
he considered, and rejected, Alan’s gate as a possible model to copy),
and sometimes helping each other. A Learning Story in Tommy’s
portfolio:
‘I could make some wings (for a jointly constructed aeroplane with
Mel).’ ‘I’ll cut it for you’ (helping a friend). ‘How’s it going?’ asks
Tommy. ‘I’ll show how much times you have to do it.’ ‘Hey, I’ve got an
idea.’ ‘I’ll cut a long piece out. I need this too, hold that piece please.’
‘It’s got to be bigger.’ ‘We made it together, we just cut it together.’
Another child: ‘We made the same ones.’ Tommy: ‘It’s not the same. It
doesn’t matter. Hey, we could make one for Tim eh?’
Natalie had watched Alan making his gate with its crisscross design
and then made her own, using the same design. She had the same
fascination for measuring as Alan and for numbers (she enjoyed writ-
ing her phone number, but commented to the teacher that she was
having trouble with the 2s). One of her Learning Stories included a
photograph of her measuring her gate with a measuring tape, with the
comment added ‘Natalie is measuring the width of the gate to make
sure the opposite sides are the same length.’ Another Story included
her final plan: she used a ruler and added numbers (mostly 5s and 7s).
As the kindergarten teachers planned for individual children and
the programme, they were developing a viewpoint about a good pro-
ject. It should be:
● interesting and authentic: children will take an interest, the project
will make sense, make connections with their lives and those of
their community;
● transparent: the intention or meaning of activities associated with
the project are readily apparent, children will be able to become
deeply involved, at their own level of complexity, over long periods
of time;
● challenging: children will be encouraged to engage and persist with
challenge, difficulty, uncertainty and puzzlement; in long-term pro-
jects, children will become familiar with the kinds of problems and
their possible solutions, will return to problems of previous days;
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Deciding 173
room next week and they talked about him, passed around four of his
stories. . . . Jules reminded them that they were to ‘build on his
strengths’. They talked about the way he likes to go into small spaces.
. . . Fern described how he was trying to unscrew the table legs when
she wanted him to eat lunch, so she played a game to get him to put his
hands on the table, then she realised he was trying to unscrew the
wing nuts with his feet! (Laughter) Jodie pointed out that persistence
with difficulty was certainly a characteristic. It was interesting how the
discussion see-sawed from negative to positive. . . . Often the adults
put themselves in Joseph’s place. It was such a rich mixture of care,
sharp analysis, humour, anecdote, exasperation – and a greater under-
standing came from the discussion.
I asked one of the over-twos staff:
The discussion, to what extent do you reckon it helped, particularly
those of you who weren’t in the baby room, helped you to know how
to react with Joseph?
Reply: It was really good. It was really good knowing, so that we could
prepare our environment for it (the transition) . . . we’re learning strat-
egies to communicate with Joseph.
At the next staff meeting, the under-twos staff wanted to discuss how
Joseph had managed when he had joined the older children’s pro-
gramme in the previous two weeks. The staff discussed the way
Joseph had coped with the larger group, and talked about how they
would like to have more spaces for children to have quiet moments to
themselves. They reviewed Joseph’s progress at settling in to the big-
ger room, and comments were made about how Joseph is ‘just so big
and you expect more’, and has difficulty with taking problems ‘a step
at a time’. Someone added that Joseph loves water. They talked to and
fro on the topic, sharing anecdotes, and concluding that trusting the
new environment, being able to go back to the under-twos room for a
cuddle with staff there, and finding quiet moments and places will
assist with the transition and help Joseph to be interested and in-
volved in the over-twos programme.
Concluding Comments
Using the Learning Stories approach to formative assessment, practi-
tioners were deciding what to do next, and planning, in rich and
complex ways: sometimes planning for learning dispositions, some-
times planning for a learning place, usually working towards both of
these aims at the same time in the spirit of the learner as a learner-in-
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11
The Learning Story Journey
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Fourthly, returning to the key idea that learning is sited within re-
ciprocal relationships, participation repertoires will include children
taking a critical approach to the way the centre sets itself up as a
learning place. Roy Nash, writing about Bourdieu’s approach, de-
scribed habitus as a grammar. He said that:
habitus is conceived as a grammar making possible the generation of
new forms of expression which may alter the structure of the grammar
itself (much as speech made possible by grammar itself transforms
grammar) and thus provides the possibility of cultural change. (1993,
p. 27)
When the same group of practitioners were asked for Difficulties Ex-
perienced, the following comments were made:
‘Untrained staff do not have the foundation to build on. Important to
provide training and support for all staff members.’
‘The need to explain dispositions.’
‘Time to build up confidence with new assessment system.’
‘Doesn’t follow steps necessarily.’
‘Changing systems – staff have invested enormous energy in existing
systems, often a dramatic change from deficit (gaps) to credit based.’
It appears that the framework has not been so valuable for untrained
practitioners, especially if they have not been part of workshops, and
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that staff need time, energy and commitment to change from one
system to another. The Learning Stories were easy to write about
outgoing, confident children; a letter from the supervisor in a child-
care centre included the comment:
We are aware how easy it is to do the L/Stories on children like J. and
N. However, we are aware that the more valuable L/Stories will be
those that we collect on our quieter, less confident children. We’ve
decided to make a conscious effort to view these children consistently.
For these parents, the Learning Stories were valuable for a number of
reasons. One major reason was to do with the outcomes they record:
adjustment in a learning environment, children’s dialogue and skills,
achievement and progress, giving ‘play’ a new perspective. A second
reason appears to be the feeling of belonging to the centre community
that it gave to the families, especially to those members of the family
who were seldom able to visit the centre. These comments are similar
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to the parents’ comments from the case study childcare centre, in-
cluded in Chapter 9.
Over and above the value for educators and families, however, is
the view that participation repertoires are valuable for the children
now and in the future. The Learning Story framework argues that by
laying the foundations for participation (interest, involvement, persis-
tence, communication and responsibility) in the early years we are
setting up structures for lifelong learning. The research cited in Chap-
ter 2 supported this position. In similar critical mode, Iram Siraj-
Blatchford maintained that:
by ‘laying the foundations’ for racial equality in the early years we are
making a major investment for future racial harmony and for the de-
velopment of a confident and well-informed citizenship. We tend to
think only of bigger people as citizens or those worthy of teaching
important concepts such as justice and equality, yet it is during the early
years that the foundations for these attitudes are laid. (1994, pp. xiii–ix)
And Bronwyn Davies (1989, pp. x–xi) contended that her analysis of
the dualistic gender order experienced by preschool children ‘opened
up the possibility for programs of change that may genuinely work’.
Assessment
How can the Learning Story approach assess early childhood out-
comes in ways that promote and protect learning? Assessment has
been the theme of the second half of the book, which explored issues
about assessing complex and elusive outcomes. David Perkins, Eileen
Jay and Shari Tishman have commented:
Yes, dispositions inevitably include reference to things that are genu-
inely hard to pin down: motivations, affect, sensitivities, values and the
like. But these factors exert no less of an influence on behavior simply
because they are hard to define, and we have argued that they must
figure prominently in a full account of good thinking (and learning, and
assessment – my addition). (1993, p. 18)
If, as Pamela Moss (1994, p. 6) suggests, ‘what isn’t assessed tends to
disappear from the curriculum’, then we have to find a way to assess
educational outcomes that we value. Otherwise, outcomes that can be
easily measured will take their place. As I commented in Chapter 1,
assessment of things that are easy to pin down do not have a proxy for
assessment of complex accumulations of outcome like learning
dispositions. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 developed nine guidelines for the
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best illustrated by Susan Isaacs (1932) and Ann Stallibrass (1974), com-
ing from an Eriksonian or psychoanalytic theoretical framework: be-
haviour was interpreted in terms of individual emotion, a tradition
continued in the United States by Vivian Gussin Paley. The next phase
of early childhood observational research in the 1970s and 1980s in the
United Kingdom had a more cognitive focus: the Oxfordshire studies
of children in English nurseries, notably by Kathy Sylva and David
Wood (Sylva, Roy and Painter, 1980; Wood, McMahon and Crans-
toun, 1980), and the Barbara Tizard and Martin Hughes (1984) study
of working class and middle class girls at home and at nursery school
(later given a different reading by Valerie Walkerdine and Helen Lu-
cey in 1989). Studies in the 1980s and early 1990s, frequently American
or Australian, were more likely to be about action or activity, located
within specific cultural and historical practices and time. Examples
include William Corsaro (1985), Sally Lubeck (1985), David Fernie
(1988; Fernie et al., 1993), Rebecca Kantor (1988), Marianne Bloch and
Anthony Pellegrini (1989), Bronwyn Davies (1989) and J. Amos Hatch
(1995). None of these studies specifically investigated the process
whereby children are constituted and constitute themselves as
learners, although Fernie and Kantor and others have focused on the
process of ‘becoming a student’. More recently, Susan Hill and Bar-
bara Comber and their colleagues, Ann Haas Dyson, Ann Filer, An-
drew Pollard, Harry Torrance and John Pryor, and others, have used
case studies and narrative approaches to study children learning to be
pupils, transitions from early childhood to school and from one class-
room to another, and the role of assessment in the process. All of these
stories about children in real classrooms and early childhood settings
have informed and guided the content of this book.
Narrative frameworks, however, especially in the context of assess-
ment, raise questions about validity. The fact that multiple readings or
interpretations are possible raises the major question in interpretive
studies, and that is ‘how is the data accountable’? In ‘positivist’ and
‘post-positivist’ psychometric methods of assessment, conventional
criteria of rigour are imposed on the collected data: validity, reliability
and objectivity. One looks to the coding (for instance) for consistency
across places and observers, and to the role of the task and the ob-
server for neutrality. One seeks appropriate levels of probability in the
statistics. In interpretive approaches, however, the local and cultural
variables are central to the study, and the assessing teacher is part of
those local influences. Questions of accountability and generalisability
become serious issues. Measures of validity and reliability are re-
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Being clear about the connection between the learner and the
environment
The relationship between the person being assessed and the other
people and the activities in the environment are key features of the
assessment. The meeting in which childcare staff discussed Joseph’s
Learning Stories and planned for his transition to the over-twos pro-
gramme was an example. Joseph was seen as a learner-in-relationship,
and the staff were ensuring that their understanding of the relation-
ships that had been working well in one place would contribute to the
planning for relationships in another.
Other audiences, with less power (colleagues and children), were also
important to the practitioners. Finding time as a staff team to work
together, to share ideas, was described by practitioners as ‘critical’;
having no staff meeting time, staff changes and untrained staff were
described as difficulties. Consulting with the children was not always
easy when the ratios were high, although the case study kindergarten
(with 44 children and three teachers) had managed this by their pro-
cess of using a polaroid camera and seeking comments on photo-
graphs and plans. Wall displays of Stories, photographs and drawings
provided ready-to-hand opportunities for discussion.
Concluding comments
The original Project for Assessing Children’s Experiences contributed
only a part of the Learning Story story. This book weaves the work of
the project with an analysis of children’s learning that underpins a
narrative approach, and includes other research. It has been informed
by the writers who have gone before and by the many practitioners
and professional development facilitators who have now picked up
the Learning Story approach to assessment and made it their own.
When I asked one early childhood staff team whether they had made
any changes to the Learning Story process one of them replied: ‘Well,
we live a Learning Story here’ and they explained that they take on an
aspect of practice that interests them, get involved with investigating
it, persist with the difficulties, discuss it together, and then take joint
responsibility to make changes. They had been exploring a number of
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different ways to ‘house’ the Learning Stories, and they had de-
veloped a system of robust folders with the children’s name down the
spine, filed in a bookcase in the centre. After a discussion between one
of the staff and one of the children about her achievements in the
outside play area, the child went inside and looked through her
folder, reporting back that there was no story about her ability to
climb to the top of the ‘cargo’ net, an achievement of a few days earlier
that she had greatly valued. They wrote one together. These lively
records of learning, enhanced by collaborative describing, document-
ing, discussing and deciding, have continued to enrich my view of
learning outcomes in early childhood. Translating them into assess-
ments stretches our imaginative and practical powers to the limit.
Work on formative assessment in early childhood settings is in its
infancy. I hope that the ideas, examples, guidelines and processes
outlined here will provide a platform for further dialogue and
development.
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Index
Introductory Note.
Alphabetical arrangement is word-by-word.
Added to a page number ‘f’ denotes a figure or illustration.
198
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Index 199
Index 201