ABSTRACT
Our current cultural understanding of this pedagogical approach recognises that it makes children’s learning visible and encourages them to become central to their own learning.
In real terms, this means that the child is actively involved in making decisions about which learning processes he/she engages with. On the basis of this, the educators and the child (children) through a collaborative process negotiate the context for learning together. This collaborative relationship between educators and children helps the child to feel confident in sharing their profound interests with the educators and their families in the early years setting. Having such information allows educators and children to coconstruct a learning environment which will support and develop these interests across the curriculum. In this way, educators, over time, will free themselves from previously held practices where only they made decisions about what, where and how children learned.
