ABSTRACT
‘At the heart of the educational process lies the child’. This observation from the Plowden Report (CACE 1967) remains as true at the time of writing in 2007 as it was in 1967. Since 1967, however, there has been an explosion of research on how children of primary age develop, think and learn. Some of this research contradicts basic conclusions from the Plowden Report. For example, it is no longer widely believed that there are different developmental stages in learning to think (Piaget’s theory, CACE 1967: 50). Similarly, it is not believed that a child cannot be taught until she/he is cognitively ‘ready’ (CACE 1967: 75). Rather, it is important to assess how far a child can go under the guidance of a teacher (the ‘zone of proximal development’, Vygotsky 1978).
