ABSTRACT
The British infant school caters for classes of 30 children in the age range five to eight years, although recently large numbers of four-year-olds have been taken on roll. The philosophy or at least rhetoric of the infant school in Britain has been dominated for fifty years by child-centred theorists. There is very little evidence on how children process classroom experience, and in particular on how they learn large bodies of curriculum knowledge. Work in the modem British infant school is increasingly structured by commercial schemes. Praise is a very public element of the assessment system and pupils pay close attention to it because it shows clearly how to please the teacher. Clear instructions and copious praise are considered to be important professional skills of teachers. The quality of their experience is not being filtered through a series of social and managerial processes unrelated to the main aims of teaching and learning in the infant classroom.
