ABSTRACT
As a way of coming to understand children’s learning, close observation has an honourable history. What we know today about Susan Isaacs’ experimental school, the Malting House, is largely based on the detailed observation records she and her colleagues kept. In Chapter 2 , I described how the working environment of the school contributed to the scope and variety of the teachers’ observations. But these observations of daily life, the adventurous, imaginative, scientifi c and spontaneous life of the children in the school, were more than isolated anecdotes. They were also the starting point for an exploration of the processes of cognition. First Isaacs notes the nature of the children’s thinking: ‘active and prehensile . . . It moves continuously on, developing and growing, as their practical and social situations change and develop from moment to moment’ (Isaacs 1930, p.49). Within this continuous activity, she goes on to distinguish different classes of behaviour, which she presents as a scheme by which we may understand children’s cognitive growth. For example, she puts forward a scheme to describe the development of the basic concepts of biology: change, growth, life and death. The scheme is supported by a wealth of evidence, such as the following observation notes:
18.6.25: The children let the rabbit out to run about the garden for the fi rst time, to their great delight. They followed him about, stroked him, and talked about his fur, his shape and his ways.
