ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to honour work across different disciplines in order to unwrap some of the mystery surrounding apparently effective and affective teaching and learning. It is centred upon the belief that effectiveness is created by an emphasis upon strong interpersonal acts between teacher and learner, communicative acts which, while often initiated by learners (similar to the way that babies lead imitative acts, see Trevarthan’s research 1998), are successfully developed by special adults. Such adults, including teachers, as I claim in this study, appear to be intuitive (Claxton 2000). Human interactions and conversational opportunities have been seen as
central to children’s well-being and learning (McLean 1991). From the work of developmental scientists, neuroscience, sociology and other disciplines, strong arguments have combined to promote the significance of healthy and positive interactions in the early years of learning. Both Vygotsky (1978) and later Bruner (1986) emphasised the social nature of learning and the significance of the company of more knowledgeable others in creating a climate for learning and progression. Greenfield (2000) claims that conversation, regardless of material resources, matters to brain development and growth. Stated simply, interactions with people help to shape the brain. The research examining how babies think, helps to confirm that ‘babies are especially tuned to people’ and that the ‘flirtatious dialogues’ in which they engage with people they love result in them learning quickly (Gopnik et al. 1999: 95). Babies seem to come into the world already designed to learn from the people around them. From the work of international research, then, the weight of evidence from
across disciplinary fields is growing and is persuasive. Alongside this knowledge, it also seems evident that while some teachers persist in conventional instructional, often didactic pedagogies, some educators, in nurseries and schools, work in an intuitive and skilled manner, empathising successfully with children and fluently participating in and influencing children’s narratives, their play and their learning. Such educators appear to create playful and conversational pedagogies, an approach clearly supported by research from different fields which claims that ‘talk’ matters to learning (Vygotsky 1978;
Bakhtin 1981; Bruner 1986; Rogoff 1990; Wertsch 1991). To accompany children in their play is a sophisticated role which may, as some suggest (see Gopnik 2009) be determined by biology. Thus, the intrinsic motivation of babies is mirrored by the intrinsic motivation of parents to share knowledge in a developmentally and culturally appropriate way. The intuitive behaviour defined by Claxton is underpinned by research to suggest that such ways of behaving with young children may in fact be biologically determined, and it is at the beginning of life as biology and culture entwine to create a sense of identity (Rogoff 1990) that an intuitive relationship is formed to support this development. While this may be a natural state between parents and children, it is possible to see how similar relationships can be created and nurtured by teachers of young children in their intimacy in play. The story I want to tell is the story of playful professionals who play in
spite of heavy prescription; those who are able to be professional in their approach while engaging at a deep level in the preferred activities of children and childhood. This engagement often, if not always, involves storying, coconstructing narratives with, next to, around and about children essentially for the children’s purposes and for their pleasure. The additional narrative layer that I am including, the narratives of experience of such teachers, is articulated clearly later and takes a somewhat different approach in its emphasis on professional narratives as an information base, rather than the conventional ‘othering’ (Brown 2003) involved in previous studies. For example, Anning et al. identify as a significant theme ‘developing a research discourse … to encourage practitioners to challenge unverified rhetoric’ (2004: 15), while this study enables two practitioners to themselves create the discourse. There are several separate areas of research and literature to review,
although there may be overlapping elements. The first will attempt to understand and define ‘storying’, this conscious act of interaction with young children; that is, the pedagogy undertaken in the classroom that involves adults and children sharing narratives. While other researchers have looked at the way that young children construct stories alone (see Barrs 1988; Fox 1988; David et al. 2000), I have chosen to focus upon communicative acts, reciprocal acts, engaging both adult and child. Working with young children involves the construction of narratives at many levels and sometimes in formal adult-led contexts. However, it is the ‘storying’ events that teachers and children often engage in informally and without preconstructed visible planning, and at many points of the day, that are distinctive in some practice and of particular interest. The co-construction of stories, oral narratives, during play presents significant occasions during which teaching and deliberate, yet invariably ‘invisible’ (Wood 1988) attempts to influence development occur. Understanding these occasions, their significance and their often, almost opportunist, nature will help to identify the games, the playfulness and the deep knowledge of those engaged. Issues of empathy, intimacy, trust
and respect – attributes that may be visible in both teacher and learner – all appear to be central to such acts. Understanding such a literacy event (Brice Heath 1983), the interactions
and the nature of the discourse, will help to determine the power of the coconstructed narratives and their potential pedagogical impact. Addressing the relative importance of such storying occasions, relative that is to other literacy events that occur during the course of a typical school day, will help provide status for playful pedagogies. Why then are co-constructed storying events so important?
