A closer look: Socio-structural influences on teacher–child interactions during project work

Abstract

An increasing amount of attention and public funding has been dedicated in recent years to the field of Early Childhood Education and the expansion of early childhood programs in the United States. Program quality in early childhood is evaluated based on program-level structural features and instructional support (e.g. problem solving, feedback, and language modeling), but quantifiable measures of structural and process features do not necessarily equate to quality instructional interactions. Questions remain about the presence and strength of socially constructed power dynamics found in pedagogic practice. This case study seeks to illuminate interactions between children and teachers in federally funded Head Start classrooms, teachers' views of children, and influences to novice project work using the Project Approach. The project work served as a frame for viewing interactions between teachers and children as mediated by varying degrees of power and control of teacher-child interactions at the classroom level (identified as "socio-structures"). Questions investigated were the following: (1) What are the socio-structures inside these Head Start classrooms before and during the implementation of the Project Approach? (2) How do existing socio-structures relate to teacher-child instructional language interactions during the implementation of the Project Approach?

Inquiry-based project learning as an approach to foster wellbeing, sustained focus, and bi-cultural practice in early childhood education

“…Through IBPL children are learning how to work in a group, listen to diverse points of view, share ideas, debate, and work collaboratively to solve problems. As they engage in this work, they are developing many of the skills and dispositions the literature argues are critical for navigating life in the 21st century (Cordoba & Sanders-Smith, 2018; Fernández & Feliu, 2017; Krogh & Morehouse, 2020; Stacey, 2019). The children we observed were deeply engaged in their work, and often remained focused on their inquiries for significant periods.…”

“…Inquiry-based project learning [IBPL] is a pedagogical approach with the potential to respond to these challenges. IBPL fosters intersubjectivity through collaboration, with the potential to simultaneously support the development of rich, localised curriculum whilst developing the skills, attitudes, and dispositions critical to navigating 21 st century life, such as cultivating a love of life-long learning, creativity, communication skills, problem solving, and global citizenship (Cordoba & Sanders-Smith, 2018; Fernández & Feliu Torruella, 2017; Kim et al, 2019; Krogh & Morehouse, 2020; Stacey, 2019). Even the youngest of children can understand their environments and their roles within them by developing skills in response to real-world questions and interests (Hogan et al, 2020; Rockel, 2010).…”

Mixing performance and competence pedagogic orientations to assessment of writing and text production in the early years

“…Educators are more likely to look for what is present in the produced text (Neaum, 2016). A competence orientation to assessment supports the notion that learners can demonstrate their learning in numerous ways and different forms (Cordoba and Sanders-Smith, 2018). Competence has an inquiry-based framework, such as LAUNCH.…”

A Structural Design of a Child Seat Based on Morphological Elements and Ergonomics

“…Reports show that children who use child safety seats in a traffic accident are significantly less likely to die than those who do not [ 8 ]. Child safety seats can guarantee the safety of child occupants to a great extent [ 9 ]. Through the statistical analysis of traffic accidents, the safety test of car child safety seats and the research on the injury and protection of child occupants in traffic accidents are carried out by computer simulation experiments [ 10 ].…”