Key Issues in Early Years Education: A Guide for Students and Practitioners / Edition 2

by Sandra Smidt

Overview

Key Issues in Early Years Education is the second edition of The Early Years: A Reader. This essential text for students and professionals is unique in its range of voices and topics and in its determination to see the child as central to learning and development. As in the first edition it not only has chapters written by key figures in the field of early childhood education and care but also by students on a range of early childhood programmes. Notable key figures from the first edition have been added including Helen Penn, Henrietta Dombey, Hilary Faust and Charmian Kenner. Rosemary Nalden, who is involved in significant work with children in South Africa, has added her voice to give us examples of children acting both as learners and teachers.

This fully revised collection is a comprehensive investigation into the key issues in early years education which:

• provides a blend of real life examples and theory, drawn from a diversity of early childhood settings and classes
• is written in an accessible voice
• brings theory to life by linking it with practice
• examines how children explore, express and represent their worlds.

Many of the original sections have been revised and updated to take account of changes to the education system over the last decade. Two new sections in this edition are Children as Thinkers and Problem-Solvers and Learning: A Second Chance, which looks at adults learning something new and considers the similarities and differences that might exist between them and children.

This fascinating and highly readable book will be of interest to teachers, practitioners, students and anyone concerned with the care and education of our youngest children.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415465250
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/14/2009
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Sandra Smidt is a writer and consultant in early years education.

Table of Contents

@contents: Selected Contents: Introduction 1. What is basic for young children? Part I: How young children learn 2. A developmental approach to the curriculum in the early years 3. Does it matter what country you are in? Are all children the same everywhere or does it matter where you are? 4. Play - the powerful means of learning in the early years Part II: Understanding Children 5. Observing symbolic play 6. Under the microscope 7. Her eyes are flashing and her ears are sore 8. Louise Drawing 9. Patterns of Play: Observing and Supporting Young Children's Schemas Part III: All Our Children 10. Supporting young children 11. Learning about writing through bilingual peer teaching 12. How can bilingual children be supported in negotiating home and school environments in their early years? 13. Storysacks: A piece of action research 14. My dream school: A booklet for parents Part IV: Children as thinkers and problem-solvers 15. Mathematical development in the Early Years Foundation Stage: (Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy) 16. Tricks 17. ‘Let’s make honey’ 18. Making ice Part V: Understanding the written world 19. It all starts with /c/ /a/ /t/ - or does it? Foundation Phonics 20. Talking in your head: Young children's developing understanding of the reading process 21. Hannah and her books 22. A poem 23. Learning to read made easy: a study of one child's development as a reader 24. My life as a reader Part VI: Representing thoughts and feelings 25. Scaffolding Caitlin's learning 26. The workshop table - a stepping stone in the visual arts 27. Transformation through music: the impact of classical music on the lives of township children Part VII: Learning: a second chance 28. Late Early Learning: A 64-year-old begins to play the viola 29. A Second String? 30. Musicology to music-making: a late learner becomes a late starter 31. Becoming a Sculptor A last word: the search for the 'crock of gold'