Planning for Children's Learning

Running head: PLANNING FOR CHILDREN’S LEARNING
PLANNING FOR CHILDREN’S LEARNING
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1PLANNING FOR CHILDREN’S LEARNING
Essay
Introduction
Early childhood is one of the most crucial phases of development as far as holistic
education is considered. As a child, an individual goes through a lot of developmental phases
that strengthens his/her connection with the larger world and the people they come in contact
with. This forms a part of the education they receive that ensures a wholesome development,
not only from the literacy and numeracy perspective but also from the perspective of larger
socio – cultural engagement. There are numerous developmental theories that support the
developmental phases that a child goes through while learning and acquiring new bits of
knowledge along the way. These theories explicitly state in detail the various stages and sub
stages that a child goes through while growing up. In a formal early education context,
monitoring a child’s progress becomes highly crucial as it provides significant data about the
child’s cognitive and social context. As an early education teacher, there are four components
that become significantly useful in connection with early childhood development. They are
namely notice, recognise, respond and evaluate. In this essay, the significance of these four
components while planning for children’s learning will be looked at from a socio cultural
perspective especially in correlation with the developmental theories.
Discussion
Drawing reference from the New Zealand curriculum ‘Te Whariki’, we find that it is
based upon an intricate series of interrelated learning dispositions (Ministry of Education,
1996). The curriculum focuses heavily on the interconnectedness of different early learning
aspects. The dispositions as mentioned earlier, of ‘Te Whariki’ are namely belonging,
contribution, wellbeing, exploring and communicating (Minitry of Education, 1996). These
dispositions are crucial guidelines as well as outcomes that serve as the cornerstone for

2PLANNING FOR CHILDREN’S LEARNING
assessment of a child. They are also supported by a series of booklets and resources titles ‘Ke
Tua o te Pae’ (Ministry of Education, 2004-2009). The document reveals the use of the
framework of ‘notice, recognise and respond’ in order to describe the purpose of assessment
in the context of both early childhood education as well as school curriculum.
The primary aspect of assessment in early childhood context is that of noticing. From
a curriculum perspective, the aspect of noticing indicates towards how the educators can
observe the child’s overall development. This does not limit the developmental parameters to
that of simply literacy and numeracy but extends to include the child’s natural and
unmoderated interactions and experiences with the general immediate environment. Cowie &
Carr state that “We take the view that learning and development, rather than being primarily
about individual achievement, is distributed over, stretched across, people, places and
things” (2009, p. 105). This indicates that while it comes to assessing the child, as an
educator, it is vital to look at how the child is responding to the natural environment. The
whole concept of early childhood development is built upon the assumption that the child will
grow up with certain developmental traits that will help him/her in the long run as an adult.
From a sociological perspective, noticing lies in direct correlation with Vygotsky’s Social
Learning Theory. The theory states the importance of greater social interaction among
children and the society as it serves as a key source of learning for the children. According to
Vygotsky, social and cultural interactions serve as a template for the behavioural
development of the child and the most of children’s learning happens in the phase identified
as the Zone of Proximal Development which is the period between assisted competence and
independent competence in children (Shabani, Khatib & Ebadi, 2010). Notice as assessment
helps identify those specific areas of development from a curriculum as well as socio –
cultural perspective, attempting to promote regions of positive development in children.