Birth to three matters - Communities and Local Government

Relationships with other people (bothadults and children) are of centralimportance in a child’s life.Babies and young children are socialbeings, they are primed to learn andcommunicate.Learning is a shared process.Caring adults count more thanresources and equipment.Schedules and routines must flow withthe child.The whole day matters;babies andyoung children do not split up theirlives into sections so neither shouldtheir adult carers.Children learn best when they are givenappropriate responsibility, allowed tomake errors, decisions and choices, andrespected as autonomous andcompetent learners.Children learn most effectively when,with the support of a knowledgeableand trusted adult, they are activelyinvolved and interested.Children learn best by doing ratherthan by being told.Children are competent learnersfrom birth.These principles are supported by researchevidence presented in this review.However, the resulting Framework steersaway from subject headings, traditionalareas of experience and distinctcurriculum headings and takes as its focusthe child. It identifies four Aspects ofdevelopment. These are:- A Strong Child;A Skilful Communicator; A CompetentLearner; and A Healthy Child. Eachof these Aspects celebrates the skilland competence of babies andyoung children and highlights theinterrelationship between growth,learning, development and theenvironment in which they are caredfor and educated.In this introductory chapter readers willfind:- information about the Framework‘Birth to Three Matters’ and the Aspectswhich form its basic structure; anintroduction to some of the issuesconcerning research and theory focusedon young children’s development andlearning;an outline of key researchconclusions on risk and resilience linkedto experiences in the earliest years; anda summary of key ‘messages’.Th roughout the text we have addedi l l u m i n at i ve anecd o tes about individualc h i l d re n ,o b s e rved by family membe r swho are both ex pe ri e n ced early ye a r sp ra ctitioners and re s e a rc h e r s. Some ofthese anecd o tes have been used to showt h at while re s e a rch can tell us much abo u tc h i l d ren and their capabilities in genera l ,t h e re are times when a child will asto u n dclose family members by what Ga rd n e r( 1993) called their flashes of bri l l i a n ce.In other wo rd s, we hope pare nts andp ra ctitioners will not only read the rev i ewwith inte rest but also with an open andc ri t i cal mind, re f l e cting on the ways inwhich the re s e a rch info rms and re l atesto their own int i m ate kn owledge andunderstandings about young childre n .7