High quality interactions are recognised as fundamental to the achievement of outstanding teaching and learning in the early years. If you are working with children from six months to six years this authoritative new book from leading author Julie Fisher encourages you to reflect deeply on the quality and impact of interactions in your setting.
Drawing on research undertaken in baby rooms, nurseries and classrooms over four years the book challenges prevailing orthodoxies and offers specific practical guidance on how to improve the quality of interactions on a day-to-day basis. With its illuminating examples, the book shows how you can best tune into and respond effectively to young children’s conversations. It exemplifies how interactions are most effectively sustained and how developing high quality interactions can better scaffold and support children’s learning and development.
'Interacting or Interfering?'
• Identifies the key components of effective interactions and how implementing these can improve the quality of children’s learning
• Contains transcripts of interactions from baby rooms through to Year 2 classes which exemplify key messages
• Provides prompts you can use to analyse and improve your own practice
Written in the author’s exceptionally clear and accessible style, this book is indispensable reading for all students and practitioners working and studying in the early years.
"There is a tendency for adult talk to dominate nurseries and schools in an attempt to manage, organise and interrogate children’s learning; this closes down children’s own investigation and capacity for thought. Fisher points out how ‘the very act of “being an educator” can sometimes distort the nature of an interaction so much that it inhibits the very learning it is trying to promote’. In this timely, thought-provoking and very readable book she prompts us to think more deeply about interactions and adapt new strategies to encourage all young children to engage in meaningful and enriching talk."
TACTYC, March, 2016
"The prompts and points for reflection encourage practitioners to critically consider their role and function, noting where their work is affirmed and where there is scope for further development ... This book is both relevant, though provoking and extremely useful for all involved in early childhood - an excellent tool for professional development."
Marion Dowling, Early Education Journal, No 79/ Summer 2016
Table of Contents:
1 The importance of interactions for young children’s learning
Introduction
Different definitions of ‘effectiveness’
Interactions in the home
Why interaction matters
Why interactions matter to children entering school
Why interactions matter to practitioners
Summary
2 Interacting with babies and toddlers
Introduction
The foundations of interaction
The development of interactions
Summary
3 Knowing the child well
Introduction
Focus on babies and toddlers
What practitioners need to learn about children
The importance of the Key Persons Approach
The impact of knowing children well
Talking to someone and not everyone
Analysing your own practice
Transcripts: knowing the child well
Transcripts 3:1; 3:2
Summary
4 Environments conducive to conversation
Introduction
Focus on babies and toddlers
Emotional space
Physical space
Analysing your own practice
Transcripts 4:1; 4:2
Summary
5 Tuning in to the child
Introduction
Focus on babies and toddlers
The child as a learner
Strategies for tuning in to children
Working out what a child is thinking is more valuable than looking at what they are doing
Deciding when and whether to interact can be the difference between interacting and interfering
Analysing your own practice
Transcripts 5:1; 5:2
Summary
6 Who leads the learning?
Introduction
Focus on babies and toddlers
The benefits of learning alongside an adult and learning independently
Independent learning is not abandoned learning
Interactions in adult-led, adult-initiated and child-led contexts
The purpose of an interaction
The balance between adult-led and child-led learning
Who leads the learning?
Analysing your own practice
Transcripts 6:1 to 6:4
Summary
7 Sustaining effective interactions
Introduction
Focus on babies and toddlers
Initiating conversations
Sustaining interactions
Consolidating, extending and provoking thinking
Analysing your own practice
Body language
Analysing your own practice
Tone of voice
Transcripts 7:1 to 7:7
Analysing your own practice
Summary
8 Interacting with children who might not want to interact
Introduction
Focus on babies and toddlers
Reluctant talkers
Children with autism
Children with English as an additional language (Eal)
Signing as a form of communication
Analysing your own practice
Transcripts 8:1; 8:2
Summary
9 Questions that work and questions that don’t
Introduction
Focus on babies and toddlers
Why do we ask questions?
Who asks the questions?
Transcripts 9:1 to 9:6
Different types of questions
Using questioning as control
Children’s answers
Questions that work and questions that don’t
Alternatives to questioning
Analysing my own practice
Transcripts 9:5 to 9:6
Summary
10 The attributes of effective practitioners
Introduction
Focus on babies and toddlers
The attributes of effectiveness
The importance of reciprocity
Interacting not interfering
Analysing your own practice
Transcript 10:1
Summary
About the Author :
Julie Fisher is an independent Early Years Adviser and visiting Professor of early childhood education at Oxford Brookes University. Prior to this she held the post of Early Years Adviser in Oxfordshire for 11 years. Before moving to Oxfordshire, Julie was lecturer in early childhood education at the University of Reading. She has taught children from 3 to 12 years and has been headteacher of two urban, multi-cultural schools. Julie has been chair of the Early Years Curriculum Group and the National Association of Inspectors, Advisers and Consultants Early Childhood Group. She was the first elected chair of the national Early Childhood Forum. She is now national vice-chair of the British Association for Early Childhood Education. Julie is author of a number of articles on early childhood education as well as her books ‘Starting from the Child’ and ‘The Foundations of Learning’ (Open University Press).
