Key topics
Listening
26 Feb 2010
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Young Children's Voices Network (YCVN)
YCVN is a national project promoting listening within the early years (birth to five). This network is run by the Early Childhood Unit at NCB and supports local authorities in developing good practice in listening to young children with an aim to inform policy and improve early childhood services. In 2009/2010, YCVN will deliver a programme of training for advisors and practitioners, hold national network meetings for Local Authorities (LAs) to share strategic practice and develop resources to help LAs plan, show and assess how well they are listening to young children to inform the design, delivery and development of early childhood services. They will also continue to add leaflets to their 'Listening as a way of life' series.
In the long run, this national project hopes to accomplish the following:
- children feel they are being listened to and their unique needs are recognised and being met
- families understand how important it is to listen to their children
- practitioners are confident in their ability to facilitate participation and recognise its importance in pedagogy and social and emotional development
- LAs and their Children's Trust partners, clearly value and act on the voice of the young child
In November 2008, the evaluation of the YCVN pilot project (2006-2008) was published. During its pilot, the YCVN successfully instigated a listening culture within Early Years in 15 of the 20 local authorities it supported. The remaining five authorities were unable, or felt it was too soon, to take part in the evaluation.
According to the evaluation's executive summary, "The impact of the work was most immediately visible through reports of raised skills and confidence of practitioners. Listening work is most effective when it complements existing skills and knowledge and builds on these to embed a fundamental listening approach, rather than imposing a set of additional responsibilities." Support offered to local authorities from ECU included:
- project manager offering consultancy support to initiate a local YCVN
- and continued guidance and support to inform network development
- training for staff in young children's participation
- access to experts from the National Advisory Group
- email bulletins and internet contact sharing
- national network days for representatives from local networks to share effective practice
The national rollout of the programme began in March 2009. For further information visit NCB.
PEAL and Listening to Young Children
Option 1 for Practitioners
The Listening as a way of life - An Introduction course aims to inspire and enable practitioners to listen to young children and involve them in decisions which affect their lives, through every day practice.
Option 2 for Advisers/ Managers
The Embedding listening within the Early Years course aims to inspire advisers, managers and those in strategic roles to support practitioners in listening to young children and involving them in decisions which affect their lives, through everyday practice. This course also explores the links between listening to young children and other related practice, such as the involvement of parents as partners in their children's learning, and creating a broader listening culture as part of quality improvement. The course includes resources for cascading training.
For more information on either of these courses call 0207 833 6816.
Talking it up
Practitioners must understand the needs and interests of individual children in order to plan and deliver truly child-led activities, Nursery World reports. They can get this understanding by communicating and, most importantly, listening to children and their parents. This does not mean that early years professionals must asked open questions. Rather, it means they must value every child's contribution. What is crucial is the supportive context for talk. Early years consultant and writer Helen Bromley asks, "How can you get to know the children if you don't talk with them? We also need to look at encouraging children to talk to each other."
Effective early years communicators are people who:
- recognise that communication is a two-way flow of information
- by their welcoming, open demeanour, encourage others to speak
- listen and do not interrupt
- read other people's body language
- think before they speak
- use simply language and avoid jargon
- speak and write clearly
- ask open questions of the children
- do not make assumptions when talking with the children but wait for the child to explain
- take the time to communicate with children who are non-verbal on their own others
(Nursery World, 20 November 2008)
Listen and Learn
Nursery World reports on the importance of listening to parents and carers as the fundamental first step in respecting and getting to know the family and engaging and involving parents in their children's learning. Helen Moylett and Janet Ackers remind us how "Children feel more confident and positive about themselves and their learning when parents and practitioners work together in an atmosphere of mutual respect."
It is important that all parents, including those who do not conform to the 'norms', who are experiencing difficult personal experiences, or who are learning English as a second language are made to feel welcome when they enter the early years setting. According to the article, parents will feel valued if:
- they always get a warm and genuine greeting
- practitioners make an effort to learn a few words of greeting in the children's home languages
- they do not see other parents being treated better than they are
- staff pronounce parents' and children's names correctly
- staff are flexible and able to cope with the unexpected twists and turns of family life
- resources and displays represent the ethnic, cultural and social diversity in society
- they can see their own family background and culture represented as well as others
Arrival and collection times are central in allowing an informal but important communication between parents and early years practitioners. If there are elements in a parent's life that makes their visits infrequent (such as a job), email is a good way of keeping in contact. It is still important, though, to set aside regular times to meet with parents in a private setting where they can talk and be listened to.
(Nursery World, 13 November 2008)
All about...children's rights
An article in Nursery World highlighted a child's right to provision, protection and participation, with the last element of participation placing a duty on adults to listen to children and act upon their views.
These rights come from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The article highlighted how the principle of children expressing their views has been increasingly embraced within the early years. Listening is at the heart of early years good practice.
The article also mentioned that listening is crucial to ensure children's right to protection from discrimination is respected. Inclusion should be considering barriers for participation for all and not just disabled children.
(Nursery World, 3 July 2008)
A matter of opinion
An article in Nursery World focused on the importance of consulting with young children, following the launch of the Children's Plan and the duty for local authorities and service providers to do this.
Key benefits were outlined such as citizenship, helping children to realise they are valued, inclusion, learning and service improvement. To plan a consultation the article outlined that listening must be integral to the consultation process. It described listening as a six-spoke wheel which includes listening, observing, documenting, reflecting, taking action and feeding back.
Understanding stages of child development was also highlighted as crucial, as younger children have shorter attention spans and their thinking is more egocentric. The pros and cons of giving children photographs were also explored, with the example of a child taking pictures of sparkly greeting cards. This wasn't because she liked the cards or because they meant something to her, but because she liked sparkly things. The article emphasises the need to cross check with children what the pictures mean to them, to ensure clarification and avoid drawing the wrong conclusions.
(Nursery World, 17 April 2008)
Let's Talk About Listening to Children: towards a shared understanding for early years education in Scotland.
This is a publication from Learning and Teaching Scotland that aims to stimulate discussion about the theory, method and everyday realities of listening to children in early education in Scotland. It includes contributions from Professor Kathleen Marshall, the Children's Commissioner for Scotland; Linda Kinney, Head of Early Childhood, Play and Out of School Care, Stirling Council; and Peter Moss, Professor of Early Childhood Provision, University of London. There is an overview by Dr John Davis, Lecturer, Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh. For more information and to download the publication visit Learning and Teaching Scotland.
