Early Learning

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophies and Theories of Early Childhood Education and Care brings together leading writers in the field to provide a much-needed, authoritative guide to the major philosophies and theories which have shaped approaches to Early Childhood Education and Care.

Providing a detailed overview of key concepts, debates and practical challenges, the handbook combines theoretical acumen with specific examples to show how philosophies and theories have evolved over the centuries and their impact on policy and society. It examines the ways in which societies define and make sense of childhood and the factors that influence the development of philosophies about young children and their learning.

The collection offers an insight into the key theorists and considers how the economics and politics of their time and personal ideology influenced their ideas about childhood. It looks at curricula and provision which have proved inspirational and how these have impacted on policy and practice in different parts of the world. The handbook also explores alternative and perhaps less familiar philosophies and ideas about babies and young children, their place in society and the ways in which it might be appropriate to educate them

Bringing together specially commissioned pieces by a range of international authors, this handbook will enable academics, research students, practitioners and policy-makers to reflect on their own understandings and approaches, as well as the assumptions made in their own and other societies.

In Jomtien in 1990 and again in Dakar in 2000, world leaders committed to the
measurement and improvement of learning as part of Education for All. Yet clear, actionable
metrics, particularly in the early grades and in the poorest countries, would continue to elude the
sector. This paper reflects on the development and impact of the early grades reading and
mathematics assessments, open-source tools applied in more than 60 countries and 100
languages. Case studies illustrate the promise and pitfalls of working at national scale, while
summary results from 10 nationally representative studies document the scope of the crisis in
early learning. The authors conclude with reflections and aspirations for placing country-driven
learning assessment at the centre of post-2015 goals.

Suggested Citation:
Gove, A., Chabbott, C., Dick, A. DeStefano, J., King, S., Mejia, J. and Piper, B. (2015). Early learning assessments: a retrospective. Background Paper for Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2015. UNESCO. Paris: France

Early learning has increasingly been the focus of social policy and programmes with a proliferation of public, community and commercial entities entering the field of production. Understanding this phenomenon requires educational researchers to conceptualise early learning both within a globalised network of circulating commodities and within specific situated spaces of local sociocultural practice. This paper describes how a research project has drawn on geosemiotic and actor-network theories, and employed spatially sensitive methods, to investigate the resourcing of early learning in spaces new to most educational researchers. Focusing on the suburban field site ‘Midburb’, we analyse the ways in which discourses operate through/in place producing different entry points, pathways and access for parents, impacting on their opportunities for encountering early learning resources.

Spatial and temporal dimensions of parenting experienced were explored in this study, which investigated the accounts of 25 mothers and 8 fathers of young children from the perspective of their roles as supporters of early learning. The analysis was driven by three questions: How does space and time act on these parents in their educative roles? How are they acted on by space and time? How does narrative analysis assist us to answer these questions? The authors describe an interpretive tool – the time-space grid – which was used to analyse parents' narrative accounts. Utilising this tool made visible the ways in which parenting is impacted by space and time in both proximal and distal ways. We argue that  the process of storying assists parents to make connections between meaningful events, thoughts and feelings that occurred in different times and across spaces in their lives, including projected times and spaces.

International Thinking on Children in Museums introduces current research, theory, and practice about young learners in museums around the world. The book imparts vital knowledge about the nature of childhood and children’s learning that will improve understanding of the very youngest museum-goers.
Including contributions from practitioners, scholars, and consultants around the globe, this volume examines museum practices and children’s learning across a range of distinct cultural and geographic locales. The framework of the book is based on research and current thinking in the realm of developmental psychology, sociology, and anthropology, allowing the contributors to examine the evolution of early learning and children’s programs through a sociocultural lens. This broad-based look at international museum practices for children offers a rare view of the field from an important, but oft-neglected perspective: that of society and culture.
International Thinking on Children in Museums will broaden understanding of museum practice across cultures and geographic regions and, as such, will be of interest to scholars and students engaged in the study of museum education, museum studies, and early learning. It should also provide a much-needed source of inspiration for museum practitioners working around the world.


Section III Case Studies on Children and Museums
Chapter 7 Early Learners in Lebanese Archaeology and Art Museums: A Sociocultural Case-Study

Over the course of its modern history, the Lebanese social fabric was dismantled by the influence of many internal and external factors. The final stroke was the civil war (1975-1990), which destroyed the country’s cultural, social, and architectural infrastructures. Those events lead to the population’s division into different ethnic, religious, sectarian, and political groups. These cultural gaps are ever-growing and the historical narratives are falsely used by sectarian and political parties in an attempt to prove origins and develop factions. Thus far, the Lebanese refuse to reconcile with this painful past and to move towards a better understanding of their history.

The multitude of different and often contradicting narratives, the disagreement on the origins, and the identity have resulted in the absence of a homogenous unified history textbook.
These controversial issues extend into both modern and ancient history. History is thus considered to be full of awful events and came to be ignored by the majority of the population. A considerable number of Lebanese students enrolled in public schools between the ages of 4-14, do not study history at all. And if they do, it is at the ages between 14-16 but not earlier. As for students in private schools, they study world history, not the Lebanese or Middle Eastern. 

Contrarily, the museum world has been thriving in Lebanon, especially in the last five years, as new projects are being funded and are planned to be implemented in the next five to ten years. But alas, the proper management infrastructure that is supposed to lead such a revolution is inexistent.
The Lebanese are not used to visiting museums and this has to do with the way museums promote their offers as being exclusive. Museums are regarded as boring, expensive, and dedicated only to the rich and the elite, with rarely any activities designated for children.
The situation is even worse for early learners (0-7 years old), where the social belief is that they do not belong to museums and they are too young to understand, apprehend or even enjoy a museum visit. They are viewed by society as lacking the sophistication for a museum experience. Over the weekend and during vacations, family outings usually consist of leisure activities such as playground visits, a day at the beach, or a movie night. Although museums are open on Saturdays and Sundays and during holidays, parents rarely take their children to visit any museum. When questioned about this issue, they do recall bad museum experiences:
“The children got bored and started to run all around the museum”, “We couldn’t find anyone to help us with the kids and we did not know what to show them to attract their attention and spark their interest”.

Parents do rely a lot on the school's curriculums to provide their children with the proper education and do not consider that any extra teachings/ learnings outside the school's walls are essential. They simply do not view family museum visits as part of their parenting responsibilities.

From the museum's side, most of them do not welcome early learners, especially toddlers, and do not allow strollers inside the museum premises. And if they do allow it, many of them are not suitable to be able to circulate with one: narrow passages, different floors with stair steps and no elevators, … Early learners are considered by the majority of museum professionals to be noisy, uncontrollable, and needs special attention that simply the museum is not ready to offer. 

But nowadays, there is a shift towards making children at the center of the museums’ cultural offers. Although it is still a modest change, teachers in nurseries and in schools are reaching out to museums pushing them to design cultural offers for early learners.
Many museums still refuse to do so but the ones that are admitting early learners, are focusing on the financial benefits of admitting new audiences and building on that to reach more visitors and increase their yearly revenues.

An elementary teacher, from a private school situated in Mount Lebanon, far from the capital Beirut, said when asked about her motives behind bringing her 5 years old students to visit the Lebanese Museum of Prehistory in Beirut said: “ I teach them human evolution at an early age and what a better place to see ancient human skulls but a museum! Young children should form museum-going habits in early childhood. They are future visitors and I feel that I have the responsibility to engage them in such experiences as part of their learning”.
This essay will examine the social factors that shaped the children’s learning in Lebanon and utilizes data from local case studies and international researches, as well as personal and professional experiences to diagnose the causes behind this shift.
This case study will also observe influences and their effect on the museums’ inclusion and public outreach programs.
Although the focus will be on archaeology and history museums, it will also include case studies from art museums as the latter are pioneering specially designed programs for children and setting a new trend that is being copied and reiterated by other museums. Field visits will be conducted to attend special programs and to interview museum personnel for a better understanding of the reasons behind these changes.
As research papers on the subject of early learning and museums in Lebanon are scarce, field surveys will constitute an essential part of this study. In the same framework, a representative sample of school teachers and parents of early learners will provide the grounds for this study. Gathering all this data, we can better assess the current situation, analyzing the socio-cultural context that shaped the museum experience for children in Lebanese museums.

The authors conduct a document analysis of the Early Learning for Every Child Today: A Framework for Ontario Early Childhood Settings (2007) to identify children’s rights
as reflected in a widely used early childhood curriculum framework in Ontario, Canada. They argue about the significance of looking at curriculum through the lens
of children’s rights in order to create a global community and strive toward a “rights-integrative approach to early learning.” The findings from the analysis indicate how
curriculum documents used for guiding early learning practices may serve as ideal vehicles for introducing discourses on children’s rights.

Long term academic risks increase with students' trauma levels. Both the family and community offer vital support services for students of trauma. Educators recognize the strong influence that community and family exert on young children. But, what happens when there is a breakdown in the community systems that support young children? This article explores the challenges of COVID 19, a pandemic that alienated many students from support systems. The authors explorer recommendations for responding to the symptoms of trauma, addressing trauma in learning settings, and the importance of persisting with community collaboration.

Central to the concept of ecological speciation is the evolution of ecotypes,i.e. groups of individuals occupying different ecological niches. However,the mechanisms behind the first step of separation, the switch of individualsinto new niches, are unclear. One long-standing hypothesis, which wasproposedforinsectsbutnevertested,isthatearlylearningcausesnewecologi-cal preferences, leading to a switch into a new niche within one generation.Here, we show that a host switch occurred within a parasitoid wasp, whichis associated with the ability for early learning and the splitting into separatelineages during speciation.
Lariophagus distinguendus
consists of two geneti-cally distinct lineages, most likely representing different species. One attacksdrugstore beetle larvae (
Stegobium paniceum
(L.)), which were probably theancestral host of both lineages. The drugstore beetle lineage has an innatehost preference that cannot be altered by experience. In contrast, the secondlineage is found on
Sitophilus
weevils as hosts and changes its preference byearly learning. We conclude that a host switch has occurred in the ancestorof the second lineage, which must have been enabled by early learning.Because early learning is widespread in insects, it might have facilitatedecological divergence and associated speciation in this hyperdiverse group.