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What questions are asking about primary education, and why?
The past decade has changed the way we view children and childhood and generated much debate about the rights of children, their voices in decisions about their care and education, and their access to and engagement with the digital and virtual world. Key questions include: Who is the 21st century child? How does he/she learn? What is a primary education for? What kind of curriculum is needed today?
At the same time, NCCA's curriculum reviews and ongoing work with schools in the Primary School Network (involving over 2,600 teachers) have identified curriculum overload as a key challenge. Our primary teachers struggle to implement the curriculum within one school day, week and year which has remained the same length, despite the increased size of the 1999 curriculum and the many additions to it since its publication.
It's timely to ask now what we value for children's learning and development in primary schools. The growing consensus concerning children's literacy makes this a useful starting point. Aistear, the Early Childhood Curriculum Framework, challenges us to respond to these questions and issues, not by adding to the primary curriculum, but by changing it beginning with the early years.
What is Aistear?
Aistear is the curriculum framework for all children from birth to six years in Ireland. It describes the types of learning that are important for children in their early years across the range of settings including childminding settings, sessional services, full and part-time daycare settings, children's own homes and infant classes in primary schools. As a curriculum framework, Aistear can work as a guide for settings and practitioners in planning practical learning programmes for children.
Aistear is available online in English and Irish at www.ncca.ie/earlylearning. Print copies are for sale through Government Publications. More than 8,000 free copies have been made available to primary schools and 4,500 free copies for settings participating in the Early Childhood Care and Education (Pre-school) Scheme.
There are a number of supports for practitioners and teachers who want to use Aistear:
- Aistear Tutor Network
- Classroom-based work with infant teachers
- Setting-based work with daycare and sessional services
- Online Aistear Toolkit.
How is Aistear relevant to the primary developments?
Aistear is informed by a significant body of evidence and research. Much of this emerged in the last 10-15 years. The Primary School Curriculum (1999) was also informed by the research of its time -- but they were different times. Aistear builds on, enriches and extends the Infant Curriculum. While there is much synergy between the two, there are also significant differences most of which relate to how we, as a society, view children as young learners, how contemporary theories and research describe how children learn and develop in their early childhood years, and how adults can support and nurture that learning.
Why are we focusing on on language and literacy in the early years?
There has also been much research development over the last decade in the areas of reading, writing and oral language -- and on how these elements of language interact -- including for example, the importance of interaction models of teaching language and the role of parents in supporting children's language development. It is timely to explore the potential of these developments to address the curriculum and assessment issues concerning children's language development that arose from two phases of curriculum review by NCCA, Inspectorate evaluations, national assessments and most recently PISA 2009. The launch of Better Literacy and Numeracy for Children and Young People adds considerable impetus to the work in this area. It is prudent to begin with the early years, given the tremendous opportunities which Aistear and the free pre-school year provide to re-envision children's learning experiences at this crucial time in their development.
What is the current status of the work?
The approach to change is a phased one. Research outputs in the form of papers on oral language, emergent literacy and the structure of an integrated language curriculum will be completed by the end of 2011. Initial work from NCCA's engagement with schools on emergent literacy will also be available towards the end of 2011.