What Affects Children's Ability to learn?

What Affects Children's Ability to learn?

1. Teacher Reltionships and Teaching Quality

2. Teaching Quality

   • Needs to be improved, because research shows that it is one of the highest factors to successful pupils
   • Training to enhance pupils' learning, such as the use of differentiation in activities, to ensure all pupils have a fair and equal change to reach their full potential
     • Banks and Shelton-Mayes, 2001

3. Teaching Performance

   • Concerns of teaching performance come from pressure from the government
   • OFSTED is a government service that inspects childcare settings and schools, to help improve teaching quality to furthermore enhance better learning for individual pupils
     • Ofsted, 2008
     • this can add extreme pressure onto staff which may be transferred onto pupils. Teacher have too many curriculum requirements to abide by to ensure that children are reaching their full learning potential, that sometimes they may forget or not have the time to nurture a relationship with a child
       • CSEFEL, 2008

4. Teacher Relationships

   • Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby Attachment Theory
     • Bowlby is the most recent theorist of attachment
       • Attachment is a bond or connection between a child and an adult, generally the child’s caregiver, however children do develop bonds with other caregivers that they have regular contact with, such as teachers
       • Holmes and Farnfield, 2014
     • Attachment is especially important within the EYFS curriculum- the key person approach. Evangelou, Sylva, Kyriacou, Wild and Glenny (2009) state that attachment relationships with a key person may create issues that may effect and relate to social and emotional development when a child becomes older
   • The relationship and interaction between a teacher and individual pupils is of paramount importance
     • Kaplan and Owings, 2002
   • A secure attachment is dependent on how the caregiver responds and protects a child’s needs. Attachment is important for child development however, teacher and student relationships do show major concerns
     • Riley, 2011
   • The relationship of the teacher and pupil can be influenced by the teacher’s fondness to an individual. Although teacher’s should not show favouritism, research shows that teacher’s will treat pupils differently on the like and dislike of each individual
     • teachers may dislike pupils for many reasons, however the main cause are children who are ‘aggressive’ and/ or ‘disruptive’
     • Chang, 2007

5. Teacher- Student relationships

   • The communication between a teacher and child can lead to social segregation. A teacher’s fondness of a child may increase or decrease an individual’s peer’s acceptance or social behaviour. A teacher who dislikes a child, for whatever reason, may also encourage peers to dislike a child because of perceived and observed behaviour
     • Bandura was a theorist who conducted many experiment on observation, which all supported his work on the Social Learning Theory
       • Bobo Doll
         • The finding from the study portrayed that observation influences a huge part in a child’s learning
           • Pastorino and Doyle-Portillo, 2013

6. Performance Related Pay

   • Performance related pay is a new government initiative that was made aware in September 2013 and first came into effect in September 2014
     • Department for Education, 2013
   • teachers will be paid according to their performance and standard of teaching in the classroom
     • Ratcliffe, 2013

7. Class Sizes and Teaching

   • Recommendation
     • reduce teacher to pupil ratios as well as reducing class sizes. The only significant way reducing class sizes can influence learning is if teacher to pupil ratios are also reduced
       • Major, 2012
   • There is a major connection with class sizes and teaching which may also be closely associated with cognitive approaches such as Vygotskys theory- Scaffolding
     • Blachford, 2003

8. Childcare Act 2006

   • in place to ensure local authorities ensure that the outcomes for children are being improved to all children and that childcare settings are to the best and high quality they can be
     • 4Children, 2007