Within this blog I shall be critically reviewing some of Goswami’s conclusions from their 2015 literature conclusions about child development, thinking and learning. Within this blog I will be focusing on two conclusions, the first being vocabulary development and the second being pretend play and imagination. I will be exploring these by looking at where I have seen these conclusions influence teachers pedagogical practice in schools, as well as assessments. I will also be looking at what the implications may be in regard to my own practice during my school based training 1 (SBT 1).

In order for us to understand pedagogy within education it should first be defined. Pedagogy can simply be defined as the method and practice that is used with teaching. Pedagogy involves all teaching styles, feedback and assessment as well as the theory the teacher will use. The use of pedagogy is also the way the educator also known as the teacher deliver the curriculum content to the class (TES, 2019). When educators plan their lesson, they will decide in which way they would like to deliver the curriculum content, the decision on how they will deliver the content is based upon their own preferences. Each teacher has their own way of teaching preferences which can be based upon the experiences they have had (TES, 2019).

The first conclusion that I will be looking at will be the development of vocabulary. Goswami (2015) details that the cognitive development of word and vocabulary is symbolic, this is due to words being symbolic because they all have a meaning. Parents and carers talk to babies before they have the ability to talk and talk back. They name objects they are holding or attending to as well as commenting on activities that they may be doing together. A study has shown that children in early years learn around 3,000 new words every year (Baker, 1995 citing in Mackay, 2007). This was apparent within SBT 1, being within a year one class room, where the children are aged five to six, the children are being exposed to a varied amount of new words in books and within their learning. They are also identifying new words they are learning through their phonics. This is allowing them to blend the new sounds they have discovered to sound out words. The importance of teaching children new and interesting words allows them to develop their knowledge and variety of words they use within their writing. One thing I noticed with my SBT 1 was the over use of simple adjectives, when completing a describing task as a class the same words would keep coming up from children. Children must want to engage with the learning process of new words; therefore, the encounters children have with words should be allowed to be playful, in order to provoke an interest and sense of curiosity in word study (Anderson and Nagy, 1993).

The second conclusion I will be looking at will be pretend play and imagination. Goswami (2015) details that pretend play is the earliest stage of a child ability to characterise in relation to their own knowledge. The use of pretending as an action is detaching themselves from the immediate situation. The use of pretending allows the child to see a representation of something different we associate the representation with. Pretend play allows children to develop their thematic interpretation as well as developing their social skills (Perry, 2001). Within SBT 1, within our teaching we used pretend play to allow the children to detach themselves from the real world and become characters in books for example. May of the children were able to develop their skills to change their tone of voices, to change the way they walked or acted. The use of pretend play allowed the children to separate from the world they knew and to step in to a world of the unknown, where there was not a certain way to do things and they could change the being they were. Many of the children interacted with each other, therefore aiding their social development. The use of pretend play and imagination during my SBT 1 allowed the children and the teachers to become more creative and allow a sense of the unknown which was then interpreted in to their writing.

References:

Anderson, R. and Nagy, W. (1993). The vocabulary conundrum. Technical report 570.

Goswami, U. (2015) Children’s cognitive development and learning. York: Cambridge Primary

Review Trust.

Available: http://ow.ly/K6Rh3027Oci(Accessed 10th August 2019)

Mackay, M. A. (2007). Vocabulary development: activities & games for early

learners.Huntington Beach, CA: Shell Education.

Perry, J. (2001). Outdoor play: teaching strategies with young children. New York: Teachers

College Press.

Tes (2019). Pedagogy Focus: What is pedagogy?(on-line).

https://www.tes.com/news/pedagogy-focus-what-is-pedagogy-definition. Accessed 10 August

2019.