Living in a Sustainable World
A central theme of young children’s learning must be about the sustainability of their
lives, the lives of others (human and non-human) and the world (Taylor and Giugni,
2012). The learning of the individual child is relational interdependent to everything
and everyone. If children (and professionals) are engaged in learning processes and
environments that are narrow, universalized, limiting and excessively monitored, young
children’s living and learning will not be sustainable, and will be a pale shadow of what it
could be.
In the current highly uncertain political and cultural climate, early years development and
learning that focuses on sustainable living and learning is necessary more than it has ever
been. This in turn requires different, creative and critical approaches to early years
experience that consider the actualities of the world in which children live, and the best
ways to create learning milieu x that attend to these realities.
Conclusion
This Early Years Framework is a very long way from being a ‘manual of practice’, and it
will likely disappoint those who are looking for such a document. As the great scientist
and humanitarian Albert Einstein once poignantly wrote, ‘The world we have created is a
product of our thinking. If we want to change the world, we have to change our
thinking…. We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we
created them.’ (our italics) Thus, to have uncritically ‘bought into’ the curricular,
stipulation ideology of the EYFS by creating a ‘better EYFS’ would have been to merely
reinforce the current malaise, rather than aspiring to transcend it.
Many people are now striving to embrace a new paradigm, but ways of thinking can take
much longer to change; after all, most of us have been strongly conditioned into
‘separative’ and compartmentalized thinking. To give an example, we may recognize that
play is nature’s fundamental mode of learning, but to speak of ‘directed’ or ‘structured’
play could be construed as a contradiction of that understanding. In the early years at
least, it is important for there to be a clearer understanding of what is meant by ‘learning
through play’, where the multiple engagements of the child are given central place in
showing the best way forward. Play might then be defined as all those activities which
evoke in the young child a sense of well-being, which are related to potential, and which
are seen to satisfy their internal developmental wishes and drives – even though to us,
these may still be mysterious.
This document intentionally possesses an inherent flexibility: it could, and hopefully will,
exist as an early years framework document in its own right for those fortunate enough to
be working in permissive, non-statutory professional environments; and it can also be
used alongside other curricular documents in order to galvanize and inspire practitioners
to temper the worst aspects of such didactic, professionally dis empowering approaches. It
is also very much an emerging document, in whose future development we would wish
all practitioners, academics etc. to feel able to participate – in other words, a living
document which will always be ‘in process’. For we do not believe that anyone
(including ourselves) has either the right or the capability to lay down a didactic,
universal document that will effectively capture all that is germane to the subtle, complex
and sometime mysterious world of early childhood.
At the very least, we commend Unhurried Pathways as one possible, thoughtful
contribution towards an urgently needed ‘new paradigm’ for early childhood. Half a
century, to the year, after the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s seminal book, The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions, in which the term ‘paradigm’ was first coined, for Early
Childhood Action and its many supporters, such a new paradigm cannot come soon
enough.