Child development: Vygotsky

Psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) wrote many papers and books about child development. His work focused on three main areas – language and its influence on thought, the zone of proximal development and the social context in which learning takes place. Vygotsky was a constructivist; he believed that a learner builds their knowledge and understanding directly from what they experience.

Vygotsky encouraged people to talk to children and to label what was happening to help them understand abstract concepts. He felt that language was developed through social interaction and saw the effect that adults talking about everyday experiences had not only on a child’s language (their grammar and vocabulary) but also on the formation of ways of thinking and interpreting experiences. He noted that children observed conversations between others and that they use what is said, what is done (both body language and actions) and what is felt to interpret the social situations they observe. Finally Vygotsky observed how children talk to themselves when carrying out tasks to unify action and language, and that this disappears around the age of 7, however it can reappear for difficult tasks. Even adults talk to themselves when faced with something difficult!

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Child development: Friedrich Froebel

Froebel (1782-1852) was one of the very early theorists concerned with play. He believed that it was vital to child development, and that children enjoyed it. He was also the first person to set out a comprehensive theory of how children learn and how others could apply his work. His work is still popular because it allows children to be children, and not progress onto the next stage of development too quickly. He was very interested in the mother-child attachment and pioneered women teachers as well as free play, sensory experiences and plenty of time outdoors.

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Choosing a childcare course

Do you want to improve your CV and get ahead in your career? Courses can be a fantastic way to do this or simply to explore new subjects but there’s a bewildering array out there. Here’s how to narrow it down.

What do you want the course to do?

If you’re hoping that it will lead to a new career you need to make sure that the course is recognised by potential employers. If you just want a bit more information then accreditation and recognition is less important but you still want to be confident that the course content is accurate. Deals through sites like Wowcher and Groupon may look great but they don’t lead to recognised qualifications and you may end up paying money, and putting time in, for nothing.

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Child development: BF Skinner

Burrhus Skinner (1904-1990) was a behavioural theorist whose work was mostly based on experiments carried out on rodents. He believed that animals and people were essentially the same, but that people were simply capable of more sophisticated learning. His argument was that all behaviour is linked to nurture and that behaviour is intrinsically linked to punishment and reward. By punishing negative behaviour and rewarding desirable behaviour an animal or person will learn to behave in the expected way. Skinner, however, prioritised reward over punishment, and advocated breaking things down into achievable steps with plenty of positive reinforcement and reward for each step. His work also influenced education by encouraging the repetition of the same type of sum or word.

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Second interviews, trials and settling in sessions – to pay or not to pay

First interviews are very rarely paid in the nanny industry. The exception would be paying expenses or a weekend long interview, which doubles up as a trial.

Some parents will offer to pay for the time taken for a second interview. Whether you do or not is your choice, but if you didn’t give your children the chance to meet your nanny at a first interview then she’s probably expecting to come back for a second interview, and many nannies won’t accept a job where they’ve not met the children first. Shortlisting candidates is fairly standard, especially in a competitive market, and second interviews are sufficiently common that they count as part of the normal recruitment process. A second interview should remain fairly short, although you might ask your nanny to play with your children or join in the evening routine.

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