Young children explore: critical thinking for the Early Years

Dr Jane Murray explains how her PhD research can help practitioners recognise and evaluate young children's explorations as critical thinkers

Strengthening the impact of case studies through the use of a digital medium

This workshop provides an opportunity for delegates to explore their understanding of an aspect of Validated Prior Learning in higher education through the medium of film. The use of case studies is identified as valuable exemplification to support our understanding of complex structures and environments (Bassey 1999). By adopting a framework for exploring key issues in Validated Prior Learning we can draw comparisons across themes in single case studies and between multiple case studies. This may highlight particular structures and environmental features that can contribute to successful quality assurance, lifelong learning and societal integration. It may also identify inhibiting factors. Thus critical success factors for implementing VPL are revealed through case studies. By adopting an innovative digital medium such findings can be revealed more clearly to a wider audience then using traditional dissemination. In this workshop delegates will have opportunities to explore the power of Validated Prior Learning by story planning ahead of disseminating case studies through such tools as Videoscribe

Young children’s research behaviours: teachers and parents as help or hindrance?

Interest concerning children’s capacity as researchers has increased in recent years yet tends to focus on adults’ agenda and older children. Conducted in England, the Young Children as Researchers (YCaR) study frames young children as competent agents in research by conceptualising ways that they may be warranted as researchers in their everyday activities at home and at school. The YCAR study was guided by a value orientation concerned with troubling young children’s exclusion from the academy; in turn this drove a qualitative pluralist methodology and particular ethical considerations. 138 children aged 4-8 years participated in the YCAR study, joined by their teachers, families and professional researchers. This paper focuses on ways that teachers and parents affected children’s engagements in research behaviours which were revealed as congruent with those of professional adult researchers. The YCaR findings carry messages regarding children’s rights to be respected as researchers in matters affecting them

Inclusive childcare services for children with disabilities in England: review of conditions, standards and practice

The most recent UNICEF (2013) publication on the state of the world’s children is dedicated to the rights of children with disabilities to an education and a meaningful and productive life. The report stresses the importance of building an educational system based on the fundamental principles of inclusion, which are the respect for the rights, aspirations and potential of all children. While inclusion has been practiced and researched in primary and secondary school, much still needs to be done with regard to childcare provision. Despite envisaged changes and setback, concerns for improving childcare’s conditions, provision and offer remain pivotal issues both in relation to educational practice and to the need of the economy. Thus, it is not surprising that considerations about the importance of early childhood education and care (ECEC) have grown considerably in the last three decades in England, in Europe and at the wider international level

Using eSkel to Implement the Multiple Baseline Stereo Application

We give an overview of the Edinburgh Skeleton Library eSkel, a structured parallel programming library which offers a range of skeletal parallel programming constructs to the C/MPI programmer. Then we illustrate the efficacy of such a high level approach through an application of multiple baseline stereo. We describe the application and show different ways to introduce parallelism using algorithmic skeletons. Some performance results will be reported