Opening and closing interactive spaces: shaping four‐year‐old children's participation in two English settings

This paper draws on an ESRC‐funded study (Payler, 2005 Payler, J. K. 2005. Exploring foundations: sociocultural influences on the learning processes of four year old children in a pre‐school and reception class Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Southampton, UK [Google Scholar]) of the sociocultural influences on learning processes of 10 four‐year‐old children in their second year of the Foundation Stage in England (DfEE, 2000 Department for Education and Employment (DfEE). 2000. Curriculum guidance for the foundation stage, London: DfEE/QCA. [Google Scholar]). The children, very close in age, were in one of two early years settings: a pre‐school playgroup with a largely invisible pedagogy (Bernstein, 1996 Bernstein, B. 1996. Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique, London: Taylor & Francis. [Google Scholar]) and a reception class in a primary school with a more visible pedagogy. In this paper, children′s experiences in specific teaching and learning episodes are used to examine how the pedagogies of the settings created open or closed interactive spaces; inviting, building on or limiting children′s contributions. The study considers a range of communicative modes (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001 Kress, G. and Van Leeuwen, T. 2001. Multimodal discourse: the modes and media of contemporary communication, London: Arnold. [Google Scholar]) used in creating interactive space. It draws on diagrams, outline drawings from video stills and detailed transcription incorporating gaze, body positioning, tone of voice and use of resources to explore factors involved in shaping children′s interactive learning experiences. The findings suggest that although both early years settings worked to the same Foundation Stage curriculum, their sub‐cultures of pedagogy ensured that the curriculum was differently enacted in each, offering quite distinct interactive opportunities for children in which learning was mediated in different ways. This resulted in different learning outcomes according to children′s positions as the youngest or oldest in a cohort and to adults′ perceptions of their abilities.