CHILD

In the following section, based on the learning from this research, a model is proposed which is intended to address a variety of factors crucial to learning improvement. This model, depicted in figure 8.2, is derived from a variety of aspects both addressed in the critique of the literature and other aspects which have been investigated through this research. It transpired from this research that effective learning and development outcomes are heavily dependant on macro aspects, driven by government guidance and interventions in preparing the ground for educational models to cater for children’s growth and development in a continuous and sustainable manner. Furthermore, schools have been found to have a key enabling role by preparing the right climate, developing the right models of learning and nurturing children’s absorption of knowledge in the right way and with the right final outcomes.

The proposed model is described in the following sections. It is dependent on three things:

The government is concerned with improvement of standards and therefore its role is to establish the vision for learning and raising standards of children’s education. The role of the government is to raise standards through guidance, research, policies and setting realistic standards based on children reaching their full potential. Learning is driven by government policy and clear vision and providing learning opportunities for all intending to raise standards and reach full potential (excellence).

The Child Centric Learning Effectiveness Cycle (CCLEC)

Figure 8.2

Click on the image to enlarge

The goal should be to create a flowing approach which focuses on high impact and high standards of effectiveness. The resources, strategies, interventions should be channelled at targeting the child and thereby enhancing the ability of the child to learn effectively – and not on the peripheral areas around the child, as has mostly been the case. The CCLEC (Child Centric Learning Effectiveness Cycle) is termed child centric which means all the endeavours have to be appropriate, holistic, developmentally sound, customised, fruitful learning experiences for the children.

The Learning Model is driven by four major elements which include: Enablement, Enrichment, Enhancement and Effectiveness.

This is the role of leadership. It is about creating the right environment that can facilitate and induce an efficient learning experience, about providing the necessary resources and the materials i.e. the hard factors. The government needs to channel interventions and initiatives on sound education and child centred bases. It needs to consider carefully the developmental aspects of the child and perhaps reconsider its policies on the age at which academic subjects are appropriate to be introduced and when the child’s readiness to learn is priority, and therefore, when developmental and emotional skills should be the key focus of the teachers. The compulsory starting age for school is six in nineteen European countries, including France and Germany, and seven in a further eight countries, including Sweden and Poland. The telegraph reported that:

‘American research recently found that children who had "teacher-led, academic lessons" at the age of five did not display "lasting academic advantage" over those who began later. Moreover, they were more likely to suffer emotional problems as adults’. (The Telegraph, 2003)

Professor Brook’s report on the DfES phonics seminar (2003) touched on the issue of the age of starting formal/compulsory education and he too referred to studies which implied that earlier starting ages ultimately result in lower levels of reading ability.

The environment of the school has to be conducive to learning as well. For example, there is much background noise in a classroom generated by several types of sources: heavy traffic, adjacent classrooms or corridors, uncarpeted floors, chair bottom squeaks and fans in the air conditioning system. Acoustically inadequate classrooms are one of the most insidious factors that are contributing to the countless numbers of students who have graduated from high school without the skill of being able to read and write. According to Elliot (1982) what is of major importance is the need to develop an education and learning model that allocates the school’s resources in the right way and ensures that the goal is always to focus on the children and their learning experience.

These are the core aspects such as curriculum design, pedagogy and learning styles and teacher effectiveness. These should be well researched and appropriate intervention strategies, such as Reading Recovery, employed. The strategies used by the teachers should empower the teachers and enthuse the teachers and should be realistic. The child needs to be at the core. For example, teachers need to be trained as to how a child learns and aspects of the brain which are central to learning. This will bring in elements such as the importance of using a variety of learning styles in teaching, as more is understood about how the brain works with regards to learning.

Staffs need to be motivated and enthused and strategies that help control and manage the behaviour of the children need to be a core part of teacher training. Striking the right balance between creative, academic and practical subjects is vital since the emphasis is on the well-being and development of the whole child. The teachers need to be helped to manage the workload which should be kept to a manageable amount, for example, eliminating unnecessary paperwork or meetings. Parents need to be involved in supporting their children. Creating the right ethos for educating children and providing the necessary requirements conducive to learning, such as healthy diet and physical exercise, should be part of the education of both the parents and the children.

A key area needs to be incorporated in the curriculum that develops and addresses emotional intelligence as well as academic intelligence, and physical literacy as well as literacy. The impact and importance of emotional intelligence is not only in being able to learn effectively but about children managing their learning and becoming responsible for their learning.

Developmentally, children need to be ready to learn and areas such as auditory processing and primitive reflexes need to be considered carefully, since they enable the child to learn efficiently and effectively. This does not mean that problems related to specific reading difficulties are not found in other areas (coordination problems, left right confusions, sequencing problems, several problems related to vision, problems with postural control and primitive reflexes to mention some) as shown in research (Zeffiro and Eden, 2000) and documented by Bein-Wierzbinski (2001), Goddard (1996), Nicolson and Fawcett (1994, 1995, 1999), Sohlman (2000), and by Stein (2001). Also by Sperling et al. (2003), Stein (2001, 2003), Talcott, et al., (2000) and Talcott et al., (2003).

The training for assessment and implementation of programmes if required needs to occur either at school level or teacher training level. All of these, teacher factors, factors with curriculum, factors with pedagogy, factors with learning styles, and factors with intervention (holistic improvements) – are of vital importance if the issue of raising child learning is to be addressed effectively and in a sustainable fashion.

The learning experience cannot be left on its own, with the underlying assumptions that because resources, policies and interventions are in place, effectiveness will ensue. This was one major criticism of previous strategies that have not worked, as well as the fact that they were not child centred. The purpose of this enhancement, as a key component of this cycle, is to ensure that interventions, approaches, methods and strategies implemented have a positive effect on learning experience and therefore, are more likely to yield the desired outcomes. Basically, specific performance improvement evaluations have to be an integral aspect of any enrichment mix that is proposed. Enhancement of the learning experience is a key element of verifying and validating the appropriateness of the learning strategy adopted and the usefulness of any method or best practice approach that a school seems to adopt.

Child centre standards of improvement need to be established and any likely improvements noted and verified. This can be done through testing or assessments such as tests that assess the developmental stage of the child or the incidence of any aberrant reflexes which could affect learning. These might include:

In Sweden, for example, children are screened for deficits in attention, motor control and perception at 6 years of age. These are factors that impact on preparedness for school and include language abilities and auditory processing skills. Therefore, children should be screened on entry to school.

All of the above tests assess whether the child is developmentally ready to learn effectively as discussed previously. In addition, emphasis must be placed on helping the child develop emotionally as well. This is more likely if the child is in control of his or her physical and can then wrestle with the emotional world and then, finally, with the academic world.

This component reflects the final performance outcomes that schools and government seek to attain. This is how children can achieve benchmarking standards in the form of specific standards. These might not be the ones already in use. For example, the ability of the child to coordinate the body and eyes has a bearing on the child’s ability to read effectively and efficiently, or on his readiness to read and ultimately literacy levels, just as the child’s developmental ability to control his bladder has an impact on how quickly he can be potty trained.. Similarly if the child’s short-term working memory has an impact on his overall performance as suggested in this study, or the child’s auditory processing ability impacts on his ability to read, also as suggested in this study, these factors must be considered in standard-setting.

Since the CCLEM is proposed as an integrated, flowing approach, causal relationships can be established throughout the model, thus reflecting effectiveness not only as a final outcome but also through the knock on effect or causal impact that can be generated.

For instance, it would be established through this model whether enablement approaches used in school are having the effect of making the learning experience better (enrichment). It would also be checked whether an enrichment strategy is actually improving the learning experience, and finally whether the learning experiences are positively managed and it could be expected therefore that the standards independently set can be easily achieved. Therefore the CCLEM depicted in fig 8.2 is based on the following:

The proposed model has an additional component which helps render the learning experience more dynamically oriented and therefore constantly subjected to innovation, change and improvement. This component is referred to on the CCLEM and at its heart is the drive to fulfil each child’s potential. There are four stages to this, evaluation, energizing, experimentation and examination, in a closed loop approach.

This closed loop cycle can help schools evaluate and scrutinise each aspect of the CCLEM and modify add, enhance or introduce new ideas that will assist in making each of the key components more robust, more effective and producing higher impact throughout the cycle (like a hologram). This is done through a constant cycle of baseline evaluation (where are we now), gap identification and remedies (energizing). By having a focus on the key areas where the improvement or change might be required and under a final examination of the impact generated, the drive for achieving full potential can be continued and the overall effectiveness of the CCLEM cycle can be generated.

Current approaches used in schools, as far as learning effectiveness is concerned, tend to be missing the closed loop cycle which drives the improvement. In other words investment in raising standards, investment in new interventions and methods are done through a ‘hit and miss’ approach. The improvement cycle will assist schools in managing learning as a core process, in an intelligent, highly focused and common sense and controlled manner. It offers the following prompts and directional points.

By doing an experiment in a holistic way and looking at whether the interventions worked or not, the indications are that it is possible to enhance the learning experience of children, if the focus is on the child and everything that is designed and implemented is geared towards providing each child with a unique customized appropriate experience, since causal relationships can be established.

The complete experience of schools is the drive to achieve children’s full potential and provide foundations for future learning effectiveness so that the government can benefit from helping to raising the achievement levels of children and the standard of education generally. The cross fertilisation and exchanges between various schools through the sharing of best practices can also be a mechanism for enhancing and raising school standards. In other words, this is an integrated perspective and a dynamic closed loop approach. It is recommended that all the key stakeholders contribute in the formulation of learning and development for the future of all children, and that learning strategies in all schools are implicated through a generic integrated, flowing and child-centric model, incorporating internal and external influences.

The dynamic and closed loop approach of the model means that constant guidance, monitoring, measurement and an action orientated mindset is applied at all school leadership levels. Finally, the model suggests that outcomes will have relevance and significance and can provide the capabilities for moving further the innovative cycle of learning in the future.

This chapter was concerned with the interpretations of the key findings emerging from the data analysis and had the main purpose of discussing the key outcomes. In relation to the various discussions, the following emerged:

Several of the key outcomes from the study were consistent with similar research. Other authors searching for child focused interventions and researching the impact on learning capacity and improvement in performance have found similar outcomes. In particular, the following results are worthy of mention. The tests used to measure crystallised intelligence showed (apart from the class exposed to the sound intervention) that there was no improvement; this leads to the conclusion that the interventions used in this study have only a part to play and that remediation and other strategies such as the ones put in place by the government have a role to play in raising child learning. There was more of an impact on the tests that were designed to measure memory (forward and backward digit span test) and therefore the assumption is that if this is raised, learning will become more effective, as will the implementation of any strategies and teaching.

Whilst the SIMPLE programme may be able to help increase the readiness of children to learn, it should not be seen as an alternative to good sound teaching. The results of the present study suggest that the use of sound and movement may have an impact on raising children’s performance particularly with regard to memory and, in the case of the sound therapy in reading, but remediation and teaching is absolutely a core part. In a nutshell the movement programme may be able to alleviate some of the underlying problems that could affect reading, but not actually teach reading.

First, the study findings have shown that the movement programme had a positive effect on the overall performance of the children. This may have occurred because of the link with the primitive reflexes and learning challenges consistent with the findings of other studies. This leads to two recommendations:

Firstly, in the quest to raise children’s learning and performance, any problems in this area need to be assessed and addressed just as in the case of reading and numeracy skills. Studies have shown that reflexes have been implicated in the ability to read successfully. Since these reflexes have an effect on the eyes in aspects such as sacadding (smooth pursuit of the eyes) and tracking binocular fusion, accommodation, convergence and divergence, there should also be an assessment in this areas to assess whether the eyes are functioning, mechanically, as well as they can be. Also, the vestibular system (balance) may have been affected positively. Studies have shown that this is implicated in the ability to read successfully and the recommendation again is for this area to be assessed and addressed.

Secondly, it is evident from the findings that scores on both forward and backward digit tests improved. These reflect working memory which has been implicated in raising children’s learning, both in this study and in others. This has implications for the type of assessment that is carried out at the start of a child’s schooling and the necessary steps taken to improve any shortfalls. Working memory affects cognition and this is involved in all complex learning situations, such as those in acquiring literacy and numeracy skills.

Thirdly, the sound intervention findings showed an improvement in reading and this may have occurred due to improved auditory processing and plasticity of the neural networks. In the report of the National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000) it is recommended that reading programmes should cover five domains: phonological awareness, phonics in reading and writing, work on fluency, vocabulary and finally comprehension. The findings presented in this study lead to a recommendation of a sixth “domain”, adequate auditory processing ability. The new Early Years Foundation Stage that will be implemented from 2008 will require high quality phonic work so any auditory problems need to be addressed if children are to fully reap the benefit of this strategy.

The two findings above imply that the assessment and provision of proven movement programmes and sound therapy in the first year of children’s schooling is highly recommended between ages five and seven as foundation skills of reading are most easily learned (Kantrowitz and Underwood, 1999) at this time. Similarly, since Kraus et al., (1999) found that auditory discrimination skills are largely developed by age six; it would seem prudent at this age to test whether they have developed and run a remedial programme if required.

Fourthly, the findings in this present research showed that the movement intervention which was conducted as a Physical Education lesson and was designed to include all the national curriculum requirements had a positive effect on the learning of the children. Although Physical Education is not regarded as a core subject, these findings suggest that it is a fundamental and vital part of children’s development, which has more extensive and far-reaching effects then originally thought. It therefore needs to be included, not just for the impact that it has on the cognitive functions of the children but also because of the following:

Fifthly, the findings showed that the sound therapy had a positive effect on reading. Therefore, another aspect that needs to be considered (apart from auditory processing), is that the learning environment should present listening conditions which are favourable and conducive to learning. This should be taken into account in designing the acoustics of the school environment. If auditory processing is impeded this have implications for aspects of the enablement of pupils.

Sixthly, the study findings have pointed to the child being a core aspect of raising standards and attainment. This, therefore, means that interventions need to be child centric, to enhance the capacity of the child to learn.

Finally, based on the overall findings of this study, a proposed integrated generic model as a holistic way of raising children learning and performance was developed. Detailed descriptions and illustrations were given in chapter 8 for the workings of the key elements of the model, based on the study findings and a comprehensive review of the literature.

1.4.1 Theoretical contribution

The theoretical body of knowledge, as far as movement and sound interventions are concerned, is still in its early stages. Even though private therapists and clinics, as well as some schools, have attempted in various ways to implement movement and sound programmes few of them are not based on a specific theoretical foundation. This study can be considered as a step towards theory building. It has integrated a large body of relevant literature, and unified diverse schools of thought. In particular, the study has been uniquely effective in identifying and describing some components that could make up a holistic approach to raising children’s learning and performance. Not only did this study provide an empirical assessment of the two interventions, but it also assessed the implications of putting them together as an integrated approach based. It also gave a comprehensive review of the concepts and theories behind the movement and sound interventions to date.

The study has also indicated that raising children’s potential for learning and improving performance is complex and multidimensional. The government and schools have found this endeavour challenging in terms of sustainability, maximum impact and transferability. Efforts have swung from a top down to bottom up approach and to a combination of the two. Policy so far has disregarded the importance of the intervention being targeted at the underlying problems of the children. The findings from this study suggest that the child is crucial in raising standards and sustainable learning and performance. The way forward seems to lie in a holistic, child-centric perspective, based on the child developmental aspects which in turn affect the child’s academic achievement. This calls for a new way of assessing the needs of the child and new perspectives in addressing these needs.

1.4.2 Methodological contribution

The study employed quantitative techniques to investigate the research questions in a school setting with tests that teachers could relate to. The quantitative study provided useful information for further studies and also showed that these kinds of studies can be conducted in schools with minimum disruptions. Since the study was of a quasi-experimental nature, this has an advantage over pure experiments, because it was conducted in the natural setting and since programme effects were found it can be assumed that at least we can be confident that these work in real schools and classrooms, with all their complexity, and not solely in laboratory settings. Consequently, this study has contributed to the methodology of research on raising children’s learning by demonstrating that it is possible to implement movement and sound programme in schools.

1.4.3 Practical contribution

The findings of this study are important and relevant to different sized schools in different areas, and different samples of children. The research has provided an insight into new and innovative ways that can be used to raise children’s learning and performance. Despite the numerous interventions that the government has put into place in the last decade, the issue of raising children’s performance is complex and an on-going concern. Consequently, this study has recognised a series of critical aspects in the link between the child’s development and learning that must be carefully considered to ensure raising children’s educational standards. These factors culminated in the proposed generic model. Taking into account the various dimensions of CCLEM model will help schools ensure that children’s needs are being met in a holistic way.

Generally, the generic model proposed by this study could enhance the current practices of schools in trying to raise children’s performance and meet the government’s demands. This was in contrast to past initiatives which have not targeted the child as an integral part of the process of raising performance and have mostly been peripheral approaches around the child. In essence, the results of this research will help schools to take a more holistic and wider approach in the implementation of strategies and initiatives to achieve the children’s full potential and to address the underlying problems that children may be facing, before going on to teach the children the skills required for a successful school career.

Further research is needed to expand the findings from this study and to provide more conclusive answers. Despite its attempt to be exhaustive and cover a broad area of research, there are many areas in which future research is needed. Nevertheless, the results of this study might be of value to government policy makers as well as for schools and researchers. For government’s policy makers, they may be able to examine the types of intervention and initiatives and the targets for these being to identify the underlying causes for schools. Results from this study can be used as guidelines and useful input for drafting future policies and strategies aimed at raising children’s learning standards.

For researchers, the findings of this study provide a starting point for further research in this area. In particular, for researchers concentrating on holistic interventions in schools, the approach adopted in this research might be useful. The findings also serve as a documented piece of research in a school setting of which, to date, there has been very little research so far.

In conclusion, this research project was intended to provide both theoretical and practical insights into the implementation of holistic programmes in a school setting and its impact on raising learning standards. Identifying one key success factor is unfeasible and ambiguous, due to the complexity of raising children’s learning. However, this research found several factors specifically that the developmental stage and other aspects such as auditory processing ability are vital to determine whether the child is ready and able to learn effectively. When these underlying causes are identified and remediated, the child can benefit from the various and numerous interventions and strategies and initiatives that the government is implementing in schools.

This study has presented a holistic review of innovative and different interventions through a comprehensive scrutiny of the relevant literature, and a study of four parallel classes. It has provided a detailed discussion of critical factors involved in the raising of children’s learning potential and performance in a generic model, depicted in Figure 8.2. The proposed model, the Child Centric Learning Effectiveness Cycle (CCLEC) is aimed at helping the drive for excellence towards raising children’s learning and performance. In essence, adhering to the various levels of application of the model could ensure that schools can derive maximum benefits from the implementation of the government’s initiatives and this would ultimately benefit the children academically, developmentally and emotionally. The CCLEC is termed child centric which means all the endeavours have to be appropriate, holistic, developmentally sound, customised, fruitful learning experiences for the children.

Finally, it is hoped that the research findings presented in this research will boost school effectiveness and can help tackle the underlying causes that may affect their successful implementation of related initiatives. Although various government initiatives were aimed at raising standards, to date, they have ignored the underlying cause. Changes have concentrated on national curriculum, schools inspections, League tables, assessment procedures, target setting literacy and numeracy strategies, performance management, benchmarking etc. The proposed model emphasises the importance of empowerment and child-centric approaches in helping to raise children’s capacity to learn in a way that dovetails easily with existing strategies.

It is hoped that the research findings presented can help by addressing the underlying problems that children may have. To use a computer as a metaphor for the brain by metaphorically raising the capacity of the “computer” to learn and not just loading it with more and more powerful software in the hope that it will work better. Other interventions and perspectives apart from the ones studied here need to be considered, as well as other approaches. Since this is an exploratory research only replication of the current findings will enable firm conclusions to be drawn. Finally, prevention is by far the most effective solution and early identification and intervention of problems, can lead to increases not only in children’s capacity to learn but also in their self- esteem, confidence and being.