Practices/7, Wales: Foregrounding Relationships in Classroom Practices Framing Children’s Learning: Case Studies from Two Primary School Classrooms in Wales

Abstract

This contribution examines how two class-teachers frame and manage classroom learning to present the curriculum to the children. Through everyday interactions between teachers and children, children and their peers, relationships develop to form the socio-cultural context of classroom learning. Children contribute to the plurality and richness of discourses in these contexts, but the class teachers take the lead role in selecting and guiding the discourses of interactions they share with the children. Foregrounding relationships when framing the curriculum to provide sensitive classroom discourses of inclusion support children’s ‘social identities’ to encourage their involvement in learning. Through active participation, the ‘habits of mind’ (Katz LG, Raths JD, Teach Teach Educ 1:301–307, 1985), the ‘participation repertoires’, (Carr M, Assessment in early childhood settings-learning stories. Paul Chapman Publishing, London, 2001) children can develop strong ‘learner identities’ and with their ‘self-determination’ strengthen their ‘learning dispositions’. The level of ‘autonomy’ afforded to children in their learning is dependent on the format of the lessons. Group work allows far more peer interaction and ‘autonomy’ for children’s learning.