03Body-19.html

Kathy Sylva

PROFILE

Kathy Sylva describes herself as a developmental psychologist but she is much more. Her work has had an immense impact on early years policy since she came to England in 1975. Today her influence continues through the Effective Provision of Pre-school Education (EPPE) project.

LINKS

How Children Learn 1

Bruner

High/Scope

Her life

An American, Sylva worked with another famous American at Oxford University, Jerome Bruner. Under his direction she worked on a study which came to be known as the Oxford Pre-School Research. At that time relatively few large-scale early years research projects had been developed in this country. Since then she has been engaged in a number of highly influential and prestigious research programmes. Sylva’s early work for her PhD at Harvard University had focused on play. She has commented on what she learnt from this experience, in which she took 180 toddlers out of their playgroup one by one into a play laboratory, in order to test their ability to solve problems. In discussion with Guardian reporter Karen Gold she states that “the irony of dragging children away from a natural learning experience to give them an unnatural learning experience made me realise that I wanted to study children in real settings from then on” - and she has.

The Oxford Pre-school Research Project was a three year study undertaken between 1975 and 1978. Its focus was care for the under-fives - in nursery schools, playgroups, day-care centres and at childminders. Bruner’s focus, as director of the project, was “what is good care?” He himself admitted that the questions raised by his research went far beyond the scope of social scientists and that the team had “been forced to raise questions about fundamental values for which we have no answers” (Bruner 1980). He went on to suggest that he believed that “the questions will themselves be of value”. This has proved to be a rather perceptive view.

Her writing

A book entitled Childwatching at playgroup and nursery school was written by Kathy Sylva as part of the Oxford Pre-school research in the 1980s. The book focused on what young children were actually doing. It is described on The Children’s Society website as ‘questioning an unbridled free play ideology’. Sylva and her colleagues devised a system of tracking a target child and recording their actions and interactions through the use of a code. This process has been used in a number of subsequent research studies and made it possible to gather and analyse a large amount of research data.

Kathy Sylva has described herself as “an ace evaluator”. She describes her pleasure at identifying the patterns that emerge from complex and large scale research data - patterns which make it possible to identify statistically significant trends and indicators. She has been involved in the evaluation of the Peers Early Education Partnership (PEEP) project; the High/Scope programme when it was first introduced into this country; and the Reading Recovery programme.

Currently Sylva is probably best known for her work, alongside Edward Melhuish; Pam Sammons and Iram Siraj-Blatchford, on the EPPE project. This studied 3,000 children as they moved from pre-school into Key Stage 1. The project lasted from 1997 - 2003. Its aim was to identify the most effective forms of pre-school provision. Since that time the same children have been studied as they moved into Key Stage 2. This project is known as the Effective pre-school and Primary Education Project (EPPE3-11). Sylva says of this work “we’ve shown that if a child goes to a really good pre-school, it’s a protection against a not very good primary school.” The project is currently moving into two further phases, namely EPPSE 3-14 and EEPSE 16+ which are looking at the outcomes for students in secondary education.

Her theories and research

The key findings of the EPPE project published in 2003 identified outcomes which are directly related to day-to-day work with young children and their families. These include findings that:

Pre-school experience enhances children’s development. Disadvantaged children gain most, especially if the setting they attend has a good social mix of children.“For a poor child, not going to pre-school (is) like tying their hands behind their backs for the rest of primary school.”
Longer periods of attendance overall improve independence, concentration and the ability to get along with others. Intellectual development is also improved. However full-time provision does not of itself offer advantages over part-time provision.
Good quality provision may be found in all kinds of setting. However it was most consistently high in integrated centres, nursery schools and nursery classes. Settings where staff and particularly managers had higher qualifications offered better outcomes for children. Where appropriately qualified teachers are involved provision is also enhanced.
Opportunities for sustained, shared conversation and thinking with children promote effective learning.
Parents and carers make a real impact on children’s learning. What parents do with children at home makes a difference, and this makes the work of practitioners in influencing and guiding parents vital to children’s long-term success. The project developed a rating scale for the Home Learning Environment. The children of families who scored highly, regardless of income and qualifications, had higher achievements and better social and behavioural outcomes. The index includes:

– Reading to a child

– Teaching songs and rhymes

– Painting and drawing

– Taking children on visits

– Offering opportunities for children to play with friends at home.

Children who play are more effective problem-solvers. They are able to come up with more new ideas and are more relaxed. They have fewer frustrations and less fear of failure. “We get more and more confident that there really is something about play-based and informal education for children before school that really is beneficial. It’s more important that they play than have a formal education.”

Putting the theory into practice

Just as a dripping tap takes time to fill a bucket so the attitudes of the general public, politicians and policy makers cannot be changed overnight. They have however been changed - and continue to do so - in the thirty years since Kathy Sylva came to work in this country. Sylva’s theories are often put into practice at a policy level.

The Oxford Pre-school research project underlined the lack of clear strategic direction for services for young children and commented on the fragmentation both of provision itself and of responsibility for such provision. Its findings were highly controversial at the time since they indicated, for example, that there was insufficient difference between provision in playgroups and in nursery schools to justify the immense difference in cost. It went on to underline the disadvantaging effects of the fact that there were at that time insufficient nursery places for all three and four your olds whose parents wanted it.

Similarly Sylva’s High/Scope work has also influenced practice and policy. The long-term impact of High/Scope which Sylva did much to highlight in this country (see for example her chapter in Early Education Transformed) was to lead to the setting up of Sure Start.

Some of the findings of the EPPE project, such as the need for sustained shared conversation, requires a re-assessment of the way in which staff work with children and can have a direct effect on practice. On the other hand, while you may have no direct control over policy decisions such as children’s attendance patterns, it is important to understand and to be prepared to talk about the impact on children of policy decisions. Early years practitioners are experts in their field and need to feel not only entitled but obliged to let other people know what you know.

Her influence

Sylva’s influence cannot be denied. She has developed research findings which underpin theories and which in turn are being put into practice. Along the way she has developed useful research techniques and found ways to make her research findings accessible to politicians and practitioners. Perhaps her most positive influence has been in enabling politicians and policy makers to understand the issues that face early years education.

Comment

Sylva’s work has often attracted criticism. The publication of the Oxford Pre-school research was critical of existing practice in early childhood care and education. Her work around High/Scope was regarded by many as demonstrating her failure to understand the nature of what has been termed as ‘traditional early childhood curricula’ in this country. The EPPE report, although controversial amongst those working in early childhood care and education, has been highly influential amongst policy makers and practitioners. She has brought hard-edged quantitative research methods to a field of provision that has been traditionally viewed as not open to such methods.

Sylva’s long-term involvement with government has the potential to place her in a difficult position. Recommendations arising from her research about the involvement of qualified teachers in early years settings have not been as readily accepted by politicians as she would have wished. Sylva suggests that this is because it would be expensive to implement. Although the EPPE projects are all government funded she has generally managed to steer a steady course. She supports the government’s record on early years but has not been afraid to challenge on issues. For example, she has challenged some of the early learning goals as overly ambitious for young children. This has been achieved against a background of research objectives which were initially distrusted by many practitioners. However, over time the research process has underlined the importance of play, conversation and social and emotional well-being. Sylva has been and remains highly influential in getting this message across to politicians - she has a voice that is heard and respected.

Points for reflection

Why do you think that children who play might be more effective problem-solvers?
How can (or should) practitioners help parents to improve their ratings on the Home Learning Environment scales?

References

Play: its role in development and evolution Jerome Bruner, A. Jolly and Kathy Sylva, (Pelican Books 1985)

Under Fives in Britain Jerome Bruner (Grant McIntyre 1980)

Childwatching at Playgroup and Nursery School Kathy Sylva (Grant McIntyre 1980)

Assessing quality in the early years Kathy Sylva et al (Trentham Books 2003)

The effective provision of pre-school education (EPPE) project: findings from the pre-school period Kathy Sylva et al (2003) Research brief: RBX15-03 (downloadable from websites shown below)

‘The Role of Research in explaining the past and shaping the future’ Kathy Sylva in Early Education Transformed Lesley Abbott and Helen Moylett (eds) (Falmer Press 1999)

Where to find out more

http://eppe.ioe.ac.uk/eppe