The Development Of High-Quality Interaction And Thinking Alongside The Extension Of Child-Initiated Learning Into Key Stage One: A Whole School Initiative

A UK East Midlands urban infant (four to seven years) school is working to design, implement and evaluate a new pedagogy across all three year groups in the school. The focus is on the implementation of a negotiated progressive skills matrix, centred on continuous and enhanced provision and on creating high-quality interactions between adults and children in the child-initiated activity which took place there. Children are encouraged to plan their own use of the provision, sometimes to initiate the activity and negotiate the time spent in that area. This first stage is intended to inform a fuller evaluation of the new pedagogy across the following year. While other research has focused on the nature of childinitiated activity and more structured play in the Early Years Foundation Stage phase, this investigation addresses the difficult issue of progression to age seven and provides both theoretically underpinned pedagogy and an account of a nonhierarchical approach to change.