It’s not really about dinosaurs…

Children’s fascinations often form a central core of how early childhood education (ECE) educators enable and empower learners; often under the catch-all justification of ‘following children’s interests’. Identifying and supporting these self-defined, and often intense, pursuits of knowledge and information have a long and rich tradition in ECE philosophy and, skilfully guided by adults, enable motivation and curiosity to drive the process and the child’s learning, development and progress.

In the pre-schools of Reggio Emilia the notion of ‘Pregazzioni’ (projects) is carefully negotiated and co-constructed between the educators and the children, and such an episode may last days, weeks or months and could equally involve individuals, groups or the whole class. The focus of this is always going to be invariably and inevitability idiosyncratic and unpredictable, and as ECE educators we are often called upon to update and extend our own knowledge base in order to keep up with the turbocharged trajectory that a child’s interest may take.

For example, a fascination with prehistoric life forms, especially Dinosaurs, is an often predicable feature of ECE provision and accessing the information itself frequently engages children in deep and obsessive research to extend their fascination. Through this, young children become expert palaeontologists, confidently conversant with complex concepts of time and epoch, meta language, classification and description.

So, it might follow that this early interest, and the intense focus it engenders in children, will follow through into their later educational career and adult life. However, taking the example of Dinosaurs as a case study, anecdotal data suggests that this is not the case. Despite the frequency of interest among children in ECE, recent statistics from the USA ⁽¹⁾ indicate that by 2028 there is expected to be around 1800 professional palaeontologists. Given that the USA has an adult working age population of 258.3 million this accounts for roughly 0.0006% of the salaried population, a very low correlation with the frequency of this interest. So, it is clear that a fascination with dinosaurs in ECE rarely turns into the adult career we might predict. Furthermore, anecdotal evidence also suggests that children who followed this fascination in their ECE provision, when asked in later life, do not recall the level of knowledge detail they possessed at the time.

This then poses the questions of what happens to that knowledge, what has been its function, and more directly, how does this represent the nature of children’s interests and fascinations? Working on the assumption that this evidence is consistent, what purpose does supporting these interests have? After all they are not building retrievable knowledge.

It is probably worth, at this point, to briefly explore the nature of knowledge and how this is located with the ECE view of curriculum. Much recent debate has focussed on the concept of a ‘knowledge rich’ curriculum and is increasingly shaping the agenda of statutory requirements with the EYFS Framework and the focus of Inspection by Ofsted.

Core knowledge and sticky knowledge 

Work by E.D. Hirsch ⁽³⁾ , which is aligned to the agenda of ‘cultural capital’ identifies and lists specific core knowledge and facts that should be ‘known’ and remembered by all children in their Kindergarten (ECE) phase. Equally current is the concept of ‘sticky knowledge’⁽²⁾ an assertion that that the more children know, the more they will learn and therefore will be able recall, retrieve and utilise the information.

Some critiques of E.D. Hirch’s work, especially in regard to ECE, have expressed concern that such a clumsy and superficial approach undermines the potential richness and complexity of child’s experience and learning and critically narrows their potential learning and development. However, the suggestion that there are key elements of knowledge that children will need to ‘know’ and be able to recall in order to be successful is less controversial and constitutes the basis of how responsively and appropriately ECE curricula are designed and developed. Although we may dispute the manner in which this learned, and indeed some of the specific content, is taken in, we would agree that our role as educators is to identify what needs to be known. We make decisions as educators, with our wider knowledge of necessity and from and with children, about what needs to be learned and known. From that we shape experiences, opportunities and provision to enable and support children to acquire this effectively.

Equally, while the concept of ‘sticky knowledge’ is also sometimes challenged as overly simplistic within an ECE context, it is, nevertheless, accepted that in order to make connections between different knowledges, the more knowledge that is present, the more connections are likely to be possible. As children build knowledge(s) they make sense of the world around them and reconstruct ideas and beliefs.

This leads us back to the purpose and nature of children’s fascinations, using Dinosaurs as a case study, and how it locates itself within the process of learning, development and progress.

The first distinction to assert here is that between ‘core knowledge’ and ‘personal knowledge’.

Core knowledge and personal knowledge

If we acknowledge the essence of the work of E.D. Hirsch and take a derivative position that there is indeed a necessity for ‘core knowledge’ that ‘should’ be known, then we are ready to engage in the process of defining what that should consist of. In the case of dinosaurs then we probably could argue that there are a set of facts and knowledge that we all should know as it is part of a basic knowledge of natural history and the evolution of the planet. For example; dinosaurs lived millions of years ago, some were carnivores, some were herbivores, we know what size they were from the reconstruction of bones that have been found, and so on. In all elements of the curriculum, and indeed the arena of knowledge, there are core facts that ‘should’ be known.

This in turn leads us to the concept of ‘personal knowledge’. In any areas of knowledge we follow have a personal interest or fascination, the subject piques our motivation to find out more and we become more interested, enthused and specialist, or even expert, in the arena. We immerse ourselves in the ‘sticky knowledge’ that enables this and go far and beyond the core knowledge of what we might define as what ‘should’ be known. In the dinosaurs example, this is precisely what children do. They add to any basic core knowledge and learn the names of the different epochs and periods when different creatures existed, they engage with the theories of how the dinosaurs died, they learn the names and classifications, their dietary and territorial or migratory habits, how theories of this evolved from the scientific study of the artefacts and geological clues that remained and were discovered. Within this the knowledge is secure, albeit well beyond what is ‘needed’, but as discussed it is debatable as to whether it remains and is always retrievable, so, inexorably it leads us back to questioning the purpose of this.

So what is the purpose of personal knowledge? 

As the title suggests, by contention at this point is that following (and supporting) an interest or fascination is not primarily about developing what might be temporary knowledge – however sophisticated and well-motivated.

The purpose of developing personal knowledge in ECE is to secure and build the cognitive schema and architecture of being a successful and skilled learner. In following an interest, a body of knowledge is inevitably established, but it is the process of establishing this where the real purpose lies.

The motivation behind such interests enable children to process and organise knowledge and facts, research and pursue information, evaluate theories and apply them to the knowledge they have, develop meta language and specific technical vocabulary and the ability and confidence to recall and retrieve long and complex names like Diplodocus or Brontosaurus while identifying key and unique features for each. They learn how to use the information to express, communicate and represent ideas in multimodal ways, refining their approaches to discuss, hypothesise and explore ideas around the knowledge they are retrieving. Whether they retain the knowledge on a long term basis ceases to be the objective and purpose.

What they are learning is how to be a learner

Central to that learning, in the case of personal knowledge, is the refining and development of ‘learning behaviours’ that enable them to drive the pursuit of immersing themselves in the knowledge and information of exactly what it is that intrigues and fascinates them. Although this is not making the presence of the knowledge ‘secondary’ in any way, it is acknowledging that it is driven by, and therefore consolidates the learning behaviours required to achieve this. This motivational drive secures precisely the attributes and competencies that enable the foundational structure of effective learning and development to be secured.

As educators, our role here is to use personal knowledge as a context to develop precisely the behaviours that will shape and enable brain development and learning potential. Through pursuing personal knowledge, children develop behaviours such as their meta cognition, executive functioning, cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, self-regulation and retrieval, alongside the equally apparent and more visible Areas of Learning and Development within the English Statutory Curriculum (EYFS, 2021), such as Language and Communication, Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Physical Development and a range of Specific Areas of Learning that support different elements as required. It is precisely the intense motivation that enables this, and by this fascination they will demonstrate Csikszentmihalyi’s description of ‘flow’⁽⁴⁾ and Ferre Leavers concept of ‘High Levels of Involvement’⁽⁵⁾.

Supporting children’s fascinations and interests remains a critical way in which their learning progresses the curriculum that is delivered. By ensuring that the distinction between the purposes of core knowledge and personal knowledge is understood, educators can enable children to fully develop their competencies as effective and potent learners.