"Play-Way” Pupils Found More Original

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30540, 8 September 1964, Page 1

"Play-Way” Pupils Found More Original

A world authority on the education of young children has spent the last two years re-examining the “free-choice” activity period—sometimes called the “play-way”—in British nursery and infant schools and finds that its products later out-shine their fellows in originality and inventiveness. She predicts that these will be the adults who bring most new ideas to both letters and science.

Miss D. E. M. Gardner, reader in child development at the London University Institute of Education, said in Christchurch yesterday that her investigation was. admittedly on the classes of “good teachers,” but she was convinced that this free-choice period of an hour to 90 minutes a day (common in both British and New Zealand infant schools) was now vindicated from much criticism.

Miss Gardner said the freechoice period might be used by children for drawing, modelling, acting, building, reading, talking and many other activities of their own invention. Her investigation had two major aspects: (1) changes in attitude which occurred at different age levels and which required a change in participation by teachers; (2) the later performance of “free-choice” pupils compared with those who had only traditional formal infant work. The role of the teacher was vital. Miss Gardner said. The extremists held on the one hand that the teacher should constantly prompt and guide in the free-choice period and, on the other, that the teacher should not interfere at all. The ideal was somewhere in between, the teacher leaving children to choose activities freely and then putting forward leading questions and suggestions. “The best teachers are not

conscious that they are doing this. It comes naturally and is better for it,” said Miss Gardner. The investigation showed that five, six and seven-year-olds appreciated quite different teacher participation. The phenomenon hinged on “work maturity at six.” Children of five liked praise for their appearance and other personal features. At six there was a sudden desire for encouragement or recognition of their work. “They don’t want it discussed; they want to get on with it,” Miss Gardner said. By the age of seven they wanted to talk about it and collect other ideas. The highlight was that six-year-olds, markedly more busy with their own affairs, sought less information. Concurrently affection for or interest in the teacher was higher at five and seven. Miss Gardner said that, from all this, teachers might decide that “fives” needed to. be watched closely as their free-choice activities were often symbolic and needed understanding; that “sixes” could be left more to their own devices; and the "sevens” were ready for the stimulation of wise guidance. The second investigation was on children of 10, some

from free-choice infant schools and some from schools which stuck to purely formal teaching. Miss Gardner showed a reporter examples of work by both groups in art, craft and written expression. The freechoice pupils showed astonishing originality and fluency. Miss Gardner has comparative tables of performance in all subjects, judged by experts in each field. The freechoice pupils score heavily. The only subject in which there was no distinct difference was arithmetic to which Miss Gardner feels there is no “carry-over” of skill. She will publish these results in a book Called: “What they’re like at 10." Further Work Miss Gardner said she was now interested to carry this survey into secondary schools because she had a suspicion, that (apart from arithmetic) formal work in primary schools was less important than encouragement for children truly to understand their whole environment. Miss Gardner spoke to a big gathering of teachers last evening, she will address infant workers this evening, and lecture at the University of Canterbury this afternoon.