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Understanding behaviour and development in early childhood: a guide to theory and practice
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | House, Richard |
| Copyright Year | 2012 |
| Abstract | strate that children are alert and sensitive readers, actively working to make increasingly nuanced sense of the images and stories they encounter. It shows how children use adults, as more experienced learners, to assist them in their construction of understandings and responses to what they encounter. The book, though 242 pages long, actually consists of only 139 pages of argument. The remaining pages are an appendix of the raw data, together with bibliography and index. Although written with great enthusiasm, the book suffers from a weak organisation of ideas. It might have been better to offer the reader, at the start of the book, some contextualising strands of theory against which the data might be iterated. As it is, there are references to literature and concepts scattered through the chapters, which, although intended to support her findings, often feel rather clumsily woven into discussion. Many references felt as though they had been dropped in to show a breadth of reading rather than to support an argument – references to Goya (p. 33) and Atwood (p. 43) were two particularly grating examples of this. I felt that the rich data gathered were underexplored and often minimally discussed, with a sense of res ipsa loquitur, which, sadly, they did not. I wondered, too, how valid some of Toomey’s claims were: often she seemed to make assertions without fully sustaining a reliable argument for them. Ultimately, I felt that her claims to reliability were seriously undermined by a descriptive narrative of the data; unreferenced assertion; failure to explore alternative understandings of the data; and an apparent desire to make the data fit her argument. The conclusion is more fluid and nuanced than the rest of the book: it raises questions and issues that those involved in English education need to consider carefully, if for no other reason than to guide them away from prescriptive book lists. Overall, this is an interesting and worthwhile study which might benefit from a more nuanced exploration in the context of, rather than being made to match, the literature. I found myself frequently wanting to challenge interpretations of the presented data and to seek alternative interpretations. Nevertheless, the book is an interesting contribution to the field of early literacy development, and to understandings of what kinds of sense young children make of their interactions with others, both fictional and real. |
| Starting Page | 245 |
| Ending Page | 247 |
| Page Count | 3 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1080/09575146.2012.688283 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://feeling-good.me/understanding-behaviour-and-development-in-early-childhood-a-guide-to-theory-and-practice.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2012.688283 |
| Volume Number | 32 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
