Starting with the questions...

I am starting this blog to help me to understand and expand my own ideas about what a competent and powerful child is, what that looks like, what it consists of.

My first question was: How do teachers understand children's capabilities and how do they map that into their teaching? But then I realized that there is no real definition of 'competence' per se--research has been done of social competence and its impact on how children do in school but the idea that teachers might have a more global understanding of the competence of children to work on and effect the world has not been explored.

I should explain the origin of this idea of competence. It is a principle of the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education that teachers view children as competent beginning with the idea that they are able and ready to ask meaningful questions and that they can have the ability to actively explore the world for understanding. It is quite opposite of the deficit model that views children as somehow incomplete and needing adults' help to learn and understand. Seeing children as competent changes the role of the adult significantly to that of a scene setter, careful observor and actually child researcher.

But I digress, the second question: How could we define competence? What elements make up the competence of a young child? Are there ideas that come through when talking with teachers who view their children as competent?

The third question: How do teachers come to view children as powerful in this way? Does it come in an aha moment? It is a gradual understanding that comes with experience? Is it something that can be 'taught'? Is there evidence that teachers think this way? (Oops, that is more than one question, but oh well)

Fourth question: What impact does a view of child competence have on the way a teacher constructs her teaching? Does a teaching method impact how the teacher views children's competence?

I'm not going to answer these questions right now, just need to get them written down to look at them. There are probably more. I want to find others to talk to, I also want to develop some kind of survey to find out more on the ground about this issue which I think needs thinking and talking about. So I intend to be back.