Professor Laura Justice from The Ohio State University is the keynote speaker at the Child Well-being Symposium at UC this week. The event also features experts from UC's Child Well-being Research Institute and is designed to inspire and upskill the early childhood sector.
Interacting with adults is necessary for young brains to fully develop, however childhood education experts in the United States of America have found that under-fives need far more 鈥渂ack and forth鈥 interaction than previously thought.
鈥淭here is a lot of emphasis right now on what we call 鈥榮erve and return鈥, which is back and forth interaction, like a tennis game,鈥 international literacy and language development expert听听of The Ohio State University says. Visiting 成人大片 (UC) on an Erskine Fellowship, hosted by the听UC Child Well-being Research Institute, Professor Justice will share her expertise with the early childhood sector at UC鈥檚听Child Well-Being Research Symposium听this week (6 and 7 June).
鈥淚 serve, you return, and so on - you need 10 鈥榬eturns鈥 to be effective. This serve and return interaction builds the circuitry of the brain through language development,鈥 she says. 鈥淪o the question is how do we build this serve and return routine into our children鈥檚 lives?鈥
It鈥檚 an important question. Early childhood language development, Professor Justice says, is the foundation for everything else; it influences emotional, social and academic development.
鈥淎t the symposium I will be speaking about the neuroscience behind brain development, because a lot of people don鈥檛 truly understand the plasticity of the young child鈥檚 brain and what we call 鈥榚xperience-dependent plasticity鈥. Children need to have experiences and sustained interactions to shape the brain.鈥
The peak of language acquisition is between birth and five years, which is why early childhood educators need to be resourced with facilities and strategies to optimise children鈥檚 development.
However, this is often not how classrooms are set up.
鈥淚n a typical classroom situation most children have very few opportunities for long sustained interactions with adults. It is way easier said than done. What we often find is that teachers are in charge of 23 kids and a lot of time teachers focus on structuring a really well managed environment.鈥
The problem is not unique to Aotearoa New 成人大片either. 鈥淚n one of our studies of teacher/child conversations in a US classroom, we found that only 1 in 10 conversations was multi-turn.鈥
Aotearoa New 成人大片has significant challenges when it comes to improving literacy success for young learners, and this starts with empowering quality teaching in the classroom. Professor Justice suggests we need to consider 鈥渉ow to build classrooms where each child has opportunities for sustained, high-quality interactions鈥.
Child Well-being Research Symposium on 6 and 7 June
The Child Well-being Research Symposium is an opportunity for experts from the Child Well-being Research Institute at UC and international guests to share research from the interconnecting disciplines of nutrition, psychology, language and literacy development, technology addition, public health and more, along with practical strategies that will make a difference for children in classrooms. The event is designed to inspire and upskill those working in the sector. 听
UC speakers include Child-Wellbeing Research Institute Director Professor Gail Gillon, Professor Philip Schluter, Distinguished Professor Niki Davis, Associate Professor Brigid McNeill, Professor John Everatt, Professor Angus Macfarlane, and UC Vice-Chancellor Professor Cheryl de la Rey.听
