AIBU to ask Wtf Is 'Child Led'?

[JustDanceAddict]

Seeing this a lot lately - what does it actually entail.
If my DCs didn't want to get up for school cos they're tired, is it child-led to keep them off school?
Mine know unless they are illthey are going in, as I have to go to work when tired, etc.

I will listen to my kids' reasons to do x,y or z but if I don't agree they will not be doing it.

I have let DD (15) off a couple of optional things and have regretted it as in the end it wasn't right in the circumstances that she didn't attend.

Surely it's all about compromise, but some things: school, family events, etc. are non-negotiable (barring mental health issues around school before I get flamed).

maisy I think in the absence of the internet I would worry about teaching more specialism, but with the internet (and the skills required to navigate it!) I actually think the most difficult things are keeping up with ideas in education theory itself...which feels more important at primary than secondary level.

Even then there are so many online courses teaching all sorts of topics...its so very much easier to HE then it can ever have been before.

See I'm coming at is as a teacher so a lot of the theoretical 'how kids learn' is fairly similar for primary and secondary (which is why I'm qualified to do both, even though really I'm happiest ks2-5).
If I were to HE, which me and DH have considered in due course, I'd happily HE primary because I'm an English teacher so have a reasonable grasp of primary English curriculum too. I'd never consider HE secondary because I know the amount of prep it takes when colleagues have to teach out of specialism.

But I do see your point that getting the basics right is essential. We had to do primary placements when I trained to teach. Primary colleagues are awesome.

I'll be honest (and this isn't mean in any way to be disrespectful to those who aren't from an education background), I don't feel I'd feel up to HE without a grounding in how children learn etc.

Maisy, presumably you can only be qualified for secondary in a single subject not all subjects. My understanding is that it is only possible to qualify as a generalist at primary level.

Most well educated parents with a "knack" for teaching and a reasonable amount of patience can probably homeschool their own child at primary level, IMO, provided that the chemistry is there and parent and child can work together without driving each other mad. I'm skeptical of some of the theoretical pedagogy taught to professional teachers, TBH. It often leans heavily towards constructivism and seems to be pay little attention to late 20th century and 21st century developments in cognitive science.

Mary
QTS (qualified teacher status) is about being qualified to teach and is transferable across age ranges. So a primary teacher wuth the required subject knowledge (e.g. a degree in french) could teach French at secondary. Though the way teaching is heading, so few people want to do it that there's an increasing use of non specialists and unqualified staff (despite half of Mumsnet being self appointed experts on a range of educational topics who think our job is easy )
Secondary is a postgraduate route so you do a degree and then go for QTS.
Primary can be either postgraduate (same as secondary) or it can be an undergraduate route (3/4 years often straight from a level).

Some primary postgraduate courses allow student teachers to specialise in a particular subject and once qualified primary staff will tend to end up leading a particular subject.

Fundamentally, the reason secondary teachers need a specialism is because the content is of a higher level. Whereas I could probably manage your teach topic work to primary aged children as a qualified teacher as long as I'd read up on an area.

The pedagogical content varies across teacher training. I still think the benefit of training means I have more experience and a better grounding in theory, critiquing theory and drawing on broad range of schools than someone who hasn't. Otherwise it's just rehashing the same old critique 'some unis use dated theories therefore teacher training is pointless and anyone can do it'.
I can do first aid, but it doesn't mean I'd be a great nurse.

However in my experience much of teacher training relates to teaching a number, so differentiation, crowd control etc etc. Not so relevant with one or two of your own kids.

True witsender. It's a different set up. It came up when talking about how people view home Ed. I said that some home Ed is clearly great but others (that I'm aware of) I don't feel set the children up particularly well. I'd also said I don't really get unscholling branches of HE especially up into secondary.

I'm not saying nobody should home educate if they aren't from education backgrounds.

I just said that personally, DH and I would consider it but wouldn't feel able to do it confidently without knowing what I know (which has come from years of professional experience as well as uni).

For me this is all about teaching for breadth or depth. On a 1:1 basis it is really easy to follow a child's interest and simply help them through any conceptual road blocks they have. This is great for depth.

It is the way both me and DH are wired, we can start from nothing in a subject specialism and plough on down using whatever resources are to hand.

My (possibly outdated) opinion is that school teaching is very much about getting everyone to a roughly equal place across a wide range of subjects.

So my DD is 6yo and she knows nothing about all sorts of things that her cousin has encountered at school, but knows a huge amount about certain specific topics that have taken her interest...like bees, negative numbers, the Romans, fractions, etc.

I feel like gaining the ability to learn was the value of my education. I recently had to get to grips with the mathematical theories behind knots...and it wasn't to hard to pick up given all the free resources out there and one well placed text book - and I'm very much not a mathematician!

So I hope that is what we can teach DD more than anything, that questions are interesting and finding out the answers is fun.

My worry is that I don't think that will help her one bit in gaining either GCSE or A-level qualifications.

At some point we may have to explain to her that she needs to forget all the ideas and concepts and start memorizing the 'correct' answers to the rote questions.....

That's sounds good.
I think my worry links to what you've said about gcse, which is if a child knows lots about some areas of say maths, but lacks the foundation knowledge of other gcse texts.
I can only talk for my subject (English), but the more rounded a child's understanding is, the more they've read, the more they understand history and myths etc, the more likely they are to access the higher grades. It's a much better way of doing things now than it used to be.

There needs to be a balance between breadth and depth, children need a well-rounded education but also the opportunity to go into things in depth that they are interested in. With the school day being so short here in Finland I can, if DD is interested, go into things in more depth with her at home (I plan on teaching her British history at home at least as she won't be learning that in school obviously and I want her to know more about Britain)

natsku

I think if we were in Finland we wouldn't be HE! The later start, the shorter day...all of it would work so much better for us.

maids

I see your point about English, but surely nurturing an interest in reading (and making time for actually doing it - I don't remember actually sitting reading books at secondary school AT ALL) is the best way to go about that? I'm unconvinced that 3 years of phonics drilling and split digraphs is the way forward for producing an abiding love of reading....the pressure my Dneph is under to read every day, go to extra lessons to brush up phonics, all with no regard for whether he is enjoying it seems massively counter productive in the long run. My DD will never know what a split digraph is, nor will she ever be asked to practice reading nonsense words or have to sit an exam on this.

She may not know a split digraph by name nor be screened for her ability to decode new words, but she won't be able to read English if she can't actually do these.

happily she can read english so not really a major issue...

I'm not even sure what a split digraph is and I can definitely read English!

well quite...

I think in reality people don't learn to read by 'decoding' words at all. Its just straight up rote memorization.

I didn't realise this till DD started. Its more 'fun' to practice reading if you can work out words you don't recognize but its not crucial if you are doing all your reading 1:1 with an adult whenever and for however long you want.

I found just sitting with DD and filling in all the words she doesn't recognize works great. Once she has seen a word and heard it said around 20 odd times she has it logged. So we just read together and I fill in the bad ass words whenever they crop up....

I reckon I probably learned from memorization as I think I was reading before I started school.

Morphene if you think that is how children learn to read I'm a bit sad for your child as she will never learn to read any new word she hasn't seen before. So no Roald Dahl, Alice in Wonderland etc.

Thanks but save your crocodile tears.

My daughter-in law suggested to his nursery that my three year old first grandchild was showing interest in reading and she asked if they could help him with early reading during nursery hours. I was flabbergasted by the reply. “ it’s too early” “We concentrate on child led learning and the class are learning through play and experiences rather than formal teaching of reading at this stage” I totally get this if it’s combined with a more traditional approach such as teaching them early about letters, numbers, reading and counting etc. To say this is not important is in my opinion ridiculous. Thankfully my daughter -in-Law agrees and is using her own resources. At least he will start school with knowledge he is there primarily to learn to read,write and count first and foremost and that takes structure while still having fun in the process. I’m all for child led learning but they need structure and yes a degree of formality or we might as well let them run wild and takeover the classroom. I say give them a sense of whose in charge. They need this to feel secure. Rant over haha.