Building learning in the early years: how conversations can change children’s lives for the better

Research evidence tells us that high-quality early education is one of the best ways to ensure that a child can thrive and succeed, regardless of their background.

Approaches which support children’s early language and communication are central to this. For example, children who are better communicators at age five go onto become better readers, get better exam results at age 16, and are more likely to gain higher-paid employment as adults (The Power and Promise of Early Learning, Shuey and Kankaraš, 2018). As the EEF’s Preparing for Literacy guidance report states, ‘language provides the foundation of thinking and learning and should be prioritised’.

This raises two important questions:

• What does high-quality support for children’s language and thinking look like?
• What steps can we take to put the evidence to work?

Engaging children in back-and-forth conversation is one well-evidenced approach to helping them develop their communication. This is often more difficult to achieve than it looks, requiring practitioners to be emotionally attuned to children and skilful in picking up on their cues to develop extended conversations. Making time for conversation with every child – not just the most confident and chatty – is difficult. That’s why the EEF developed the ShREC Approach, showing how this research evidence can be put into action in everyday contexts like the playdough table.

Increasing the number of conversational turns children experience is important. However, this isn’t sufficient to ensure that all children become confident and capable talkers and learners. That’s why we developed the Early Years Evidence Store, including our mini-guide to Improving early education through high-quality interactions.

Research evidence suggests that the quality of conversation matters most, not just the quantity. High-quality language approaches include:

• Shared or interactive reading, where the book is a focus for conversation between educators and children.
• Discussions which go ‘beyond the here and now’. These might include discussing what happened in the past, or what might happen in the future. Or they might be imagination-rich discussions during pretend play.
• Conversations where educators introduce new words to children in a natural way (teaching and modelling vocabulary). This enables them to expand their vocabulary.
• Promoting talk about learning: educators use talk to help children plan, monitor and reflect on their thinking and learning.

In addition to these high-quality language approaches, scaffolding is one of the most effective interactions for promoting learning.

Scaffolding involves providing temporary support for a child during a task, to adjust the level of challenge. This can include educators helping with elements of the task that are too difficult for the child to accomplish on their own. That means the child can concentrate on what they can do, and gradually complete a task they’d find too hard on their own. Or an educator may provide support which makes a simpler task more difficult, to extend the child’s learning.

Successful scaffolding enables educators to provide a level of challenge for children that is ‘just right’. This is the ‘Goldilocks principle’: not too much and not too little.

The EEF has broken this down into the STAIRS approach, which is part of the Improving early education through high-quality interactions mini-guide.

Consider how you can use the ShREC approach and the Improving early education through high-quality interactions mini-guide to prompt professional discussion and reflection in your team.

Visit our Early Years hub to see more of our resources for early years educators.