Schema intro for SPACE babies.

Last year I started to work on a half-hour introduction to schemas. Here's one specifically for SPACE babies

Susan Harper's schema intro for SPACE babies.

Babies have passionate interests, they work very hard to learn as much as they can as fast as possible. Babies find this world fascinating and their adults find babies fascinating. When older humans work out what babies are interested in we empower them, encourage their interests, reinforce their persistence and facilitate their learning. Schemas are a useful way of thinking about what babies (and children) are into.

A schema is a pattern that a child loves to repeat in their play—an exploration of an abstract notion.

Flow: Do you remember a time when you were so into what you were doing that you didn't notice the irrelevant extras around you, you disappeared and there was just the doing of the activity? You were in "the zone” or “a flow state”. Flow is something worth paying a bit of respectful attention to; there's evidence that getting into flow on a regular basis promotes mental wellness and flow is a great motivation for and indicator of learning (and it's my favourite thing about all my favourite things). Babies and children look like flow is how they feel when they do things they love.

Question: "Is there something your child loves doing over and over again?"

We can tell what our children love doing partly because they do it over and over again, persisting in the face of difficulties (including clashes with adults' expectations and desires). It is very likely that something a child loves doing over and over is schema-related.

Loves doing over and over: A baby may love dropping things, over and over again, persisting with this tricky feat of coordination in the face of adults' expectations of appropriate things to do with one's food. A baby who drops things repeatedly is developing understanding of many things about the world including

• gravity,

• object permanence (i.e. that things don't just disappear),

• how to let go,

• motion,

• what happens to them when different sorts of things hit the ground,

• how visual stimuli change as items change position, and

• that they can rely on people to help them by picking things up and giving them back.

These new understandings lead to further schema-investigations as the baby's understanding of the world deepens: for example, a baby who loves learning about motion may keep working on a trajectory schema, a baby who loves learning about object permanence may keep working on hiding and other investigations of an enveloping schema, a baby who loves learning about what happens to different things when they hit the ground may keep working on a transforming schema. If we continue to think about our baby who loves to drop things over and over again, and look out for other things our baby loves to do repeatedly, we may well work out what our baby is into on a schema level.

There are examples of some more schemas and lots of behaviours on the "Schemas in Areas of Play" chart, some of which may ring a bell.

Interacting with children and their schemas:

Striking characteristics of schemas:

• Schemas repeat. If a child is working on a schema it will be noticeable as it crops up again and again, all over the place.

• While working on schemas children often seem fascinated; they concentrate, are deeply engaged and very persistent. Schemas are sources of much learning and development in children.

• The repetition, fascination, concentration, engagement and persistence typical of children working on schemas is often confusing and frustrating for adults. Schemas can seem compulsive and perplexing.

Repetition, development... frustrating:"She has never found being left easy and she started school the other day. Since then Hazel's been doing a lot of disconnecting. She's been cutting up her bedding, her dad's sock, her teddy's fur and her sister's bed base. She's been drawing smiles on pieces of paper and cutting them out for us as presents. She's been picking things apart, dismembering dolls, crumbling food, and pulling things to pieces. I'm not sure what the content of her stories is, I'm rather worn out with dealing with the physical disconnections. I am intrigued that it's a disconnecting schema she's pursuing as she disconnects from us in order to connect to school." Harper (2007)

We were lucky that we knew about schemas and so sock and bed cutting didn't seem like inexplicable caprice or sheer malice. We still had to deal with the bad consequences but we were able to do so with faith that they weren't caused by madness, meanness, nor were they aimed at us. Also, knowing that Hazel was likely to keep disconnecting meant that I knew to get out a lot of appropriate things to disconnect. I used my own chart for ideas.

Using the “Schemas in Areas of Play” chart:

1. Notice a child's repeated behaviour.

2. Recognise a schema (or two) they might be pursuing.

3. Respond to their schemas using Te Whāriki, excitement and understanding.

If, as well as a schema-fascination, you also recognise a lovely piece of learning going on you might

• help the child to consolidate or extend their thinking within their schema,

• use words relevant to their schema,

• help them make friends with you, or other children who are interested in that schema.

If, as well as a schema-fascination, you also recognise a problematic behaviour, then redirection within the row of the schema is often taken surprisingly well.

Some caveats for the emptors: Schemas are just one way of thinking and talking about children, there are lots of others, use whatever works for you and the child at hand. Dividing schemas into kinds such as trajectory, enveloping and transforming is useful for adults but schema learning theory is descriptive rather than prescriptive and your children may vary. Not all children have schemas that are easy to recognise and work with and the schemas on the chart are not the only schemas by a long way. You can think about and facilitate other things children love to do over and over again in the same way.

Enjoy!

Susan Harper
April 2009

References:
Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper and Row.

Cubey, Pam (2007) "Schemas and Learning Stories: the two are compatible and complementary" pp 20-22 Playcentre Journal. Issue 128: Autumn 2007.

Cubey, Pam (2007) "The fascination of schemas: a Playcentre researcher's story" pp 23-25 Playcentre Journal. Issue 128: Autumn 2007.

Harper, Susan (2004). "Schemas in Areas of Play." Playcentre Journal. Issue 121: Spring 2004. (also available in Thinking Children and Getting Started With Schemas).

Harper, Susan (2007) "Transitioning to school with schemas" p 15, Playcentre Journal. Issue 128: Autumn 2007.

Meade, Anne and Cubey, Pam (2008) Thinking Children: Learning about schemas. [2nd ed]. New Zealand Council for Educational Research.

Ministry of Education (1996) Te Whāriki: He Whāriki mātuaranga mo ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. Learning Media.

van Wijk, Nikolien (2008) Getting Started With Schemas: Revealing the wonder-full world of children's play. New Zealand Playcentre Federation.

 

Book: Getting Started with Schemas

If you're curious about schemas you may be glad to hear that Nikolien van Wijk's book Getting Started with Schemas: revealing the wonderful world of children's play is, at long last, available! It's not yet listed on the Playcentre Publications website, though it should be available from them by email: publications@playcentre.org.nz 

I bought it from the Wellington Playcentre Shop: 

Wellington Playcentre Shop Address: 73 Kenepuru Drive Suburb: Porirua City: Wellington Phone: (04) 237 7827 Fax: (04) 237 7821 Link: www.wgtnplaycentre.school.nz Email: shop@wgtnplaycentre.school.nz Shop Hours: Monday - Friday 9.30am - 4.00pm  Sat 9.30am - 12.00 noon.

and I've also seen it available online from The Arts Centre Bookshop. 

One line review: it's good as far as it goes, and that is far enough to get started with schemas. 

Workshop workshop.

Yesterday a subconscious urge struck me and I signed up for the "How to run a workshop" Playcentre workshop on November 19th; now I'm trying to work out why I did that.

Is it about schemas?

In 2004 we at Wilton Playcentre developed a 2-3 hour Schema Workshop as part of its Centre of Innovation research contract with the Ministry of Education and I've enjoyed giving that to Playcentre and other Early Childhood Education people about half a dozen times.

While we were working on that schema workshop I made a chart showing schemas in areas of play*. My chart is popular with people who find it immediately accessible and useful, but I suspect it would be more accessible, more useful, and therefore more popular, if it had some sort of brief introduction with it. Also, when I wrote it in 2004 I put on it everything I knew about schema learning theory at the time but I've learnt some more since.

So a few months ago I started working on my personal introduction to schemas because I'd like there to be something really short that I can give to people who ask me about schemas that they can use in the meantime, while they work out whether they're interested enough in schema learning theory to do any more reading about it. It started as a half-hour workshop that can be part of another meeting and I've given at a SPACE group and a session meeting (a meeting where a whole playcentre can get together to talk about the kids). My introduction didn't stay down at the half-hour length and so it could do with some work yet, and a Workshop workshop might well show me the trick of concentrating and shortening it.

--
* Schemas in Areas of Play.pdf
Harper, S. (2004) Playcentre Journal 121: pp 18-19
Also in Meade, A. and Cubey, P. (2008) Thinking Children: Learning about schemas pp 27-29


Or is it about something else?

You see, schemas are quite an interesting thing to know about, but I think I'm wanting to write about them in order for what I know about them to end up as a pamphlet so I don't have to be there to introduce them myself: A Letter of Introduction to Schemas perhaps.

What I'd like to stand up on my hind legs and lecture you about right now is Te Whāriki's belonging and well-being, flow, people's passions (of which schemas are a subset) and how desperately they matter when people interact.

My Introduction to Schemas in Early Childhood Education

Susan Harper's Introduction to Schemas in Early Childhood Education

1. Welcome.

2. Waiata: with schema connection e.g. Enveloping and Trajectory

Jack in the box is a funny wee man,
He sits in his box as long as he can,
He sits in his box as long as he can
And then he jumps out like this: BOING!

3. Ice Breaker: “Is there something your child loves doing over and over again?”

4. Aims and learning outcomes of this introduction: Start participants thinking and talking about the notion of schema. Introduce the use of schema in early childhood education, i.e. noticing repeated behaviour, recognising schemas, responding within the schema recognised.

5. Definition:

A schema is a pattern that a child loves to repeat in their play.

6. Noticeable characteristics of schemas:

• Schemas repeat.

• While working on schemas children often seem fascinated; they concentrate and are deeply engaged.

• But to adults schemas can seem compulsive and perplexing.

7. Noticing, recognising and responding to schemas:

If a child is working on a schema it will be noticeable as it crops up again and again, all over the place.

It's worth being able to recognise schemas because they are sources of much learning and development in children as well as confusion and frustration in adults.

Therefore, understanding schemas makes responding to children's behaviour more effective and fun in many ways and on many levels.

However, not all children have schemas that are easy to recognise and work with. Schemas are just one way of thinking and talking about children, there are lots of others. Use whatever works for you and the child at hand.

9. Do you have a passion?

Do you remember a time when you were so into what you were doing that you didn't notice the irrelevant extras around you, you disappeared and there was just the doing of the activity?

... pause for thought...

That kind of “being in the zone” or “flow state” is what doing their schema seems to feel like to a child.

I think that this sort of flow is something worth paying a bit of respectful interest to, as well as being a great motivation for and indicator of learning, it's certainly my favourite thing about all my favourite things, and there's evidence to suggest that getting into that state on a regular basis is a very good habit for promoting mental wellness.

8. Using the “Schemas in Areas of Play” chart:

1. Notice repeated behaviour.

2. Recognise a schema (or two).

3. Respond to schemas using Te Whaariki:
   If you also recognised a lovely piece of learning going on you might

• help the child to consolidate or extend their thinking within their schema,

• use words relevant to their schema,

• help them make friends with you, or other children who are interested in that schema.

If you also recognised a problematic behaviour (see the last column) redirection within the schema is often taken surprisingly well.

Reference: Harper, Susan "Schemas in Areas of Play" first published as pages 18 and 19 in the Playcentre Journal Issue 121: Spring 2004.
It's under Crown Copyright as Wilton Playcentre was a Centre of Innovation at the time.

Note: Transporting, transforming, trajectory, rotation (and circularity), enclosure (and enveloping), connecting and disconnecting are not the only schemas. They are some common ones which are fairly easy to spot. Other repeating behaviour can be thought about and facilitated in the same way.

Further Reading:

Meade, Anne and Pam Cubey (2008); Thinking Children: Learning about schemas [2nd ed]

van Wijk, Nikolien (forthcoming 2008); Getting Started With Schemas, Playcentre Federation of New Zealand.

Gobbets of thought all over the carpentry table.

I've been thinking again, so here are some notes that might remind me of some sparks I'd seen when next I get to put prefrontal cortex to grindstone.

1. Children use their schemas when processing emotional learning as well. Threads of thinking fitted into space, time, and relationships of all sorts.

2. What's fun about playing?
Free play ECE and supporting schema learning gives children who've got into a flow state the chance to stay in it, and more opportunities to keep on getting into flow.

3. Serenity for the Godless: a user's guide to practical positive psychology.
Flow isn't the only good thing and flow-ish states are really quite good. People who're good at getting into flow and flow-ish states are pretty happy people.

4. Make-believe in Art, Religion, and Sport.

Connecting and disconnecting concepts.

"Schemas are about relationships, space, and time." I said, at the moment I often blog by sending a text from my phone in order not to lose the thought and with the tiny character limit I packed my meaning so densely that it was hard to get a chunk off for conversation so and Mash told me I have become too Zen to easily engage with.

When I wrote this entry I'd been thinking for a couple of days about what makes a pattern of play a schema and how to individuate schemas. A common problem in the philosophy of human activities (e.g. aesthetics, jurisprudence, and political and philosophy) occurs again in this little tributary of philosophy of education. It is the problem that descriptions of the activities of real people in the world do not divide up neatly into clear theoretical categories. But I do think it reasonable to say that "frogs" are not a schema in the way that "trajectory" is because it is at the wrong level of abstraction; schemas are about relationships, space, and time.

Qarl said I'm working at a "meta-schema schema" and I do think I do schemas with concepts, and here even unto the concept of schemas. But am I connecting and disconnecting

(schemas with relationships, space, and time) and (frogs not-with trajectories),

or am I sorting into a hierachy of abstraction?

1. relationships, space, and time,
2. trajectory, enveloping, connection, disconnection et cetera,
3. frogs and kangaroos

But today I want to think about animals. Nikolien suspects some children investigate their relationship with the living world and people through passionate repeated thinking about animals. I agree it doesn't look as theoretically simple as them being into trajectories and thus frogs, or enveloping and thus kangaroos. I think she's right. There's a way of thinking about animals that feels like a schema.

Upcoming schema.

I think I've got a different schema starting. I'm not sure yet, but there are symptoms.

I've been making a file index of all the fictional people in our roleplaying game and didn't colour code the cards, although I had two colours.

I've been enjoying tidying the Lego (sorting by size and shape into clear boxes and putting the boxes into bigger boxes) as much as or more than making stuff with it until tonight.

Tonight I invented the Lego graph: a bar chart you can feel the differences between! But I didn't want it to have anything but yellow Lego in the bars.

Tonight I covered a four by twelve flat grey with yellow Lego, and covering that with more and more yellow Lego, filling in the space lots of different ways. It was so beautiful I had to put it in my mouth.

And last night three of my friends wore matching magenta tops with concentric silver stars to the party and every time they gathered together I got a special replete feeling and I just wanted them to be near me the whole party in their colour co-ordinated beauty (despite temptation I made do with a magenta sparkle, thanks for your concern).

Schema fascination.

I've been writing an article for the Playcentre Journal about schemas and transitions (and Hazel cutting stuff up). This is some more thinking around it.

At my Playcentre we use schema learning theory to help us deliver Te Whaariki (the New Zealand Early Childhood curriculum).

Other people say that schemas are repeated themes in children's thinking and patterns of behaviour. I think they are a useful framework we can use to consider the consuming passions of children. This Schema Matrix I had published in the Playcentre Journal a few years ago will give you the right sort of idea and what's more lots of people find it useful in practice.

Children are utterly passionate about their schemas, this makes schemas very useful when dealing with children. Children like people who share their schemas. On session, a free-play environment combined with the children's abiding schema interests provide a lot of continuity for us. Children think hard about their schema fascinations so they learn a lot from their schemas and they become experts in the areas their schemas lead them into. Children are also easier to redirect within a schema than outside it.

I have noticed that children often seem to express very strong emotions with their schemas, I think someone with a trajectory schema will often throw things when furious or jubilant, while someone with a rotation schema is more likely to turn angrily on a heel or pirouette joyfully.

Things are looking up, night before last Hazel was utterly absorbed in dissolving toilet paper in a basin full of soapy water and yesterday morning she was mixing canned plum juice with milk at breakfast (as well as cutting out the lips of people from magazines for her sister). The changing mixtures suggest she might be moving on to processing this major life event as a transformation, which is perfect, and I prefer cleaning up a transforming schema's truly mucky messes to finding my books torn to pieces.

Emotional processing

Once upon a time in Nelson I observed a child, in his last couple of weeks before leaving Playcentre for school, mixing sand and water to make floods for dolls-house people (in which they died). His transformation schema worked on a multitude of levels: a physical transformation, a story about transformation of a landscape and death (the biggest transformation of all), all part of the transformation to school-child.

Hazel (a notably clingy child) has just started school. She's doing a lot of disconnecting. She's been cutting her bedding, Sean's sock, her teddy's fur and Iris's bed base, she's been drawing smiles on pieces of paper and cutting them out for us as presents. She's picking things apart, dismembering dolls, crumbling food, and pulling things to pieces. I'm not sure what the content of her stories is, I'm rather worn out with dealing with the physical disconnections. I'm very interested that it's disconnecting that she's doing as she disconnects from us in order to connect to school when trajectory has long been her dominant schema.

And I'm wondering, can you remember other children's schemas at the start of school or during other major life events and were they an abstraction on such a high level of the way they were experiencing the world?