Birth to three matters - Communities and Local Government

promote and enhance an individual child’scompetences and skills compared withother children who are progressing alonga more conventional pathway.‘In the early years/SEN realm interventionis purposeful and designed to effectas close a match as possible betweena young child’s identified special needsand that provision or resources whichwill meet his or her needs and bestfacilitate learning and development’(Wolfendale 2000:4).This is best achieved through givinga child access to as normal a learningsituation as possible within an inclusiveECEC context, whether that be a homeor a group setting, where perceptivepractitioners can take advantage of those‘teachable moments’ (Wilson 1998: 92)which occur naturally during the courseof a day.CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY IN CHILDREN’SLIVES,DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNINGA further area of disagreement concernsthe question of the significance of theearliest years of life and whether whathappens during this period influencesthe whole life course. Certainly the Jesuitsbelieved this stage in human life to shapethe adult. Some psychologists havesuggested there are ‘sensitive periods’during babyhood, when certainexperiences are thought to have mostimpact. Others, such as Bowlby (1969;1973) claimed that there would be longlasting ill effects from experiences suchas institutionalised care during babyhood.As Bornstein (1999) argues, the idea thatearly childhood is especially important iscommon sense. This is the stage at whichthe nervous system is immature and at itsmost plastic and the prolongation of earlychildhood is thought to have adaptivesignificance.Thus it appears logical thatthe earliest years should cast an especiallylong shadow onto future life. Bornsteinstresses the complexity of factorsimpacting on this early development andthere are a number of research studieswhich confound the view that earlychildhood is a ‘critical period’ – meaningdamage in this stage will be irreparable.For example, Rutter’s work with theRomanian Adoptees Study Team (1998)shows how children subjected early tovery poor living conditions do catch upor at least are not irretrievably damaged.So Bornstein (1999: 29) concludes thatinfancy is ‘extremely important,…uniquelyformative, but not determinative’.Taking continuity to mean ‘smooth’development and learning, again thereare questions about whether childrenexperience ‘leaps’ in ability orunderstanding – for example in chapter6 in the section about brain developmentthe view of Gopnik et al (1999) ispresented. These American cognitivescientists argue that at around 18 monthsof age there is a change in children’s brainstructure because the children’s brains‘reprogramme’ themselves, as a resultof recognising that other people havedifferent minds/views/likes from their own.11