Birth to three matters - Communities and Local Government

politically. Bowlby had concluded fromseeing the grief and despair of youngchildren separated for long periods of timefrom the adult/s to whom they hadbecome attached (usually their mothers),that attachment is vitally necessary to thedeveloping infant and that maternaldeprivation would have damaging longterm consequences. (See chapter 3 formore about research on attachment).Later, in 1972, Rutter’s reassessment of thebasis for maternal deprivation theorywas welcomed. Rutter pointed out howthe ideas had been taken to extremesand his work through the last 30 yearshas continued to draw attention to theneed to treat young children sensitivelyand for re s e a rch to be used appro p ri ate ly(see further references to Rutter inchapters 1 and 3).What Rutter stressed in particular aboutBowlby’s work,however, was that he hadbeen right to draw attention to the poorquality of much substitute care at the timeof his report to the World HealthOrganisation in 1951 and it is a messagewe should dwell on as we increaseprovision for babies and young children.In the same way that Bettelheim (1987)wrote about ‘good enough parenting’those in the field of ECEC need to debate‘good enough edu-caring’. One of the aimsof this literature review is to help informthat very issue and encourage the debate.LEARNING THEORIESConditioning and Behaviourist theoryWhile the theories pre s e nted so far havebegun from the notion that ‘n a t u re’ ( w h ata child is bo rn with) fo rms the basis fo rl ater deve l o p m e nt, Le a rning Th e o ries arebased on the idea that it is ‘n u rt u re’, o rex pe ri e n ce, t h at is the most influentialin its impact on human deve l o p m e nt. Ea rlyre s e a rch ca rried out in Russia by Pav l ov,whose dogs salivated at the sound of a be l la fter a few ex po s u res to the bell ringing asfood was pre s e nte d, began a theore t i ca lpe r s pe ct i ve kn own as co n d i t i o n i n g.In the West, the most famous theorist inthe Behaviourist tradition is Skinner (1972),who built on the early ideas of Watson inthe USA, to formulate the theory ofoperant conditioning.This theory proposesthat there are two types of reinforcement.The first is called positive reinforcement,and this means a reward is given fordesired behaviour, while the second,negative reinforcement, means eithersomething is stopped or somethingunpleasant, or punishment, happens whenthe desired behaviour is not shown. So forexample, when an individual child allowsanother child to take and play with atreasured toy, s/he would be rewardedin some way (eg. praise, reassurance, beingpassed a different toy). This theory hasunderpinned many of the interventionprogrammes devised for children withspecial needs, for example, those28 EDUCATIONAND SKILLS B I RT H T O T H R E E M AT T E R S