If There Was Just One Thing…

If you could measure the quality of an early childhood setting by only one factor, what would it be?

Teachers today feel weighed down by so many things they have to keep in mind. Forms, lesson plans, assessments, and the what-is-that discovery that may or may not be a crisis in the corner of the classroom. Teachers are amazing multi-taskers.

But what if we had to pick just ONE thing. Just one factor that we labeled as the most important?

A group of the most prominent researchers studying early childhood education have already made their pick.

According to the consensus statement released by the Brookings Institution and compiled by 10 of the nation’s top researchers in the field of early education and child development, there is a key ingredient that sets high-quality environments apart.

As they write in the statement:

Developmental science tells us that a key ingredient is the instructional, social, and emotional “serve-and-return” interactions that occur daily between teachers and children, as well as among classmates.

Similarly, early childhood educator and author, Erika Christakis wrote in her book (that I can’t get enough of), The Importance of Being Little (affiliate):

If I had to characterize the key difference between a high-quality and a low-quality preschool environment, it is this:

In a high-quality program, adults are building relationships with children and paying a lot of attention to children’s thinking processes and, by extension their communication. They attend carefully to children’s language and find ways to make them think out loud.”

I love those two main components: relationships and thinking out loud. Together, it is the same key ingredient mentioned in the statement above. The key ingredient of interactions.

It may be hard to measure this intangible concept of interactions. (And unfortunately, culturally we tend to emphasize and value what we can measure.) It’s easy to measure words, but not so easy to measure relationships or attention or thinking.

Interactions include words, yes. But they are more than just words.

In 1995, researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risely presented their groundbreaking discovery of the “30 Million Word Gap”. In short, by recording the number of words a child heard throughout the day, they found a substantial gap between the words children heard in families from different socioeconomic backgrounds. The fascinating claim was that it was this gap in words – more than the gap in economics – that was responsible for the achievement gap between these SES families. (Read more about that here.)

For a while, all the attention was on the words. We measured the words and then encouraged more words. More words meant more achievement.

But subsequent studies have emphasized that it isn’t just the words, but the richness of the conversation.

As Todd Risely emphasized:

Betty and I were looking for something we called “incidental teaching”; that’s capitalizing on the teachable moment to expand and elaborate your child’s comment or words. That’s where the best teaching happens. It always turns out that’s an automatic part of extra talk. It doesn’t have to be taught. It’s automatically there when you’re talking about extra things that are not business….”

(“Business talk” being the necessary day to day directions. “Hang up your coat.” “Get in the car.” “Come eat lunch.” Etc.)

If you’re talking a lot, then you begin to talk, begin to add all those interesting interactions. Talkative parents don’t start conversations more often. Whether there’s a taciturn parent or a very talkative parent, they start their interactions with their baby about as often. It’s that the talkative parents are taking extra turns responding to what the child just said and did, and elaborating on it, or responding to it, or caring — taking extra turns.”

It wasn’t just the words, it was the caring. It was taking more turns because you showed real interest and were working toward real connection.

Interactions are where words and relationships meet. It’s both the art and the science of teaching. And, as Todd Risley noted, it’s where the best teaching takes place.

In the Brookings Institution statement, the team goes on to say, “The odds for better outcomes are improved when these back and forth interactions are consistent and responsive.”

Consistency and responsiveness are key components of healthy relationships and powerful interactions. Of particular concern in this era of standardization is the crucial ingredient of responsiveness.

Responsiveness requires flexibility. There is no one-size-fits-all.

As I worked recently with a group of teachers, I asked them about responsiveness. They agreed that you have to know children to be able to respond to them.

So I decided to talk to them about another thing that they were undoubtedly familiar with.

I asked them how well they knew quarters, a common coin in the United States currency. They all agreed they knew what they were and had used them for decades. Then I asked them to draw one. Front and back.

Their confidence faded.

Who’s on the coin? Which way is he facing? Does it say “In God we trust” or is that on something else? What about the back? Is it an eagle? What’s he holding? Leaves? Arrows? A snake? WAIT!! What about the new editions with the different state emblems on the back?

I had to admit, I had set them up.

The first realization I wanted them to make that while they “knew” quarters, they had been around them their whole lives, they could stand to make a closer inspection, a more careful observation. (I laughed as we pulled out quarters at the end of this exercise and suddenly, grown adults were examining these quarters with such intensity you would have thought they’d never seen one before!)

Just as we may say that we “know kids” because we’ve been working with them so long, often we’re required to make a more careful observation to really discern how to be responsive to the children right in front of us. Assumptions based on children in a different time and place may help, but can never be an adequate substitute for really seeing the children right in front of us.

Secondly, I wanted them to come to the realization that while quarters are all quarters, they really don’t all look the same. The words and images have been changed and moved over time, and each individual quarter shows its own history of dings, scratches, and chemical reactions.

Though they all fit in the same category, none of them is exactly the same.

Just as we may hold a bag full of quarters and label them with one sweeping concept, we may be tempted to see a room full of children and make the same broad brush assumption. But when we truly connect and see each one more closely, we begin to discern the individual differences that each one has. The experiences that have been etched in their own sense of self and awareness of the world.

While it’s important for us to know about generalized principles and understandings about children as a group, these differences found through personal connection matter.

Erika Christakis emphasized this same principle in an interview as she said,

Teachers need to know children well on two levels. They need to know the kinds of things to expect from a typical 3-year-old and also to know those 3-year-olds as individuals, each with unique strengths, challenges, and idiosyncrasies. In order to understand young children in this comprehensive way, teachers need to be versed in sound developmental principles and to have the time and opportunity to get to know children in their natural habitat, which is to say in a play-based, language-rich setting involving relationships with adults who cherish them.

In particular, teachers need to take the time to listen to children’s stories, to laugh with them, to get down on the floor, at their eye level, and figure out what makes them tick. This kind of respectful observation of what children can (and can’t) do is rare in early childhood settings, where instead too many children receive calibrated doses of highly scripted, one-size-fits-all instruction…”

As I’ve said before, this is what makes teaching not just a science — not just something that can be quantified and measured and standardized and boxed up — but also an art that requires judgment and flexibility, room for change and deviation and above all, the ability to authentically respond to the child right in front of you.

The best teaching, and the best learning come from the combination of measurable words, and immeasurable connection. We can’t script this kind of learning.

So, while many programs may be under pressure to find a “research-based curriculum”, which to the powers that be occasionally looks like a scripted curriculum with a stamp that says “research-based”, the reality is this:

Based on research, there is no script. Based on research, our teachers must be trained well and given flexibility.

Based on research, there is one priority above the others:

Responsive, caring, playful interactions.

Brookings Institute Consensus Statement

How to Build Language and Literacy Through Powerful Conversations (PDF) {Hanen}

Serve and Return of Responsive Interactions {Not Just Cute}

Episode 10: Puzzling Out the Science of PreK {NJC the Podcast}