Discussion on the role of environment in ECE

By Ann Pairman
Published in Iti Rearea April 2006

The title of that article was Lisa’s brilliant idea – I thought it spoke volumes about the influence of the physical environment.

In this article I’d like to discuss the influence of the physical environment on adult:child ratios. Why is it that some services can still provide good quality even though they have lower adult:child ratios than others (lower = more children per adult)? Some of the reason relates to the quality of adults. However, much has to do physical environment and whether it is meets the needs of the age range attending.

What’s a good environment?

An environment that is safe, but has challenge and interest will invite children to explore and become fully involved in an activity. This environment will allow adults to interact with children to support their interest as needed.

An environment that is not safe, has too few challenges or areas of interest, will result in children being bored, frustrated and over reliant on adults. This environment requires adults to intervene to keep children safe and involved. Adults working in these environments may find themselves entertaining or ‘directing’ children in order to manage unwanted behaviour and maintain interest.

The challenge of small mixed age services

Small services (up to 30) that enrol babies to five year olds often find it difficult to create physical environments that meet the needs of key age groups.

This is because the smaller the licensed numbers, the less overall space there is. Contrary to the ‘small is beautiful’ idea, small centres (with wide age ranges) often struggle to provide multiple programmes that offer children in key age groups appropriate richness, choice and challenge.

Some common comments from teachers include…

We can only have complex resources for the older kids when the little ones are asleep…

We don’t have enough room to create a really good space for the babies or the big kids…

You need to be right by the little ones when they are outside [because a lot of equipment is designed for older children] – and that takes all our adults…

When they build amazing stuff with the blocks, they spend most of their time worrying about the little kids knocking it over…

Most of my interactions with the little ones are to stop them from doing things that are natural for their stage of development (like pulling the collage resources off the table or tipping out a really complex puzzle).

All those familiar with Vygotsky recognize the advantages of mixed age environments. However we need to consider how to balance these advantages with disadvantages that arise if the physical environment is compromised. We also need to consider what we mean by ‘mixed age’. When there is limited space, how wide can the age range get before the disadvantage outweighs the advantage?

Katz, Evangelou and Hartman (1990) define mixed-age groupings as situations where children “...who are at least a year apart in age...” are placed in the same “classroom” groups. The same writers point out that the resulting range of competencies within a mixed-age group “...gives rise to cognitive conflicts and opportunities to lead, instruct, nurture, and strengthen skills and knowledge already acquired in the course of tutoring others”.

So, while they suggest that curriculum should be oriented towards projects and activities that encourage collaboration and the use of peer tutoring, cooperative learning and spontaneous grouping of children they refer to, and give examples of, situations where the age “spread” is less that two years except where the group size is very small.

The authors of Primetimes, Jim Greenman and Anne Stonehouse (1997), also support ‘mixed age’ groupings. However they warn that that if the age range is too wide, benefits are lost. They say -

If the age range extends beyond 18 months, …[it]…is a challenge to provide the range of materials, equipment, and experiences needed by children of diverse ages within one space. There is often natural movement toward the lowest common denominator – that is, toward providing only materials and experiences that are safe and manageable for the youngest children and therefore do not fully meet the needs of the oldest children – or toward … the middle, which slights both the older and younger children… There are ... centres where twenty to thirty children under 5 years spend much of their day all in together “family” grouping. This is a significant misnomer. Families are not of such size and this type of grouping places particular stress on the younger children in the group.

About group size

Greenman and Stonehouse’s comments also raise an important point about group size. Again the idea that ‘small is beautiful’ is often accepted when talking about centre size in NZ. However, a baby in a small service in NZ (eg: 25 - 30 children) will interact with more children on a regular basis (if they interact with all the children in the centre), than a baby in a large service (eg: 40 – 50) that has a separate physical space for babies.

In large services, as well as having the potential to provide smaller ‘group sizes’, infant / toddler spaces have the potential to provide a wider range of equipment and choice. This is because there is likely to be more infants in a larger service (eg, 12), and therefore more space compared to a small service with just two or three infants.  

About adult : child ratios

A rich, well resourced environment that is planned for children within a particular developmental stage results in adults not needing to constantly:

• intervene to keep children safe
• get basic equipment off the high shelf or out of the cupboard on request
• reassemble or tidy equipment, such as a complex puzzles and paints, because a toddler has taken apart or spilled it in one swift movement … and moved on…
• be everywhere at once, because the wide mix of behaviours leads to unpredictable frustrations and responses, or
• be entertainers or ‘directors of children’ in order to manage behaviour and maintain interest

Because of the impact of the environment on the adult’s role, adults in some services can be more effective than in others. Adults in services with well planned environments can teach effectively with lower adult: child ratios than adults teaching in services with environments that, as Greenman and Stonehouse describe “provid[e] only materials and experiences that are safe and manageable for the youngest children and therefore do not fully meet the needs of the oldest children – or toward … the middle, which slights both the older and younger children.”

As a result, services with well planned environments can provide high quality while being more financially viable than other services.

Possible way forward

New Zealand has many suburbs, each with several small ECE services that provide care and education to children from birth to five years of age. Many of these services are ‘stand alone’ and have separate management groups and relatively small staff groups.

Management often struggle as parent members move on when their children leave the ECE service. Services find it difficult to afford to employ support staff such as a manager or administration officer.

Teachers are also often isolated. They may attend network meetings with other services, but they are relatively isolated and have limited opportunities to find a career structure within a small service.

So, what if services ‘teamed up’? Two or three existing services could consider merging within one management umbrella. Similar to a Kindergarten Association, their funding could be pooled, their management shared, and some efficiencies of size enjoyed.

Each of the services that merged could specialize. For example, one could remodel as an infant / toddler environment, another could remodel as an older child’s environment.

There would be challenges to overcome around transitions between services (regular visits and teacher’s moving between programmes could be considered) and there may be disadvantages for siblings and their families. However, there are ways to alleviate some of these obstacles.

We are never going to achieve perfection unless we start from scratch and purpose build all ECE services. It’s too late for that. Instead, I think that we should consider how we can make the best use of the buildings and services that already exist.

So, food for thought! I’d be very interested to hear people’s views on this issue and perhaps your thoughts and discussion could provide impetus for a follow up article, or you can discuss ideas further with me on http://groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/ECE-NZ

Ann has been involved in the ECE sector for 27 years and has been an ECE teacher for 16 of those years. She’s also been a professional development coordinator, an advisor to groups establishing new services and a policy analyst with the Ministry of Education. She has recently returned part-time to teaching (infants and toddlers) and is running our membership briefings. This is Ann’s discussion about the role of the environment in ECE.