Children's curiosity about their lives and worlds motivates many interests. Yet, adults often have fixed ideas about what children's interests are and have been criticised for trivialising children's interests. This book offers a critical and accessible engagement with research on children's interests that challenges us to move beyond surface-level understandings. Children's Interests, Inquiries and Identities argues that the powerful relationship between interests and informal learning has been under-recognised and undervalued. The book proposes new principles for understanding children's learning. It provides evidence that we need to look beyond the activities or topics children may currently be selecting to find out who and what has stimulated their interests, how we might identify and interpret interests more analytically and deeply, and how we might respond and engage with these in ways that take children's interests seriously. Moving beyond play-based activities, Helen Hedges explains and illustrates a number of ways by which children's interests can be interpreted and understood, to get to the heart of what really matters to, and for, children. The book draws on examples from research with children aged under 5 years, and young adults aged 18-25. It also includes a chapter on teachers' interests. It presents new and original models for interests-based curriculum and sociocultural curriculum and pedagogy for future examination in research and practice. This book demonstrates that leaving behind long-standing, taken-for-granted practices that have influenced understandings of curriculum, pedagogy, learning, and outcomes allows a new perspective of children's interests to emerge. It will be of interest to researchers, postgraduate students, and practitioners in the early years, parents, and other professionals who work with young children.

Children's curiosity about their lives and worlds motivates many interests. Yet, adults often have fixed ideas about what children's interests are and have been criticised for trivialising children's interests. This book offers a critical and accessible engagement with research on children's interests that challenges us to move beyond surface-level understandings. Children's Interests, Inquiries and Identities argues that the powerful relationship between interests and informal learning has been under-recognised and undervalued. The book proposes new principles for understanding children's learning. It provides evidence that we need to look beyond the activities or topics children may currently be selecting to find out who and what has stimulated their interests, how we might identify and interpret interests more analytically and deeply, and how we might respond and engage with these in ways that take children's interests seriously. Moving beyond play-based activities, Helen Hedges explains and illustrates a number of ways by which children's interests can be interpreted and understood, to get to the heart of what really matters to, and for, children. The book draws on examples from research with children aged under 5 years, and young adults aged 18-25. It also includes a chapter on teachers' interests. It presents new and original models for interests-based curriculum and sociocultural curriculum and pedagogy for future examination in research and practice. This book demonstrates that leaving behind long-standing, taken-for-granted practices that have influenced understandings of curriculum, pedagogy, learning, and outcomes allows a new perspective of children's interests to emerge. It will be of interest to researchers, postgraduate students, and practitioners in the early years, parents, and other professionals who work with young children.

This monograph is designed to highlight areas of research strength found at The University of Auckland's Faculty of Education. The chosen theme of this volume, "Changing trajectories of teaching and learning," encompasses the Faculty's strong research presence in ongoing teacher learning and in raising student achievement, particularly in lower decile schools and in the area of literacy. It also encompasses the Faculty's role in enhancing teaching and learning through researching quality teacher education and social work education. This volume consists of two invited lead chapters, one each by Professors Stuart McNaughton and Helen Timperley. Each of these contributes to our conceptualisation of notions of trajectories of learning for students and teachers respectively. The final chapter by Dr Mei Lai, also an invited piece, addresses issues of sustainability of interventions to change trajectories of achievement, issues clearly vital for the ability to maintain and further improve teaching and learning beyond the length of any teaching or research intervention.

Early childhood curriculum and pedagogy are complex. Although children's interests are a common source of early childhood curriculum, little literature exists that has researched the nature of children's interests, nor how teachers recognise and use these to co-construct curriculum. In addition, the highly participative, interpretive and intuitive nature of early childhood teaching means many kinds of evidence inform teachers' professional knowledge. This book provides some insights into these matters of value to teachers, researchers and policy makers. An interpretation of children's interests, from a sociocultural perspective, requires a more analytical understanding of children's and teachers' knowledge, experiences and interests. Further, participatory learning enables children and teachers to co-create a foundation for conceptual learning. Two inquiry continua and one model are offered to incorporate key theoretical ideas and arguments. Using communities of inquiry as an approach has the potential to transform early childhood learning-and- teaching environments.