Ross Thompson, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, U.C. Davis. Photo courtesy U.C. Davis

Ross Thompson, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, UC Davis. Credit: UC Davis

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Ross Thompson is a distinguished professor of psychology at University of California, Davis. He studies healthy adult-child attachments and how they relate to learning and uses his research to inform public policy. Thompson is a frequent speaker on early childhood education and has testified in the state Legislature about the need for better funding for early childhood programs. Thompson'southward wife, whom he refers to oft when speaking well-nigh his research, is a preschool teacher. As part of an occasional Question and Answer series with leaders in California instruction, Thompson sat down with EdSource Today'south Lillian Mongeau in April to talk well-nigh early on education policy.

Thompson outlined the unique psychological characteristics of young children and explained how he thinks those characteristics should inform discussions most classroom temper and statewide early on education policy. Thompson sees the evidence of preschool'south effectiveness as overwhelming enough to justify pushing for preschool for every child, no matter their economic status. "Nosotros know what quality looks like," Thompson said. "We could institute if we were willing to do so."

Read on for excerpts of the interview. Download the total transcript at the link below.

EdSource: I understand that a focus of yours is to depict a link between scientific understandings nearly early babyhood and public policy. Can you give me an example of how the two might be continued?

Ross Thompson: Our national focus on schoolhouse readiness has not surprisingly emphasized the kinds of cognitive language and numerical skills that kids need in order to function well in the classroom. Unsurprisingly, those are what most people think about when they're considering whether children are set up for school or not.

But when you look at how children learn in the early childhood years, you realize that a lot of it has to do with their social experience in the classroom. A lot of their power to acquire has to do with their self-regulatory skill. And a lot of their learning involves emotion; emotion that is involved in the excitement of discovery or emotion that tin ascend from stress in their homes.

Therefore if we think of schoolhouse readiness (requirements) only in terms of cognitive and linguistic communication and numerical skills, we miss some of the of import ingredients to what makes a lot of children really excited nearly learning, and what makes other children who are equally smart not every bit ready to acquire.

EdSource: Let'southward get into the psychology and the science side of things. What would you say makes iv-year-olds different than older uncomplicated school-age children?

Thompson_1 Thompson: A 4-year-former has much more difficulty focusing their attention or channeling their thinking or managing their emotions. A lot of that has to do with encephalon maturation. A 4-year-old is a very active learner. As whatsoever preschool educator would know, a quiet classroom ways something's incorrect considering in that location'due south just a lot of activity and there'southward a lot of language and there'south a lot going on. Children at this phase really immerse themselves in what they experience.

By the fourth dimension you become to an viii-twelvemonth-old, you can look the classroom to be quieter as children are working. They are no less active in their learning, but they're capable of learning in the kind of studied fashion that we often remember about every bit true in adults.

Another fundamental difference is that 4-twelvemonth-olds are really intuitive and they're experimental. When a 4-twelvemonth-old asks, 'How does that work?' a smart teacher says, 'Well, let'southward find out. Permit'southward run into if we can figure it out together. Permit'due south experiment with it. Permit's describe our own conclusion.'

There was a fourth dimension when my wife, who is a gifted preschool educator, was showing her grouping of four-year-olds an airplane and asked if anybody knew what it was called. And one kid said, 'Oh, I know, that's a pilus plane.' And Janet idea that was very interesting, so she said, 'Why would it be called a hair plane?' And this 4-twelvemonth-old says, 'Well, because information technology flies in the air where your hair is.' And that's but so typical of 4-year-old thinking.

EdSource: What would be needed if we were going to take public preschool classrooms filled with iv-year-olds that would exist different from what is needed in a second-grade classroom?

Thompson: I retrieve the uncomplicated principle is that a well-designed learning setting for a 4-year-old has to wait a lot different than a well-designed learning setting for an 8-twelvemonth-old. In fact, there have been experimental studies that take shown that if you lot put younger children into a learning setting that is better designed for the needs of an older child, sitting at a desk-bound, working on a worksheet, you don't have the younger children learning more than or faster. They end up learning less and being less self-confident. … That's simply because kids' brains are working differently at unlike ages, and the things we tin can practice to help their brains office well are very, very different.

That 4-year-erstwhile classroom is going to involve a lot of racket, a lot of hands-on, a lot of collaboration between a kid and a teacher, because information technology's that teacher-child relationship that motivates a lot of the child'due south excitement of learning, discovery and self-conviction and all those skilful things. That's one of the reasons why an early learning setting functions improve with a relatively small group size.

Thompson_2 EdSource: Then hands-on materials, small student-to-teacher ratios, and lots of time and room for exploring?

Thompson: That's right. And choices, because we know (young children) can acquire better from things that capture their involvement with adult teachers functioning much every bit tour guides and helping to exploit learning opportunities as they naturally ascend.

EdSource: You've talked about the importance of emotional bonds between teachers and very immature students. I'one thousand certain that feeling like you have a trustworthy instructor is important to kids at all ages. But why is that particularly of import for the youngest students?

Thompson: An older child can get fascinated by something they're doing or learning about or reading most completely on their own or with peers. For young children, a lot of their involvement in a learning activity derives from the quality and the warmth of the relationship they have with the adult who shared that experience.

Office of this comes from what I spend a lot of my time studying, which are attachments between children and adults. Those are so powerful early on, and nosotros nonetheless see that in a iv-twelvemonth-old sharing a discovery past telling a teacher about it.

EdSource: So when a child makes a discovery and shares it with a instructor, is in that location something that happens that cements the moment as a learning experience for the child once they've shared it?

Thompson: Some of it is the response of the teacher. And this tin really be the deviation between a high-quality and a not-so-high-quality early instruction setting.

A child might plough to an adult and say, 'How does that piece of work?' And 1 developed tin offering the explanation, and another adult can say, 'Let's notice out,' and those are very, very different learning options.

EdSource: That'south particularly interesting because the developed that gives the explanation probably thinks she's doing the right matter.

Thompson: That's exactly right. And yet as I said, it's a very different learning choice.

Again, we're talking about the idea that there is a instructor to whom a 4-year-old can turn in the classroom. Only of course, that'southward less likely to happen if there are two teachers and 30 kids or 35 kids compared to a group of say, 15. That'due south why the group size and the adult-to-kid ratio really makes a deviation.

EdSource: I'm looking into the public options for preschool. In that location's mostly state preschool and Head Showtime correct now, and in that location's this new button for universal preschool in California. What's your take on that?

Thompson: We've been down this road before. Nosotros had a referendum in, what was it, 2006, where the voters decided not to go in that direction.

I'll only speak for myself. I am pulled in two means on this issue. Information technology's very clear that the value-added benefit of a high-quality preschool is greatest for children at greatest economical risk, because normally that also means they're at greatest educational chance. And so if nosotros need to exist selective, if it's not universal, we conspicuously should be targeting (preschool investments) towards those kids.

Thompson_4The problem is that as a land, nosotros accept been involved in a more than fifty-year national experiment with targeted preschool education and it's called Head Showtime. And Caput Start has never, ever, ever been funded adequately for the number of kids who need it and who are eligible for it. And so a lot of the reason to debate in favor of universal preschool is that everybody has skin in the game. That is, every parent of a young child would have a universal preschool program as an selection for them, and therefore they would take an interest in the quality and the acceptability of such a programme.

Then I'g torn. I think that the economics of universal preschool are formidable. But I was in favor of that referendum in 2006 because I worry about watching a targeted program that may suffer some of the same fate of Head Offset – which is because it's for 'other peoples' kids,' it will non be adequately supported.

EdSource: Knowing what yous know nearly 4-yr-olds developmentally, practise you think all children would do good from a high-quality preschool plan?

Thompson: I call up the evidence is pretty clear that all children would benefit. We know that all children can benefit.

Thompson_3I do have to say to remember that we're talking virtually high-quality early education. We're not talking about poor-quality preschool programs. Poor-quality programs can hurt kids. So we are talking most an emphasis on quality, and the remarkable thing and what makes this a historic moment for our culture is that for the offset fourth dimension we know what quality looks similar. Nosotros can articulate both what the classroom surroundings looks like and which characteristics of teachers distinguish a high-quality, early on pedagogy setting from a poor-quality one.

So we don't even accept to speculate about what goes into creating those settings. We've analyzed controlled trials of children'due south outcomes from those kinds of settings. We know what the results are and we have evidence-based practices now that we could institute if nosotros were willing to do so.

Complete interview transcript here.

Lillian Mongeau covers early childhood education. Contact her hither and follow her at @lrmongeau.

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