Young Children Learning [Paperback]

This fascinating account of an unusual research project challenges many assumptions about how young children learn and how best to teach them. In particular it turns upside-down the commonly held belief that professionals know better than parents how to educate and bring up children; and it throws doubt on the theory that working-class children underachieve at school because of a language deficit at home. The second edition of this bestselling text includes a new introduction by Judy Dunn.

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• Fascinating account of an unusual research project challenges many assumptions about how young children.
  
• Turns upside-down the commonly held belief that professionals know better than parents how to educate and bring up children.
  
• Throws doubt on the theory that working-class children underachieve at school because of a language deficit at home.
  
• The authors' evidence is the children's own conversations which are quoted extensively and are delightful.
  
• The second edition of this bestselling text includes an introduction by Judy Dunn.

Foreword – Judy Dunn vii

Preface xiii

1. Why we studied children learning 1

2. How we carried out this study 11

3. Learning at home: play, games, stories and ‘lessons’ 22

4. Learning at home: living and talking together 54

5. The puzzling mind of the four-year-old 80

6. Working-class verbal deprivation: myth or reality? 107

7. An afternoon with Donna and her mother 132

8. How the children fared at nursery school 148

9. The working-class girls, including Donna, at school 179