Childrens Interests, Inquiries and Identities Curriculum, Pedagogy, Learning and Outcomes in the Early Years (Helen Hedges) (z-lib.org)(KVTM)

Raising critical questions about children’s interests, Helen Hedges invites deeper
interpretations of a concept that has suffered from surface level understandings and
simplistic practices for many years. She has created a thought-provoking book for
all those who believe that we owe it to children to make their learning deep,
relevant, and meaningful.

Associate Professor Maria Birbili, Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki, Greece

This inspiring book presents a compelling case for taking children’s interests ser-
iously. Drawing upon a wealth of examples, the book guides readers towards
deeper analysis and understanding of children’s interests, inquiries, and identity
development. Bringing together theory, research, and practice, the author
demonstrates how interests can inform models of curriculum and pedagogy that
have meaning and relevance for children. This is an essential resource for all
involved in the education of young children.

Dr Liz Chesworth, University of Sheffield, England

A systematic theorisation of children’s interests has not received the attention it
needs. Helen Hedges takes up this challenge and brings together interpretations of
what we mean by “children’s interests”. Vignettes add richness to the book,
speaking directly to practice and building professional knowledge. By re-naming,
re-claiming, and theorising children’s interests, she brings forward new ways of
conceptualising foundational practices in early childhood education.

Professor Marilyn Fleer, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

This original and scholarly book draws on sustained empirical research with a
wealth of examples, a coherent theoretical framework that stands as a timely
counterpoint to the dominant narratives of child development, and critical analysis
of contemporary policy frameworks. The focus on children’s interests, inquiries,
and identities brings attention to their diverse lives, experiences and capabilities.
The strong theory-practice integration makes this book accessible for teachers,
professionals who work with children and families, and for parents and kinship
members. Students will benefit from the ethical and methodological reflections, as
well as the scholarly justifications for engaging with alternative ways of under-
standing children’s possibilities and potential.

Professor Elizabeth Wood, University of Sheffield, England



CHILDREN’S INTERESTS, INQUIRIES
AND IDENTITIES

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 iden-
tify 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 socio-
cultural 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.

Helen Hedges is a professor of early childhood education at the University of
Auckland, New Zealand. Her research focuses on the nature of co-constructed
interests-based curriculum and pedagogy, and the knowledge teachers bring to
fostering and extending children’s learning.



CHILDREN’S INTERESTS,
INQUIRIES AND
IDENTITIES

Curriculum, Pedagogy, Learning and
Outcomes in the Early Years

Helen Hedges

Cover image: © Getty Images

First published 2022
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2022 Helen Hedges

The right of Helen Hedges to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-0-367-68982-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-68978-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-13988-1 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003139881

Typeset in Bembo
by Taylor & Francis Books

CONTENTS

List of figures viii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xii

1 Children’s interests: Beyond the activities of the moment 1
13
2 Interests and informal learning: A powerful relationship
3 Children’s interests: Debates, tensions, and possibilities in 32
58
practice and policy
4 Understanding children’s interests: Relational, ethical research 77
94
5 Deeper understandings 1: Funds of knowledge as a framing for 114
interests 134
153
6 Deeper understandings 2: Children’s inquiries and identities
7 Deeper understandings 3: Children’s working theories 172
8 (Re)Positioning teachers’ interests in curriculum and pedagogy

9 Interests, identities, and outcomes beyond childhood
10 Taking children’s interests seriously: Interests-related curriculum

and pedagogy

Index 185

FIGURES

10.1 Recognising and understanding children’s interests 176
10.2 A model for interests-based curriculum and pedagogy 182

PREFACE

No matter their life circumstances, all families and societies want children to thrive,
be well-educated, enjoy life, and contribute to their families and communities.
Internationally though, different societies and cultures have varying beliefs about
children, learning, curriculum, pedagogy, and outcomes. These beliefs influence
children’s educational and life experiences. Children’s lives and educations, locally
and globally, are therefore affected by many political, historical, social, cultural,
and economic values, policies, and events. Adults—such as teachers, parents, or
researchers—also take account of these influences in their own and their families’
everyday lives, and policymakers work to prioritise and balance benefits and
outcomes for all citizens in shorter- and longer-term ways.

Globally, early childhood education addresses children’s first educational experi-
ences outside their homes—from birth to starting school. It encompasses education,
care, and learning—hence the multiplicity of terminology associated with its provi-
sion. Age of school entry varies from 4–8 internationally: in Aotearoa New Zealand,
the context of my research drawn on in this book, children usually begin school
around the age of 5 years.

Investment in early childhood education worldwide has grown substantially over
the last 50 years for a range of historical, societal, educational, and economic reasons.
As a result, a variety of curricular and pedagogical approaches abound, largely based
on a history of child development theories, cultural and social values, beliefs about
the purpose of childhood, and political debates about the kinds of education young
children should experience. Yet, no matter the policies, beliefs, and theories
about learning, or associated curricula and pedagogies, play that represents children’s
interests and inquiries appears as a constant feature of young children’s experiences and
exploration of their world.

Against this backdrop, teachers and researchers of young children in their early
years continue to raise awareness of children’s rights to an education responsive to

x Preface

their interests and capabilities represented in, and revealed in, their play. While
many international early childhood education curricular documents state that
children’s interests are central to curricular enactment, research on children’s
experiences in early childhood education suggests the term children’s interests
suffers from narrow interpretations connected with play activities. The term has
been subject to received wisdom, and insufficient theorising.

A critical engagement with research on children’s interests in the early years in this
book offers a challenge to move the early childhood field beyond simplistic, long-
standing, taken-for-granted practices. Contemporary theories outlined establish the
potential to recognise children’s capabilities. Research approaches and methods
overviewed show ways to get close to children’s perspectives of their lives, experi-
ences, and capabilities. In short, I argue that we need to look beyond the activities or
topics children may currently be selecting to find out who and what has stimulated
children’s interests, how we might recognise and interpret interests more analytically
and deeply, and how we might respond and engage with these in ways that take
children’s interests seriously.

Using research evidence, I argue that important and deep interests are evident in
children’s daily lives in their play, in their participation in family, community, and
cultural activities and practices, in ongoing inquiries and questions in reciprocal,
respectful, and responsive relationships with peers and adults, and in their responses
to the local and global events they encounter. Curriculum and pedagogy responsive
to children’s interests can make learning deep, relevant, and meaningful. Moreover,
interests, and their related motivations, have important connections to lifelong
learning and the formation of multiple identities critical to satisfying participation in
all aspects of life experience.

As a result, several chapters in this book propose a number of deeper interpretations
of interests beyond play-based activities. These interpretations get to the heart of what
really matters to, and for, children. The ideas are illustrated through examples of chil-
dren in my projects to exemplify why these interpretations are important in rethinking
children’s interests and learning, and curriculum, pedagogy, and outcomes. A later
chapter illustrates that the important points made in the book are not confined to the
early years, but are influential into, at least, early adulthood. The final chapter culmi-
nates in offering two models: one for understanding children’s interests, and a second
model for interests-based curriculum and pedagogy.

The structure of the book leads readers first through issues associated with
rethinking theory that underpins curriculum, pedagogy, and research, and critical
perspectives on policy, play, and interests. I offer guidance on undertaking child-
friendly research that is founded on ethical principles. I then propose alternative
and contemporary interpretations of interests grounded in empirical studies that
have involved extensive periods of fieldwork. Busy parents, student teachers, and
professionals in the field may prefer to leave the initial background rationale for
later reading, and instead start with Chapters 1 and 5 to recognise the children
and situations they themselves have likely experienced. Policymakers and leaders
in early childhood teaching and teacher education wondering why they might

Preface xi

read this book are encouraged to read Chapters 1, 3, and 9 to be persuaded to
read the rest.

Whichever way you approach this book, and however much you read, thank
you for being interested in children, picking up this book, opening it, and wanting
to know more to support children’s interests, learning, life experiences, education,
inquiries, and identity building.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A whakatauk-ı (Ma-ori proverb)
Ehara taku toa, he takitahi, he toa takitini.
[My successes are not mine alone, they represent the successes that come from
support and collaboration.]

My two children, Rebecca and Christopher, provided the motivation for my
research programme. Playing with them when they were young intrigued me, and
inspired me to engage more deeply with the concept of children’s interests.

I thank sincerely all the teachers, families, and children who have generously
opened themselves up to participating in my research. I have learned so much
from you all. Real names are used mostly in this book in accordance with ethical
permissions granted.

I acknowledge the human participants ethics committees at Massey University, the
University of Auckland, and the Auckland Kindergarten Association for various
approvals of the projects drawn on in the book. I also acknowledge the University of
Auckland for its extensive databases and book collection, and the library’s
willingness to interloan nuggets of wisdom, for leave to write this book, and
access to a professional editor and graphic designer.

I also thank colleagues near and far, teacher-researchers, research assistants, summer
scholars, teachers I have shared my work with, and postgraduate students, particularly
those who have involved children as participants in their theses. Discussions and
debates, questions and challenges, have influenced my thinking and research
directions, and strengthened the intellectual coherence of my work.

I thank the anonymous reviewers of the book proposal, and the staff at Routledge
who have supported this book to come to fruition.

Finally, but perhaps most significantly, I acknowledge all the scholars whose
ideas inspire me, and permeate my book. “You discover as an ‘intellectual’ you

Acknowledgements xiii

have walked on stage into a drama already well-scripted by others. … Your own
intentions and thoughts become linked to ideas, issues and institutions that have
long had a reality of their own” (Bruner, 1983, p. 56).

Reference

Bruner, J. (1983). In search of mind: Essays in autobiography. Harper & Row.

Permissions

Appropriate permissions were obtained for material, developed and expanded on in this
book, from:

Chesworth, L., & Hedges, H. (in press, September 2022). Children’s interests and curricu-
lum making in early childhood education. In N. Wahlstrom & B. Karseth (Eds.),
Knowledge and curriculum thinking. International encyclopedia of education (4th ed.). Else-
vier. (Chapter 10)

Cooper, M., & Hedges, H. (2014). Beyond participation: What we learned from Hunter
about collaboration with Pasifika children and families. Contemporary Issues in Early
Childhood, 15(2), 165–175. https://10.2304/ciec.2014.15.2.165 (Chapter 5)

Cooper, M., & Hedges, H. (in press, April 2022). Young children exploring identities, languages
and cultures in a multicultural place. In S. Stagg-Peterson & N. Friedrich (Eds.), The role of
place and play in young children’s language and literacy. University of Toronto Press. (Chapter 6)

Hedges, H. (2016). Funds of knowledge. In D. Couchenor & K. Chrisman (Eds.), The SAGE
encyclopedia of contemporary early childhood education (pp. 618–620). SAGE. (Chapter 5)

Hedges, H. (2019). The “fullness of life”: Learner interests and educational experiences
[Special issue]. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 23, 1–11. https://10.1016/j.lcsi.
2018.11.005 (Chapter 9)

Hedges, H. (2021). Contemporary principles to lead understandings of children’s learning:
Synthesizing Vygotsky, Rogoff, Wells and Lindfors. Early Child Development and Care, 191
(7–8), 1056–1065. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2020.1849169 (Chapter 2)

Hedges, H. (2021). The place of interests, agency and imagination in funds of identity
theory. Mind, Culture and Activity, 28(2), 111–124. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.
2020.1833931 (Chapters 6 and 9)

Hedges, H. (2021). What counts and matters in early childhood: Narratives of interests and
outcomes. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 19(2), 179–194. https://doi.org/10.1177/
1476718X20942939 (Chapter 9)

Hedges, H., & Cooper, M. (2014). Engaging with holistic curriculum outcomes: Decon-
structing “working theories”. International Journal of Early Years Education, 22(4), 395–408.
https://10.1080/09669760.2014.968531 (Chapter 7)

Hedges, H., & Cooper, M. (2016). Inquiring minds: Theorizing children’s interests. Journal of
Curriculum Studies, 48(3), 303–322. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2015.1109711
(Chapter 6)

Hedges, H., & Cooper, M. (2017). Collaborative meaning-making using video footage:
Teachers and researchers analyse children’s working theories about friendship. European
Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 25(3), 398–411. https://10.1080/1350293X.
2016.1252153 (Chapter 7)

xiv Acknowledgements

Hedges, H., Cooper, M., & Weisz-Koves, T. (2019). Recognising and responding to
family funds of knowledge. In S. Alcock & N. Stobbs (Eds.), Rethinking play as pedagogy
(pp. 107–120). Routledge. (Chapter 5)

Hedges, H., Cullen, J., & Jordan, B. (2011). Early years curriculum: Funds of knowledge as a
conceptual framework for children’s interests. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 43(2), 185–205.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2010.511275 (Chapter 5)

Wood, E., & Hedges, H. (2016). Curriculum in early childhood education: Critical questions
about content, coherence and control. The Curriculum Journal, 27(3), 387–405. https://10.
1080/09585176.2015.1129981 (Chapter 10)

1

CHILDREN’S INTERESTS

Beyond the activities of the moment

Jack, boats, and marine engineering
While playing with blocks in his early childhood centre, Jack, aged almost 3,
described his interests to me: “I know about moons and stars and planes and
boats.” He talked with me about boats, propellers, engines, and noise. He told me
he had a boat at his house, a matter that a teacher, Barbara, later confirmed.

During an interview at his home two months later, Jack’s mother, Rachael,
talked enthusiastically about Jack’s interest in boats:

As a family we’ve got the boating interest. We have a yacht, Rawhiti,
[M-aori for the compass point in the direction of the rising sun] and we
went away on that a fair bit over summer. Jack’s very interested in the
outboard motor and propellers on that. … [T]he thing that’s happened
most recently with our yacht is it’s come out of the water and so that’s
generated a whole lot of fun. He watched it coming out on the travel lift
and then the straddle lift, transported and propped up, put on a truck …
and it’s being restored because the boat, can you tell Helen? I don’t know
whether you know this Jack, how old is Rawhiti? Rawhiti is a hundred
years old this year.

Jack continued with this interest at home, where it had been stimulated, and expressed
it in his early childhood experiences. When Jack was 3½, Louise (a teacher) noticed
him reading a book about boats and engaged in a deep conversation with him about
this. Theresia (another teacher) also had a conversation with him about the family boat
and documented this in a learning story, a dominant form of narrative assessment used
in early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand. In a “story from home” in
response to Theresia’s story, Rachael explained more of Jack’s interest in and

DOI: 10.4324/9781003139881-1

2 Beyond activities

knowledge about boats to the teachers. This gave the detailed history of their
restoration of the boat and the nature of Jack’s understandings.

Rachael wrote me an email, to update me on Jack, six months after completion
of my year of fieldwork on this particular project. She told me that Jack had
developed an interest in the Titanic, an interest that Theresia had used to encourage
Jack to tackle new learning experiences such as carpentry and drawing.

His portfolio has a record of him making a wooden Titanic boat and over a
month later bringing it back to kindergarten for some modifications (another
funnel). Theresia also used the Titanic obsession to get Jack drawing—
something he’d never been much interested in. The drawings we have from
that period are my most treasured drawings from his time at kindergarten.
There is a Titanic series (over 15 I would guess). They mostly focus on the
funnels, with smoke and propellers with churning water. There is also one in
his kindergarten portfolio of the submarines—including his first written word
(other than his name) “submarine”. Titanic was also one of his first written
and recognised words.

Many years later, Rachael came to my professorial inaugural address with a
friend of hers, who was at that time my PhD student. She told us that Jack was
now almost 18 and had decided to study marine engineering.

Why interests are important

Jack, Rachael, Barbara, Louise, and Theresia were participants in one of my pro-
jects on children’s interests. Here, in the words and actions of a child and parent,
and the decisions, actions, and responses of teachers, are reasons why children’s
interests might be important as a significant and meaningful focus for participation
in life, learning, early childhood education, and research. Jack’s story shows ways
that an interest might be sparked and continued at home by participation in family
activities, and extended and utilised in education by teachers. Research that con-
nects interests across contexts provides deeper understandings than one context
alone. In years later choosing to study marine engineering, Jack’s story also offers
potential insight into the longer-term value and inspiration that a strong interest
might offer.

The story I have recounted will have resonance with many who are involved
with children on a daily basis. You will have noticed, for example, infants’
interests stimulated by their intense observation of siblings and peers around
them, their desire to emulate them, and to be part of experiences offered by
adults. Toddlers’ enjoyment of stamping in puddles and creating mud, or listen-
ing to music and dancing joyously are among frequently uploaded videos on
social media documenting children’s self-motivated choices of activities. Young
children develop the verbal skills to engage in dialogue and debate, with peers
and adults, on matters of deep interest and inquiry: fairness, friendship, and

Beyond activities 3

families are frequent themes in the literature. Such examples occur across a
diverse range of social and cultural contexts internationally. These examples also
show that children are keenly interested in almost everything in their lives.

It is likely you have heard similar stories to Jack’s. Perhaps you know a child who
had an interest in fire engines and much later became a firefighter; taught a child
whose parent was a guitarist in a rock band, and grew up with strong talents and
involvement in music; or heard of another child whose grandparent was a famous chef
and continued with a family restaurant in her footsteps. How and why do these life
stories arise? What is the importance and significance of the phenomenon of interest in
children’s lives? How is interest understood from different perspectives, and therefore
how might interest play out in the philosophies and practices of education?

Understandings of children’s interests

Research usually sets out to investigate phenomena, and relationships between
phenomena, that we know little about. In my case, the first research-related problem
I have experienced is that, despite experiences of a wide range of interests, or
knowing personally stories such as Jack’s, many people make assumptions and hold
narrow interpretations about what children’s interests are. Without exception, I have
found that, when parents, other family adults, teachers, and children themselves, are
asked about children’s interests, they immediately start talking about the activities
that children show a preference to participate in, or the focus of a topic of interest—
often one that children know more about than adults.

Here are examples of what I have been told in my research: Imogen likes to play on
the swing; Tom is always building with Mobilo; Hunter is an expert at playing the
drums; Simeon wants to play soccer; Chloe enjoys trying to jump; Harry often dresses
up as a princess; Campbell knows all about sharks and whales; and Hal likes to think
about what lions and zebras do and eat. Adults also commonly talk about the frequent
questions children have about activities and topics, or routines and events in their lives,
sometimes alternately pleased and irritated with constant “Why?” questions.

In this book, however, as Jack’s story indicates, I argue that activities and topics
in themselves may be important, but potentially surface-level and limiting under-
standings of the term children’s interests. We owe it to children to look more deeply
at their motivations and learning. So we need to pay attention to what curiosities,
purposes, content, and meanings lie behind what it is they are choosing to parti-
cipate in, and investigate, in their families and communities. On one level, children
may be individuals with a “go-to” favourite activity or topic when they are offered
a choice of what to do. On another level, these favourite pursuits provide windows
into children’s efforts to make sense and meaning from their life experiences with
other children and adults, and learning opportunities in their families and com-
munities. These efforts involve multiple ongoing inquiries into, and questions
about, these life experiences. Interests combine personal, social, and intellectual
goals, purposes, and achievements, and thus are central to learning and life. As Jack
also exemplifies, interests may connect with identity development.

4 Beyond activities

Alongside my intellectual curiosity about interest as a phenomenon, and its place
in human lives and learning, my research programme has taken up the challenge
articulated clearly by Carl Bereiter:

[T]he most profound of children’s questions seldom relate to activities of the
moment. They relate to the larger issues and forces that shape the world –
birth, death, good, evil, power, danger, survival, generosity, adventure. …
Adults, even the most “child-centered”, tend to trivialize children’s interests,
making them out to be more mundane and egocentric than they really are,
and thus positing a distance between children’s interests and intellectual subject
matter that is greater than it needs to be.

(Bereiter, 2002, p. 301)

Bereiter’s thinking here encapsulates further my reasons for looking for deeper,
more analytical and theorised understandings and explanations of children’s inter-
ests. How do interests reflect children’s desires to understand the complexity and
profundity of their worlds? How might we look more deeply at children’s interests
and take them seriously? How might interests serve to connect the understandings
of the childhood years and the intellectual knowledge and scientific principles that
underpin established understandings and further investigations of the world?

Interests in education

In relation to education, there are more reasons why understanding interests is
important. The most pertinent is that almost all international early childhood
curricular documents include children’s interests as one key source of curricular
decision making. More recently, as primary (elementary) and secondary (high
school/college) teachers look for ways to motivate student learning more overtly,
they draw on interests to trial ideas such as “inquiry projects” or “passion pro-
jects.” In short, how teachers understand and interpret the term children’s interests
has major consequences for the kinds of learning experiences that children are
immersed in during their education.

I have therefore also responded to the provocations of early childhood scholars
through my work. Maria Birbili and Melpomeni Tsitouridou critiqued the term
children’s interests as an under-theorised “catch phrase” (Birbili & Tsitouridou, 2008,
p. 143); Angela Anning, Joy Cullen, and Marilyn Fleer described children’s interests
as part of early childhood “folklore and practice” (Anning et al., 2009, p. 13). These
criticisms indicate that children’s interests in early childhood education may be cen-
tral to curriculum and pedagogy, but are taken-for-granted, under-researched, and
under-articulated. The criticism also aligns with Bereiter’s challenge that children’s
interests may be underestimated and undervalued.

Failing to appreciate the depth and significance of children’s interests has the
potential to stifle children’s exploration of, learning about, and meaning making in
early childhood settings related to the people, places, and things that they

Beyond activities 5

encounter in their worlds of experience. It also underestimates the potential
relationship between interests and identity, a connection the case of Jack points to.

My problem space

In short, I have found adults are quite certain they know what children’s interests
are. So, it is indeed a problem for educational research when you set out to
research a phenomenon that many adults close to children’s experiences already
have quite definite ideas about, that there is surprisingly little literature about, and
where a practice is so well-accepted that challenging and shifting underpinning
beliefs and assumptions might take time and energy.

Researching children’s interests—the origins of these, the ways and extent to which
these are stimulated, recognised, and responded to, ways adult interactions either
extend or shut down interests, and the knowledge of content and pedagogy that is
brought to these interest-related interactions—has been a fascinating source of both
project data and unsolicited opinion and feedback over the almost 20 years I have been
following my own intellectual curiosity about interests as a learning phenomenon.

Context of my research

My research programme has taken up these challenges in the context of early
childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand, where a variety of early childhood
services are available for children aged from birth to 5 years. Reflecting the inter-
national scene, not all those who have an educative role with children have
teaching qualifications. A range of terminology is used globally to indicate the
educative role adults take in services; in Aotearoa New Zealand the term used is
from Ma-ori: kaiako. However, the word I use consistently in this book is teacher.
This usage reflects that a teaching qualification assumes a basis of professional
knowledge, a valuing of research-informed practices, and having a disposition for
ongoing learning to call on in interactions with children.

Te Wha-riki (Ministry of Education, 1996, 2017) is the early childhood curriculum
document in New Zealand. It is a well-regarded document internationally, and
research related to its underpinning concepts has been taken up worldwide. While
my research occurs in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand, the experiences, issues,
and debates my projects are also grounded in are pertinent well beyond my country.
Readers will be able therefore to transfer, discuss, and apply key points and issues to
their own contexts. Some brief detail about this document is, however, important to
contextualise the material and arguments presented in this book.

Te Wha-riki, as a literal translation from Ma-ori, means a woven mat for all to
stand on. The aspiration statement views children as “competent and confident
learners and communicators, healthy in body, mind and spirit, secure in their sense
of belonging and in the knowledge that they make a valued contribution to
society” (Ministry of Education, 2017, p. 5). Te Wha-riki is framed by four princi-
ples: empowerment (in Ma-ori, whakamana); partnerships with families and

6 Beyond activities

communities (wha-nau tangata); relationships (nga- hononga); holistic development
(kotahitanga); and five strands: well-being (mana atua); belonging (mana whenua);
contribution (mana tangata); communication (mana reo); and exploration (mana
aotu- roa).

Present in the principle of empowerment, and in all the strands, Te Wha-riki
prioritises a commitment to children’s mana, a Ma-ori concept that “can be
translated as ‘prestige’ or ‘power’” (Rameka, 2007, p. 129), and is central to
children being empowered to learn. Mana is foundational to Te Wha-riki because
“having mana is the enabling and empowering tool to controlling [children’s]
own destiny” (Reedy, 2019, p. 37). Mana, agency, and identity are prioritised as
higher-order outcomes.

In line with a commitment to mana, there are important statements that mean
understandings of children’s interests are essential, including:

Te Wha-riki holds the promise that all children will be empowered to learn
with and alongside others by engaging in experiences that have meaning for
them. This requires kaiako [teachers] to actively respond to the strengths,
interests, abilities and needs of each child.

(Ministry of Education, 2017, p. 13)

The family and community/wh-anau tangata principle means that parents and
wh-anau will … contribute knowledge of their children’s capabilities at home
and in other settings and will be seen as “experts” on their children’s interests.

(Ministry of Education, 2017, p. 64)

Te Wha-riki is non-prescriptive: curriculum content arises from weaving the
principles and strands together in response to each early childhood setting addres-
sing the question of “what matters most?” (Education Review Office, 2020), a
question that determines local priorities and values for children’s learning. Hence:

Planning involves deliberate decision making about the priorities for learning
that have been identified by the kaiako, parents, wha-nau and community of
the ECE service. All children should have opportunities to learn across all five
strands of the curriculum and to pursue their strengths and interests in depth.

(Ministry of Education, 2017, p. 65)

In terms of what curriculum presents as in each setting, the document values children’s
play and exploration:

A curriculum wha-riki for young children provides a rich array of primarily
play-based experiences. By engaging in these, children learn to make sense of
their immediate and wider worlds through exploration, communication and
representation.

(Ministry of Education, 2017, p. 15)

Beyond activities 7

Te Wha-riki is underpinned by, and invites interpretations of, multiple theoretical
informants. My work on interests has particularly focused on theories and concepts
(collectively termed sociocultural in this book) that derive from the work of Lev
Vygotsky (e.g., 1978, 1986). From a sociocultural perspective, children’s interests
are stimulated by the experiences they participate in and engage with in their
families, communities, and cultures. People, places, events, and cultural tools define
and delimit the kinds of experiences children can select from to develop interests.

Participating in families, communities, and cultures is therefore a theme that
permeates the book. Participation as learning, participation as a right, and participation
as both a focus for, and a way to research, children’s interests are key concepts
outlined in Chapters 2–4 and intrinsic to the findings and arguments presented
in Chapters 5–10.

I show in this book that children’s interests and inquiries lead them to developing
their own forms of knowledge and skills—knowledge and skills that, from a socio-
cultural perspective, present differently to the linear progressions of school readiness
expectations which derive from developmental theories. Significantly too, these
interests may shape children’s futures and identities as learners and contributors.

Key argument of the book

In short, situated in contemporary research and scholarly literature, the key argument
of this book is that we need to look beyond the surface of activities or topics children may
currently be selecting. We need to consider who and what has stimulated children’s
interests, how we might recognise and interpret interests more analytically and
deeply, and respond and engage with these in ways that take children’s interests
seriously.

The book addresses the following questions:

What ideas have influenced current understandings of interest as a phenomenon?
Why might children’s interests be an important basis for understanding children,

curriculum, pedagogy, learning, and outcomes?
How might adults be more analytical about children’s interests?
How do interests connect with children’s inquiries and identities?
Where might teacher interests be positioned in professional knowledge debates

about interests-related curricula?

Evidence is provided to show that children’s interests represent their:

eagerness to enjoy and engage with experiences valued by their families and
communities;

desire to make meaning of their world and life experiences, and make decisions
and choices about their present and future participation in these experiences;

aspiration to build multiple identities that give purpose and meaning to their
lives

8 Beyond activities

While the context of the research reported in the book is largely, but not
exclusively, early childhood education (birth–5 years), the principles of the dis-
cussion apply across sectors and ages. Chapter 9 explores the childhood interests of
young adults and the ways these were continued through their lives, including
their experiences in each level of education. This chapter, in particular, provides
provocations for all teachers as to the wisdom of, and their roles in, utilising
interests in learning.

Chapter overviews

Chapter 2 first backgrounds the motivational value of interests in learning. I
overview and problematise the influence of developmental and educational
psychology on our understandings of children’s interests, and ways that early
childhood education environments have traditionally been created in response to
these theories. Many psychological studies have used observation of play activities
as the way to assess interests—a circuitous and self-serving route towards continuing
and supporting this assumption. This understanding has then had a long-standing, glib
application to childhood education practices: providing a wide range of play activities.
In short, I offer ideas that are responsive to taking a deeper look at the concept,
influence, and importance of interests in human lives.

I also provide an extensive overview of sociocultural theoretical concepts central
to the perspectives of interests of this book. These concepts derive from the work
of Lev Vygotsky, and post-Vygotskian scholars such as Barbara Rogoff, Luis Moll,
Gordon Wells, Judith Lindfors, Moisès Esteban-Guitart, and their colleagues.
The work of these scholars serves, in this book, to support my argument that
long-standing developmental theories and related entrenched practices in early
childhood education regarding children’s interests do not serve children well.
Emerging theoretical perspectives that hold potential for future explanations of
children’s interests are also outlined.

I identify that active verbs are more important than nouns in understanding and
explaining children’s interests-related learning; words such as participating, contribut-
ing, learning, playing, knowing, inquiring, and exploring are central. These concepts are
elaborated on in later chapters alongside empirical evidence from a range of studies.
As a result, I argue that informal learning is powerful for children and has a strong
relationship with interests. I propose a number of new principles about children’s
learning. These principles underpin the analyses of children’s interests that follow in
later chapters.

Significant, entrenched beliefs and practices in early childhood education mean
that shifts towards socioculturally oriented concepts are challenging to effect.
Chapter 3 focuses in on tensions and dilemmas in early childhood policy and
practice. The enduring legacy of child development theories, and binary terms such
as child-centred and teacher-centred are described. The chapter also overviews the way
sociology and childhood studies have illuminated children’s capabilities and
encouraged contemporary images of children such as those reflected in Te Wha-riki.

Beyond activities 9

I briefly review the international policy context, and rationales for recent increases
in investment in early childhood education and development of early childhood
curricular documents by governments. This investment reflects a number of ques-
tions and concerns, including discourses of “academic outcomes” and “school readi-
ness” that are growing in prominence. While curricular documents internationally
commonly include reference to children’s interests as one source of curriculum,
interests could be undermined by a focus on readiness. These academic discourses
reflect neoliberal, human capital theory, and position children in ways that contrast
with visions of children as capable, lifelong learners and citizens who may benefit
from more holistic outcomes. Capability theory is introduced as a way forward for
curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and outcomes responsive to children’s interests.

To get beyond adult perspectives of children’s interests, I have sought to involve
children as participants in research as well as teachers and parents, and to find ways to
develop relationships and interact with children to gain insights into their experi-
ences. Chapter 4 explores qualitative methodologies and methods related to research
with young children that explores the nature of children’s lives, experiences, and
interests. Methodology involves the beliefs, assumptions, concepts, and theory that
drive research design, and ought to be consistent with the theory driving the overall
research: in my case, an emphasis on sociocultural theory in Chapter 2 sets up that
participating and engaging with children are central to the approaches utilised.

Accordingly, I outline the ways that participatory methodologies and methods
can lead researchers to deeper interpretations of children’s interests. Such work
draws on ethnographic approaches through long-term and in-depth work in the
field. Developing substantive relationships with children, families, and teachers can
create insights into what really matters for children and how adults might support
those interests. Any qualitative research is imbued with ethical considerations and
challenges. Ethical principles and practices associated with researching children’s
interests are outlined as essential to the methods discussed, along with the tensions
and dilemmas that I have experienced.

The first chapter to explore deeper understandings of children’s interests is
Chapter 5. I delve into funds of knowledge as a theoretical framing for interpreting
and responding to children’s interests. Funds of knowledge is a strengths-based
metaphor that recognises the learning embedded in the everyday lives of families
and cultures (González et al., 2005). Children participate naturally in cultural
activities and practices. They are motivated to take some up as interests to represent
in their play and experiences both inside and outside education settings.

I establish ways funds of knowledge enables an interpretation of interests that
explains more deeply the choices of activities children choose. The insights gained
from visits to family homes are powerful for understanding children’s interests
represented in early childhood settings. In-depth examples of the validity and
strength of funds of knowledge as a basis for children’s interests are portrayed in the
stories of three children and their families. However, while funds of knowledge can
provide a springboard to understanding children’s interests more deeply, they also
require critical reflection when used as a basis for curriculum and pedagogy.

10 Beyond activities

Chapter 6 is the second chapter exploring deeper interpretations of children’s
interests. I focus on inquiry to understand children’s deep and ongoing interests.
The chapter explores the potential of the idea of children’s “real questions”
(Wells, 1999, p. 91) as underpinning interpretations of children’s fundamental
inquiries, and children’s serious work developing positive and contributing
identities as learners and citizens.

I argue that children’s interests represent fundamental inquiry questions that are
shared across children and have personal meaning and content. The most current
version of those questions is offered and exemplified as a catalyst for further
investigation in curriculum, pedagogy, and research.

I then bring together the material so far on interests, inquiry, and identity through
applying the concept of funds of identity (Esteban-Guitart, 2016; Esteban-Guitart &
Moll, 2014). In exemplifying funds of identity in relation to three 4-year-olds,
aspects of the concepts of culture, play, interest, agency, imagination, and everyday
participatory learning central to Vygotskian and post-Vygotskian theorising are
brought together to explain the importance of interests and identity development in
human lives.

Exploring children’s interests, inquiries, and identities in teacher–child interactions is
founded on respectful, reciprocal, and responsive relationships with others during what
is described as relational pedagogy. Relational pedagogy has particular characteristics
that align with participatory learning—it is described in this chapter and further
exemplified in Chapter 7.

Chapter 7 continues to offer deeper understandings of children’s interests. It
applies the ideas of capability theory to holistic outcomes that develop from, and
are responsive to, children’s interests and inquiries. Learning dispositions such as
curiosity, concentration, persistence, contribution, and communication are vital to
developing interests. The outcome of working theories, one that encapsulates chil-
dren’s efforts to participate, learn, think, and develop more useful and connected
ideas about the world over time, is explored in-depth. A focus on working theories
shows ways that children’s ideas and understandings based on their interests and
inquiries develop in personally meaningful and sometimes non-linear ways, and are
interrelated with the development of learning dispositions.

Working theories are illustrated through the experiences of toddler Chloe and her
efforts over time to learn to jump, and those of 3-year-old Caleb in his attempt to
understand and act on what is involved in making friends. These examples exemplify
that a complex and holistic combination of knowledge, skills and strategies, attitudes
and expectations, are involved and embodied in working-theory-related interactions
between children and adults. Accordingly, the roles of adult knowledge and
responses are also examined closely to answer questions such as:

In what ways might adults follow, foster, extend or shut down interests and
working theories?

Where do adult responses using conceptual language sit with interactions with
young children?

Beyond activities 11

A third example of children’s collaborative theorising about the purposes and functions
of the human heart shows the way that curriculum can extend beyond the early
childhood setting and involves thoughtful, responsive, and relational pedagogy.

Dominant interpretations of child-centredness associated with children’s interests, dis-
cussed in Chapter 3, have left the early childhood field uncertain about the contribution
teachers’ interests might make to curriculum, pedagogy, and learning. Yet, teacher
knowledge and responsiveness are important themes in Chapters 5–7. In Chapter 8, I
position teacher interests and knowledge centrally in curriculum and pedagogy. The
chapter will clarify that, while children remain foregrounded in curricular considerations,
teachers can be viewed as instigators, inspirers, responders, and extenders of children’s
interests, who use their own interests and related knowledge to do so.

Examples are offered of a range of teacher interests, and the ways that including
these in curricular experiences added depth, richness, and conceptual knowledge to
pedagogical interactions. These examples will address the range of ideas about
children’s interests championed in this book such as looking in-depth at activity
choices to understand funds of knowledge, deep interests, and identity building. In
turn, these examples lead to broader debates about components of the professional
knowledge base of early childhood teachers, and an argument for including teachers’
interests within considerations of professional knowledge.

In Chapter 9, I take up the challenge of going beyond the early years to see if a
focus on interests remains relevant, valuable, and significant into adulthood. The
inseparable connection between intellect and affect that Vygotsky (1986) championed
as being part of “the fullness of life” (p. 10), that led to new ways of studying human
experience, thinking, and activities is exemplified through a study using narrative
methodology.

I investigated the childhood interests of young adults and ways these had continued
through their lives and schooling. I show the ways their childhood interests eventually
led to tertiary education and early adult career decisions. This path was in no way
linear. The participants describe the ways that teachers recognised and valued—or
otherwise—interests in education. The experiences of these young adults show the
way that interests acted both as motivators for learning, and sustained them during
difficult times in their lives. In this way, interests-based learning points again to dis-
positions as a critical holistic outcome alongside the academic outcomes of schooling.

Findings presented support ideas raised in this book that the stimulus for, and
origins of, interests lie primarily and strongly with families. A further clear finding
was the impact of their interests on identity formation. This point therefore aligns
with those of young children presented earlier in the book to show ways that
interests can be critical stimuli to identity formation.

In the final chapter (Chapter 10), I summarise the key arguments and associated
evidence presented in this book. I emphasise that children’s interests are significant
in their lives as personal, social, and intellectual vectors for inspiring and motivating
participation, learning, and contribution in families, communities, and cultures. I
revisit the components of Bereiter’s challenge to adults to desist from and resist
trivialising children’s interests outlined early in this chapter, and offer a response

12 Beyond activities

based on the evidence presented in the book. I stress that adults need to take
children’s interests seriously and be analytical about them in order to utilise the
potential of interest in human lives and learning.

I offer two models, one for interests’ recognition, and one for interests-based
curriculum and pedagogy. Both derive from my empirical work laid out in the
book. The models are responsive to tenets that the early childhood field has long
held dear while also being receptive to ideas in this book about new principles for
understanding children’s learning, images of children’s capabilities and competence,
theorised interpretations of children’s interests, and understandings that teachers and
parents have an intentional role to play in supporting and extending children’s interests
and knowledge building. Future directions are offered, responsive to the central argu-
ments of the book, which place working theories centrally in curriculum and pedagogy.

References

Anning, A., Cullen, J., & Fleer, M. (2009). Research contexts across cultures. In A. Anning, J.
Cullen, & M. Fleer (Eds.), Early childhood education: Society and culture (2nd ed., pp. 1–24). Sage.

Bereiter, C. (2002). Education and mind in the knowledge age. Lawrence Erlbaum.
Birbili, M., & Tsitouridou, M. (2008). Identifying children’s interests and planning learning

experiences: Challenging some taken-for-granted views. In P. G. Grotewell & Y. R. Burton
(Eds.), Early childhood education: Issues and developments (pp. 143–156). Nova Science Publishers.
Education Review Office. (2020). Te ara poutama. https://ero.govt.nz/how-ero-reviews/ea
rly-childhood-services/akarangi-quality-evaluation/te-ara-poutama-indicators-of-quality-
for-early-childhood-education-what-matters
Esteban-Guitart, M. (2016). Funds of identity: Connecting meaningful learning experiences in and
out of school. Cambridge University Press.
Esteban-Guitart, M., & Moll, L. C. (2014). Funds of identity: A new concept based on the
Funds of Knowledge approach. Culture & Psychology, 20(1), 31–48. https://doi.org/10.
1177/1354067X13515934
González, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. (Eds.). (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing prac-
tices in households, communities and classrooms. Lawrence Erlbaum.
Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Wha-riki. He wha-riki matauranga mo- nga- mokopuna o
Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. Learning Media.
Ministry of Education. Te T-ahuhu o te Ma-tauranga. (2017). Te Wha-riki/He wha-riki mataur-
anga mo- nga- mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. www.education.govt.nz/ea
rly-childhood/teaching-and-learning/te-whariki/
Rameka, L. (2007). M-aori approaches to assessment. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 30(1),
126–144. http://alhildreth.weebly.com/uploads/2/3/2/9/23293678/maori_approaches_
to_assessment.pdf
Reedy, T. (2019). To-ku rangatira n-a te mana m-atauranga: Knowledge and power set me
free… In A. C. Gunn & J. Nuttall (Eds.), Weaving Te Wha-riki: Aotearoa New Zealand’s
early childhood curriculum document in theory and practice (3rd ed., pp. 25–43). NZCER Press.
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard
University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1986). Thought and language. MIT Press.
Wells, G. (1999). Dialogic inquiry: Towards a sociocultural practice and theory of education. Cambridge
University Press.

2

INTERESTS AND INFORMAL LEARNING

A powerful relationship

Introduction
“Interest is universal; all persons are hardwired to develop interest” (Renninger
et al., 2019, p. 1). Interests begin at birth, connected with curiosity, inquiry, and
making meaning of life experiences. Children are interested in many things: some
interests are momentary and others are deep and ongoing. Interests and learning
involve relationships, activities, objects, and interactions. Interest within learning
combines emotions, meaningful knowledge seeking, goal setting, and
concentration.

Interest, interests, and children’s interests share commonalities in being somewhat
ill-defined and overlapping concepts. I noted in Chapter 1 that creating curriculum
from children’s interests was a widespread but under-theorised practice in early
childhood education, largely built on early childhood folklore about interests as
activities. The phenomenon of interest itself has suffered similarly:

Because interest is a common phenomenon, there is folk wisdom that explains
its origins and how it works. Although folk wisdom about interest has some
aspects of truth, it also contains a number of misunderstandings about interest
that need to be recognised and addressed. Addressing these misconceptions
should allow the field of interest research to move forward and provide prac-
titioners with information about how interest can be supported to develop.

(Renninger & Hidi, 2016, pp. 2–3)

I address some misunderstandings about children’s interests in this chapter, parti-
cularly that the relationship between interests and informal learning has been
under-recognised, and therefore insufficiently connected to reveal its power and
potential.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003139881-2

14 Interests and informal learning

Defining any phenomenon has advantages in suggesting some parameters and
clarity, but risks underestimating richness and depth. Therefore, I approach children’s
interests in the way Vintimilla and Pacini-Ketchabaw (2020) approach pedagogy. As
well as addressing the matter of what interest/s is/are and how we define children’s
interests, in this book I engage with the more generative possibilities inherent in the
question, “How might we think of interest and children’s interests?”

A solid foundation of research on interest has emerged through using a number of
disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. The first part of this chapter provides argu-
ments dating from Dewey and continuing to the present day—that interest is a sig-
nificant motivator for human learning. Psychological research has gradually shifted
from emphases on cognitive research on memory and knowledge development to
include the affective and emotional states that accompany interest.

Moreover, interests do not arise from thin air: they are inspired by the people,
places, and experiences to which humans are exposed. Sociocultural scholars’ work
forms the substance of this chapter in recognising the value of children’s participatory
learning in their families and communities, and the ways these stimulate rich interests,
curiosities, and inquiries. Emerging theoretical perspectives that hold potential for
future explanations of children’s interests are also offered. The powerful relation-
ship between informal learning and interests will be established. To complete the
chapter, I propose new principles for understanding children’s interests-based
learning—principles that permeate the rest of this book.

Foundations of understandings of interest: developmental and
educational psychology

John Dewey is credited with drawing attention to the phenomenon of interest.
Interest has been associated with positive emotions, learning, engagement, and
achievement from this beginning. As Dewey (1913) noted:

Children are almost always happy, joyous—and so are grown people—when
engaged consecutively in any unconstrained mode of activity—when they are
occupied, busy. The emotional accompaniment of the progressive growth of a
course of action, a continual movement of expansion and of achievement, is
happiness; mental content or peace, which when emphatic, is called joy,
delight. Persons, children or adults, are interested in what they can do suc-
cessfully, in what they approach with confidence and engage in with the sense
of accomplishment.

(pp. 35–36)

Interest was defined as an object, activity, action, or event that inspired and moti-
vated learning. Dewey noted that interests needed subject matter in order to
develop, and encouraged certain dispositions that he referred to as “tendencies,
habits, powers on the part of the self” (p. 65); specifically in-depth engagement,
effort, and perseverance. Here was a first signal that interests-related learning

Interests and informal learning 15

involves both intellectual and affective dimensions. The emotions and dispositions
that accompany interests are intrinsic to their value for learning and their power in
education.

For many decades after Dewey, and in line with their dominance at the time,
studies of children’s interests drew on developmental and educational psychology for
foundational theories and methods. These studies defined interest as “a preference for
a certain activity, topic, or domain” (Shin et al., 2019, p. 445). Initially, research was
laboratory-based and experimental, and then occurred in children’s homes. The
association of interest with education, and a concomitant attention to what moti-
vated participation in learning, later led to many studies sited in educational settings.

Early studies were largely of individual children, and were a useful beginning
to exploring the importance of interest for young children. The studies of chil-
dren under 5 years defined children’s interests as activities or objects in the play
environment (e.g., playdough, blocks, dolls, trains, trucks), and became one jus-
tification for the long-held activity focus of play-based experiences in early
childhood education. For example, Renninger and Wozniak (1985) studied how
interest in particular objects determined 2–4-year-old children’s attention,
memory, and recall. Like most studies at that time, they used both naturalistic
and experimental research designs. The authors found that, while children had
diverse interests, each child had one or two enduring preferences, and that the
latter most influenced the cognitive skills of focus in the research.

Continuing to equate interests with activities, Cremin and Slatter (2004) investi-
gated six 3–5-year-old children’s interests, defined as their freely chosen activities. A
variety of data-gathering methods were used: interviews with parents and staff, three
half-day observations of the children, and children’s photographs of favourite places,
people, and activities. The most popular activities were outside play, socio-dramatic
play, art, and drawing. Interest taken in other children was a notable finding too, and
confirmed for me that analyses of interests in early childhood ought to go beyond
activities to the people, places, experiences, and events that accompany these.

The long-standing and influential scholarship of Ann Renninger and Suzanne
Hidi is grounded in developmental and educational psychology. Elaborating on the
quote that opens this chapter that “folk wisdom about interest has some aspects of
truth” (Renninger & Hidi, 2016, p. 3), these authors note that interest has suffered
from imprecise definitions because there are many ways to define interest that seem
intuitively accurate. Their work explores interest defined as an “initial triggering of
attention and extending through to the formation of a well-developed individual
interest” (p. 8). Renninger and Hidi note that this definition of interest therefore
has two interrelated dimensions. The first is the individual psychological state of
noticing and engaging with something that increases attention, effort, concentra-
tion, and enjoyment; the second an affective, motivational element that determines
whether the interest will be short or long term. When these two dimensions are
connected, interest can have a powerful and self-sustaining trajectory of develop-
ment. When interest is well-developed it includes the attainment of associated
knowledge.

16 Interests and informal learning

An important contribution of Renninger and Hidi’s work, then, has been to
show how interest can be triggered, as well as viewed as intrinsically present or
absent. In this way, they show interest-related learning to be stimulated, dynamic,
and full of possibilities. Another misconception in the folklore about interest these
scholars address is that interest does not need support. In contrast, their recent work
has shown that adults play an important role in ways interests are developed and
sustained; although they were equivocal about the role of child peers.

Renninger and Hidi offer a four-phase model of interest development. The four
phases are “triggered situational, maintained situational, emerging individual, and
well-developed individual interest” (2016, p. 12). Phase one accounts for ways
interests are triggered. Children are curious about many things in their lives but, as
Dewey (1913) noted, some will connect with their life experiences, and some will
be more intriguing and inviting due to the involvement and/or modelling of
others. If these create affective responses they are the interests that might continue
on to be maintained through a range of related experiences and interactions with
others. When the interest is engaged with by the individual in a self-motivated
manner and begins to be one that time is prioritised for, the emerging individual
interest has begun. Interests become well developed when they are long term,
involve actively seeking greater intellectual understandings related to the interest,
and show an ability to overcome any hurdles that appear when following the
interest. Renninger and Hidi’s example of the four phases is of an adolescent,
Emma, given a camera as a gift, and ways this novel item developed her interest in
photography. Of significance to my argument, initially Emma and others think she
is interested in flowers; the deeper interest becomes photography itself.

Dewey’s idea of interest as engaging with an object or activity is also present in
contemporary definitions of interest. Scholars often cite the work of Andreas Krapp
(e.g., 1999, 2002). However, Krapp was clearer than Dewey that the word object or
activity was also a broad term for any topics, intellectual ideas, or experiences that
sparked interest. Some of these acted to motivate learning; some were fleeting and
others ongoing. Activities were not—and I argue are still not—the only way to
define or understand interests. A focus on activities strongly connected with the
idea of interest as engaging with an object represents a narrow definition of inter-
est. Research about topics, intellectual ideas, or experiences that sparked interest
that was developed further has been neglected in the research that early childhood
education drew on because of the strong connection between activities and play as
a foundation for early childhood practices. This problem of selective use of research
and theory to justify practices is discussed further in Chapter 3.

Interest and curiosity

Like interest, understandings of curiosity arose in developmental and educational
psychology. Connecting with Renninger and Hidi’s (2016) idea of situational
interest, curiosity is stimulated by new objects, events, or experiences. Curiosity is a
multi-faceted concept, combining features such as novelty, motivation,

Interests and informal learning 17

exploration, information seeking, and creativity (Chak, 2007). Curiosity might
involve taking an interest in something occurring in children’s vicinity, or being
interested in something self-initiated and self-absorbing, and wanting to know,
participate, and explore more—leading to ongoing inquiry. Curiosity and interest
are therefore related; long term curiosity develops into inquiry. Curiosity often
involves information seeking; interest development (inquiry) involves more coher-
ent knowledge-seeking over a period of time, so is therefore a longer-term
engagement (Shin et al., 2019).

“Curiosity and interest are at the core of human inquiry … and are central to
the generation of knowledge” (Pekrun, 2019, p. 905). In this way, a definition of
interests might extend, as Krapp indicated, beyond an activity or object to con-
tent, knowledge, and intellectual ideas. Engagement in interests is long term,
intrinsically and extrinsically motivated and valued, and involves intellectual and
affective processes, across contexts. Curiosity and interest have connections with
creativity: they search for, pursue, and explore new things, leading to new ways
of knowing and learning, and thinking and acting differently (Shin et al., 2019).

Adults and peers introduce children to new experiences, maintain children’s
motivation, sustain their curiosity and exploration, foster conceptual under-
standings, and provide emotional security during inquiry episodes. Such views are
consistent with ideas of situational and individual interest trajectories as well as
sociocultural perspectives of pedagogical relationships.

Hence, children’s homes and communities—early childhood settings are an
important part of a community—may provide opportunities to generate,
encourage, continue, and sustain interests-related inquiry and knowledge
building. It is likely that play, exploration, and inquiry require other disposi-
tions alongside curiosity—such as collaboration, involvement, enthusiasm, per-
severance, risk taking, and communication. These may be important outcomes
in themselves (see Chapters 7 and 9).

Simply due to their maturity and limited life experience, young children may
have limited powers of expression, and a partial understanding of the world
that appears disorganised in relation to coherent knowledge building. However,
as Rogoff et al. (2016) identified, this does not reflect a lack of energy and
effort towards learning, and I suggest it may be possible that children’s ideas
have their own form of logic and sophistication represented in their knowledge
building. This suggests we need to consider learning outcomes that take
account of children’s ways of knowing and learning, and understand the con-
tributions of intellect, affect, and imagination (see Chapter 7). Further, when
adults know children well, a key ingredient of pedagogical relationships (see
Chapters 6 and 7), they are responsive to the many cues children provide about
their in-progress inquiries and understandings.

Emphasising curiosity and inquiry as central to interests also suggests a case might
be made for different approaches to curriculum and pedagogy alongside more
holistic and nuanced learning outcomes. These might counterbalance, at the least,
the developmental and subject-based approaches and outcomes responsive to

18 Interests and informal learning

traditional, long-standing theories (see Chapters 3, 7, and 10). These are further
reasons why discussing the work of sociocultural scholars next adds value to
explorations of children’s interests in this book.

Sociocultural understandings of children’s interests and learning

A shift to sociocultural foundations for understanding children’s learning and its
connection with interests is useful for two main reasons. First, a criticism made of
those working within developmental and educational psychology as a framing is
that they credit interest sustainment to the efforts of the individual, including
whether or not the interest aligns with personal goals. Context is regarded as a
background influence. Yet, young children’s interests reflect the contemporary,
linguistically and culturally diverse communities they live in globally, where
populations are heterogeneous and mobile. Individuals live their lives embedded in
communities and contexts where interests may be experienced in different ways.
The sociocultural values and practices of communities contribute to multiple
interests being triggered (Akkerman & Bakker, 2018), and ongoing engagement
and sustainment in multiple ways across contexts (Akkerman & Bakker, 2018;
Azevedo, 2011; Slot et al., 2020).

Second, all scholarship on interest points out that this phenomenon is not only
about cognition, memory, attention, and developing intellectual knowledge—or
knowing—by itself. Interest is tightly related to emotions. Interest is “active …
dynamic … personal [and] has its emotional as well as its active and objective sides”
(Dewey, 1913, p. 21). This was an issue that Lev Vygotsky pointed out many years
ago, too, as part of the rationale for a shift to theoretical foundations that are now
variously termed cultural psychology, cultural historical theory, cultural historical activity
theory, and sociocultural theory. 1

I first outline Vygotsky’s contributions to shifts in thinking about children’s
learning. I then overview the work of Barbara Rogoff and her colleagues, whose
extensive empirical work has shed important light on the roles of families and
cultures in children’s learning. To highlight inquiry as intrinsic to interests, I discuss
the work of Gordon Wells and Judith Lindfors. Integrating the work of these
scholars helps us to understand that infants, toddlers, and young children’s interests
engage with multiple forms of fluid, complex, and interests-based learning.

Learning leads development: selected concepts from
Vygotsky’s work

Vygotsky’s (1978, 1986) premise is that learning leads development. Sociocultural
approaches study learners’ participation in activities that involve both the indivi-
dual’s contributions as well as those of other people, places, institutions, materials,
tools, and artefacts. This is a dialectic development process—one that intertwines
intellect and affect, a point established as foundational to interest development.
Consequently, with certain biological caveats related to their maturity and life

Interests and informal learning 19

experience (see Chapter 3), it is possible for young children to learn about anything
they are interested in. Children are therefore gradually involved in learning
through observing and participating in events, activities, and practices with more
capable others, before they undertake a new task completely and alone. Alongside
the two important ideas noted already—that learning leads development, and that
intellect and affect are mutual contributions to learning—Vygotsky left a legacy of
influential concepts to assist our understandings of children’s learning.

Perhaps the most well-known of Vygotsky’s concepts are the zone of proximal
development and mediation. Simplistic explanations of the zone of proximal develop-
ment and its applications to education were that this was a zone where children
could learn with the assistance of more capable others in their families and cultures.
The zone of proximal development is more complex and nuanced, and it is
dynamic, participatory, and creative (Chaiklin, 2003; Lidz & Gindis, 2003). Media-
tion is a term that describes the cultural tools and processes, including relationships
with people, that humans use to make sense and meaning from, experiences and
events significant to their lives (Kozulin, 2003, 2018; Wertsch, 2007). Mediation also
has the potential to be dynamic and participatory, and successful where participants
know each other well and can develop intersubjectivity, that is, shift from individual
understandings and perspectives to shared ones.

With regard to cultural tools (e.g., language, symbols, resources, and equipment)
in mediation, Vygotsky (1978, 1986) believed that language was the most important
cultural tool children develop in their quest to make meaning, understand their
world, and participate in it; in other words, to explore their interests. Contemporary
interpretations of communication now highlight the multimodal ways children
interact with others in ways that include, but are not exclusive to, spoken or written
language (Flewitt & Ang, 2020) in efforts to pursue interest-related learning.

Vygotsky (1978) viewed play, and particularly socio-dramatic play, as the leading
activity of childhood. He understood imaginative and symbolic play as ways chil-
dren act out and develop understandings of real-life behaviours and related
knowledge they are involved and interested in (e.g., what adults do and say, and
the ways that families prepare meals and tools and rituals around eating them).
Vygotsky also argued that learning should be practical and authentic; that is, it
should be relevant to the daily life and practices of a child in a culture. He there-
fore reasoned that children should learn to read and write in the context of their
play, rather than taught letters in isolation, and noted that cultural tools such as
language, communication, resources, and equipment were all vital to fostering
children’s play.

Children’s language development promoted the capacity to imagine as it enabled
representation beyond what is known to grow new ideas. Vygotsky noted ways
that imagination was visible in children’s play. He defined imagination as using
life experience to build new ideas that may result in innovative blends of con-
cepts, emotions, thoughts, and meanings (Vygotsky, 1987 [1932]). I suggest that
imagination and language development are both more likely to be in depth when
related to interests.

20 Interests and informal learning

The mutual influence and co-existence of everyday (i.e., experiential) and sci-
entific (i.e., formal, academic, and conceptual) concepts in children’s learning is a
further key idea. Vygotsky (1978) described how children perceive everyday or
spontaneous concepts in three phases based on direct, personal experience that
involves learning intentions and effort. Later, and gradually, but not linearly,
through play and language, children develop and recontextualise everyday con-
cepts into scientific concepts, usually through mediation and collaboration with
knowledgeable others, hence drawing on the concept of the zone of proximal
development. Clearly, children are more likely to follow this path of concept
development, and persevere when learning becomes challenging, when they are
interested in something substantive.

In summary, Vygotsky’s work identified the immense value of everyday, informal
learning for young children. This learning related to children’s family and community
lives and experiences, and their opportunities to learn, both by themselves and with
others, through zones of proximal development, mediation, and everyday and scien-
tific concepts. For Vygotsky, play, thinking, language, learning, creativity, and imagi-
nation had a close and complex relationship. After his untimely death, scholars have
developed and explored empirically these ideas which are central to post-Vygotskian
scholarship. I propose that these ideas are essential to children’s interests-focused
learning in my research, shared in Chapters 5–7.

Rogoff’s theorising of children’s learning

A shift in developmental psychology from a reliance on experimental studies to
including those that study the contexts and cultures of children’s lived experience
was a “course-correction” (Rogoff et al., 2018, p. 5). Barbara Rogoff’s empirical
research is situated in the disciplines of anthropology and developmental psychol-
ogy, and served to develop post-Vygotskian sociocultural theory. She and her co-
researchers have undertaken research in the same communities for over 40 years,
building in-depth pictures of the diverse and participatory ways children learn
informally in their families and cultures, cultures different to the Western societies
that have otherwise dominated much research.

Although Vygotsky drew attention to culture, he did not define it. Rogoff et al.
(2018) define culture as “the ways of life of generations of people in communities”
(p. 6) and child development as “a process of growth in ways of participating in the
endeavors of their communities, in a process of transformation of participation” (p. 7,
italics in original). Rogoff (2003) earlier defined culture as accepted and routine
ways of undertaking everyday activities and processes, and ways these change over
time due to values, beliefs, technologies, and practices.

Aligning with Vygotsky’s ideas about authentic learning and contexts, child
participants in Rogoff’s various projects were often eager to participate in everyday
experiences. Rogoff et al. (2003) described how children learned by observing and
listening in on others as they collaborated in shared tasks, in flexible and com-
plementary roles. Of significance, children’s observation of others’ activities was

Interests and informal learning 21

neither incidental nor passive. When children began to participate, they used lan-
guage and other forms of communication to actively share information, question
and explore ideas; in turn, adults used language and gesture to offer feedback.
Rogoff’s idea of participation aligns well with ways children’s interests are triggered
and sustained, beginning either through new experiences or gradual immersion in
cultural experiences.

Rogoff has progressed her thinking and terminology over time. Rogoff et al.
(2003) first described observing and listening in as “intent participation” (p. 176), a
feature Neaum (2020) located in early childhood education as a worthwhile form
of learning. A few years later, Rogoff et al. (2007) revised the term to intent com-
munity participation to emphasise the integration of learners in all activities and
practices in their communities. Paradise and Rogoff (2009) then explained that the
meaning of intent had been interpreted as intentional involvement rather than
capturing the intensity of children’s interest in their daily life activities and the
purposefulness of children’s willing participation.

To clarify that observation and participation are active processes that involve
interest, and anticipate being able to initiate and take responsibility for contribu-
tions in the future, Paradise and Rogoff instead coined a term using present tense
verbs: “observing and pitching in” (p. 103). This has more recently been termed as
“learning by observing and pitching in” and its acronym “LOPI” (Rogoff et al.,
2015, p. 1). In short, children learn actively, both individually and collaboratively.
Children often watch, listen, and pay attention with great concentration. Through
participation, they take purposeful initiatives in activities of interest, and contribute
and collaborate in informal, everyday activities that are integrated into family and
community life. In these ways, pedagogical relationships clearly occur within
families. In the acts of participatory learning in cultural practices, “children grow
and transform their ways of being” (Rogoff et al., 2018, p. 6). In keeping with
underpinning disciplines and theories, Rogoff et al. (2016) do not propose that
learning by observing and pitching is a generalised and universal mode of learning,
leaving it to the principle of transferability to enable its empirical examination as a
form of informal learning in contexts outside the Americas.

Within Rogoff’s theorising, there is recognition that the value of informal
learning that Vygotsky identified was overlooked for its power and potential.
Informal learning is often under-appreciated because of its assumed inferior oppo-
sition to formal learning (Rogoff et al., 2016). In addition, the intellectual demands
of informal learning are under-recognised and undervalued (Paradise & Rogoff,
2009). Rogoff et al. (2016) argued that informal learning is valuable because of the
following features:

Informal learning is interactive and embedded in meaningful activity.
Guidance is available to learners and their partners through social interaction

and the structure of activities.
Talk is conversational, not didactic.
Involvement builds on individual initiative, interest, and choice.

22 Interests and informal learning

Assessment occurs in support of contributing to the activity, not for external
purposes.

Participants hone their existing knowledge and skills and also innovate,
developing new ideas and skills. (pp. 359–360)

In further connecting with central Vygotskian and Deweyan ideas expressed earlier,
the authors also noted “in informal education, intellectual and emotional domains
are fused” (p. 370), and that related learning may be more conceptual due to the
motivation of interest present and a “need to understand the phenomena in order
to contribute well” (p. 389). In itself, these ideas are a potential response to
Bereiter’s (2002) criticism that there is an artificial distance between children’s
interests and intellectual subject matter.

Of significance to the way I address play, interests, and learning in this book,
Rogoff et al. (2016) note that play is one important organisational feature of
informal learning. However, it is not a feature of learning by observing and
pitching in per se because play is not necessarily connected with productive activ-
ities central to family and community undertakings and functioning. I suggest
though that play is often a way children show and recreate family and community
activities of most significance, and practise knowledge and skills ready for later
contributions.

Alongside potential misunderstandings about the value of informal learning,
there are other possible limitations on children’s participatory learning. Rogoff et
al. (2016) contend that:

Children as well as adults determine what sorts of situations children are
allowed or required to participate in. They determine whether children are
present in family or community workplaces, whether children spend their days
in preschools and schools, whether bedtime includes a story book, and what
sorts of “screen time” are allowed and available. While engaging in activities
together, children and adults also structure the extent and type of help pro-
vided to the learner.

(p. 368)

Here there is perhaps also a recognition that settings traditionally viewed as
informal (families and communities) and formal (workplaces and schools) might
benefit from understanding what motivates learning. Interests are a prime
example. A focus on informal learning, promoted by Vygotsky and Rogoff,
influences the work of Gordon Wells and Judith Lindfors on inquiry as a mode
of children’s learning in schooling.

Wells’ research on meaning making and inquiry

Wells’ work is situated in the discipline of education. His work connects curiosity,
motivation, interest, inquiry, and knowledge building. Like Rogoff’s, his work

Interests and informal learning 23

demonstrated the power adults have to determine children’s interests, capabilities,
and trajectories, and the importance of pedagogical relationships with both adults
and peers. Wells extended Vygotsky’s idea of using authentic learning situations to
foster children’s language and knowledge development, to show ways adults can
collaborate and mediate in children’s learning to achieve children’s full potential as
makers of meaning and creators of knowledge.

Aligning with Vygotsky’s ideas about the role of play and representation, Wells
(1999) noted that music, gesture, movement, and dance are part of a broader
communicative and representational toolkit that children draw on to express their
motivations and messages, findings that align with more recent understandings of
the multimodality of children’s meaning-making efforts. Although the project that
Wells drew on for these ideas involved 9-year-old primary school children’s sci-
ence learning rather than children aged less than 5 years, Wells’ work aligns with
ideas about participatory learning in exploring children’s language, dialogue,
inquiry, and knowledge development when interest has been sparked. It therefore
shows the power of participatory learning beyond the early childhood years, and in
settings usually regarded as formal. He also noted that when an adult was in tune
with a focus of interest, children were able to integrate new information rapidly
and relate it to prior knowledge.

Wells’ argument is that inquiry is not a pedagogical method, such as discovery
learning, but a stance towards experiences and ideas. He therefore argued teachers
ought to provide an inquiry orientation to curriculum and pedagogy to ensure that
learners are motivated and engaged, and that learning is connected authentically
with their interests and experiences. Wells proposed that an inquiry orientation
emphasises:

[S]tarting with “real” questions that are generated by students’ first-hand
engagement with topics and problems that have become of genuine interest to
them. For it is when they have begun to formulate their own theories, to test
them in various ways, and to submit them to critical evaluation by the peers,
that they can most fully appreciate contributions to the problems with which
they are engaged.

(Wells, 1999, p. 91)

Children’s real questions as inquiry interests is taken up in Chapter 6, and for-
mulating theories as a dynamic way to learn and grow interests-related knowledge
is articulated in Chapter 7.

Wells offered a metaphor, a spiral of knowing, to represent the dynamic,
ongoing and sometimes retrogressive steps involved in children’s ways of
knowing and learning. The spiral of knowing has four quadrants: experience,
information, knowledge building, and understanding. Wells’ metaphor demon-
strates the broad-ranging knowledge, dispositions, and skills involved in the
personally meaningful inquiry and theorising he advocates as a way of learning.

24 Interests and informal learning

Lindfors’ scholarship on inquiry

Judith Lindfors’ work also sits within the discipline of education. She similarly
focused on inquiry as a stance to learning, arguing that curiosity and inquiry are
universal human endeavours that occur through participation in everyday life,
including interactions in educational settings. Lindfors (1999) coined the term
emergent inquirer in suggesting that “from birth, virtually all children develop the
ability to engage others in their attempts to make sense of the world … this
process occurs naturally in children’s daily interactions with others” (p. 49).

Lindfors proposed that three human urges combine in inquiry as a way to
learn: “to connect with others (social), to understand the world (intellectual), to
reveal oneself within it (personal)” (p. 46). She focused on children’s “inquiry
acts,” defined in alignment with the Vygotskian ideas of a zone of proximal
development and mediation as “a language act in which one attempts to elicit
another’s help in going beyond his or her own present understanding” (p. ix)
to make sense of experiences and worlds. Engaging with others is an integral
part of inquiry acts to: “[go] beyond one’s present understanding; seek infor-
mation; seek confirmation of an idea; seek explanation of some phenomenon;
wonder about something” (p. 4).

Lindfors’ important points have connections with the development of inter-
ests and Wells’ spiral of knowing model in the following ways. Inquiry arises in
efforts to build knowledge that is useful in matters of interest; inquiry draws on
various perspectives of experience such as time, place, causes, motivations,
actions, relationships, and processes; people actively try to understand their
experiences and worlds; inquiry is “uncertain and invitational” (p. 124); and,
inquiry involves skills and dispositions as well as knowledge. Connecting with
Rogoff’s and Wells’ point about power, Lindfors noted that issues embedded in
inquiry involve questions of whose purpose(s), content, stance, agenda, and
knowledge are followed. No matter how open learning partners might intend
to be, their relationships and efforts at communication in learning are inevitably
suffused with power.

The post-Vygotskian ideas of Rogoff, Wells, and Lindfors show the roles of
relationships with others, cultural tools such as language in its various com-
municative forms from birth, and wonder and inquiry, in mediating interests-
based learning. Their ideas also emphasise the important role of informal
learning in authentic contexts that Vygotsky identified, Rogoff emphasised,
and that Wells and Lindfors advocate for, in what are usually regarded as the
more formal learning contexts of schooling. Informal settings may have a lot
to contribute to ways of understanding learning and pedagogy in educational
settings. As Wells (1999) noted: “[f]or Vygotsky, and for those who have
extended and developed his ideas, learning is not a separate activity undertaken
for its own sake, but an integral aspect of engaging in the ongoing activities of
one’s community” (p. 294).

Interests and informal learning 25

Recent perspectives on interests-based learning

So far, I have justified the importance of children’s informal learning through its
connections with interest, curiosity, and inquiry. I now turn to recent under-
standings of how interests are further inspired by, and evolve in, sociocultural
relationships and contexts, and ways other theories and concepts are used to shed
light on interests across the lifespan. These recent perspectives continue to
emphasise the importance of informal learning, and draw added attention to the
people, places, and things that inspire and expand interests.

Given the complexity and messiness of, and ongoing change in, human lives,
and that people, places, and things are central to curiosity, interest ignition, devel-
opment, and sustainment—elements that children may have less control over than
adults—I suggest a circuitous route for interest development may occur over time.
Young children are curious about many things. Some of these develop as stronger
interests. Rather than a phased or staged process of interest development, a young
child’s interest might be developed and sustained for some time, go on hold due to
sociocultural influences, develop knowledge and practices in piecemeal ways, and
then either be continued through sheer personal determination, or fostered and
mediated by others, according to new sociocultural circumstances. These circum-
stances are likely to relate strongly as to whether adults recognise an interest,
understand its meaning and seriousness to children, and work to engage with it and
develop it. Chapter 9 in particular will illustrate the messy nature of interest
development over time.

This section demonstrates empirically important shifts from the somewhat linear
thinking about trajectories of interests’ development in psychological research, to
dynamic and unpredictable routes that depend on sociocultural circumstances to
stimulate and expand them. Interests are triggered, emerge, grow, and expand
among individuals and groups, across settings and practices, creating a need for a
more cross-context and practice-based view of interests and their development
(Azevedo, 2011; DiGiacomo et al., 2018).

Aligning with my concerns about the low-level association of activities with
interests, Ty Hollett (2016) decried the idea of associating interests with specific
disciplines or activities among youth. Hollett’s research has built from the criticisms
of Flávio Azevedo (2006) that developmental and educational psychology had not
addressed the realities and complexities of interest learning in either formal or
informal settings. Azevedo (2006, 2011) posed important questions about the
development and continuity of interest over time, across contexts, and the affor-
dances that foster interest development. A practice-centred perspective on the
phenomenon of interest resulted.

Hollett (2016) draws on mobilities’ and materialities’ perspectives to coin the
term “interests-in-motion” (p. 2). The term describes the idea of interests-driven
learning as developing over time and in multiple directions through both organised
and chance encounters with “critical moments, materials, and collaborators” (p. 3).
This study points to the value of peers as well as adults (collaborators) in adding

26 Interests and informal learning

novel experiences or resources (materials) that inspire interest development in new
directions, sometimes unexpectedly and unintentionally (critical moments).
Researching in the context of skateparks, Hollett and Hein (2019) bring to the fore
the affective dimensions of interest engagement for youths, showing that these
dimensions are not confined to childhood but continue wherever interest is a
vehicle for self-motivated learning. They describe individual–collective energy,
moments, and experiences, another shift in sociocultural explanations for under-
standing interests.

Hollett’s work draws attention to the value of methodologies and methods that
allow researchers to explore what sparks interest, and follow interest development
and change over time, including across settings. As he notes, there may be sig-
nificant moments where people and activities combine to influence interest tra-
jectories. At other times, interest may be self-motivated and more slow burning.
Hollett recommends mobile methods and micro-ethnographic analysis where a
researcher can follow participants around as they engage with their interests. The
use of equipment such as video cameras to capture the dynamic and complex
nature of changing activities, events, dialogue, and facial expressions that indicate
excitement, concentration and other non-verbal qualities is one useful way to do
so. Hollett suggests these methods explore interest development in ways that
show its flexibility and unevenness. These recommendations support further that
research that follows young children as they engage dynamically in their play in
early childhood settings will be more fruitful than, for example, providing and
observing separate play activities to ascertain which of these children prefer or
enjoy, or setting up special experimental conditions.

Multiple lenses on the same interaction can also show how interests might be
viewed differently. Liz Chesworth (2019) describes what might be a common
experience in early childhood education: children playing with water using a range
of equipment and resources. She posed three different ways this interaction might be
analysed. From a policy perspective, teachers had particular outcomes they wanted to
achieve; the children instead were playful and had inquiries that did not align with
the teachers’ plans. A peer culture interpretation suggests that the children’s play was
an act of resistance to the teachers’ intentions (see “Children’s agency” section,
Chapter 3), whereby they were able to, instead, explore a different interest. From an
intra-active perspective, new materialist theory might show ways individual, social,
material, and other elements combine to explain children’s interests.

New materialism2 is a recent theoretical framing that sits within post-humanism.
Post-humanism brings together the human and non-human elements of people’s
engagement with the world (Pacini-Ketchabaw et al., 2017). Post-humanism offers
potential for new insights into children’s interests (Chesworth, 2019). Chesworth
suggests this framing might investigate ways “assemblages of material, social, spatial
and discursive agents act together to privilege some interests over others, and to
perpetuate or disrupt educational inequalities” (p. 8).

For example, a post-humanist perspective might foster deeper interpretations of
children’s interests in the places, animals, insects, and other non-human things in

Interests and informal learning 27

which children often have ongoing and deep interests, or frame interests in com-
plex ways involving human and non-human elements and children’s agency (e.g.,
see Leu, 2021, who uses actor network theory). This framing does not discard the
importance of children’s participation in sociocultural activities and practices; rather
it blurs the boundaries between social, cultural, and non-human influences. It is a
theory in keeping with further developing Daniela DiGiacomo et al.’s (2018) ideas
about the social and material constituents of interest.

While the progression of theoretical perspectives discussed in this chapter may
appear to create a trajectory of sorts, in closing this section I wish to make it clear
that, to benefit children, we can draw on rich findings incorporating all these
perspectives. There is no doubt that what is personally meaningful to children will
inspire interest. A mix of personal (i.e., psychological), sociocultural, material, and
post-humanist influences and contexts will determine ways children’s interests are
developed or constrained. One of these constraints may be the understandings and
practices of educational settings such as early childhood centres, a matter explored
in the next chapter.

Bringing perspectives together: new principles for children’s
learning

Interests and informal learning co-exist in a powerful relationship. I shared the
scholarship of Vygotsky, Rogoff, Wells, Lindfors, Hollett, and Chesworth in parti-
cular to inform current theorising about children’s interests-based learning. Synthe-
sising these scholars’ ideas with the earlier research on interests leads to my proposing
the following new principles for children’s informal, interests-based learning:

Significant learning in the early years is largely informal, rich with possibility,
and promoted through authentic, collaborative, community participation.

While intentional and purposeful, informal interests-based learning can appear
disorganised because it is fluid and dynamic.

Children’s life experience might be limited, but their thinking, inquiry, and
use of imagination reflects effort, and therefore may have its own internal logic
and sophistication.

Children’s efforts to learn reflect their interests and inquiry into personally
meaningful questions, and a wish to understand, participate, and contribute
knowledgeably.

Children benefit when adults empower their learning in a range of ways that
are responsive to their interests and with good knowledge of children and
their families, communities, and cultures.

Learning in the early years involves children having opportunities to act on
learning, including to recreate, represent, and internalise experiences in play.

Holistic learning outcomes might recognise the interrelationship of intellect,
affect, and imagination in the development of knowledge, skills, and disposi-
tions useful to children’s interests and inquiries.

28 Interests and informal learning

In short, valuable learning is informal, rich, dynamic, and personally meaningful.
Mutual engagement in participatory, collaborative, respectful, reciprocal, and
responsive relationships is essential. Informal learning emphasises the ideas of
interest, curiosity, and inquiry encompassed in informal learning and possible in
formal learning contexts. Learning builds on and revisits previous experiences in a
dynamic and non-linear fashion. Observation, participation, collaboration, intellect,
affect, and imagination combine in children developing and representing their own
understandings of their lives and worlds.

Summary

This chapter has explained the origins of research and theorising about interest and
interests as phenomena. A number of well-established and newer theories offer
perspectives on children’s interests. I have emphasised sociocultural perspectives
because of their focus on informal learning, and curiosity and inquiry, in everyday
contexts.

I have shown shifts from narrow definitions of interest/s as objects and
activities to constructions of interest/s that are cognisant of complexity and
change in human lives. I have established and positioned interests as a sig-
nificant phenomenon in research and education. I have argued that informal
learning is powerful for triggering interests and enabling ways children might
represent these interests in a range of sociocultural contexts, including early
childhood settings.

I have proposed new principles with which to understand children’s informal
learning. This interests-based learning is dynamic, involves inquiry and imagination,
intellect and affect, and may require more holistic and flexible views of curriculum,
pedagogy, learning and outcomes. These principles suggest that there is a need for
newer, holistic, and multimodal ways of understanding children’s interests-related
learning as non-linear and having complex trajectories.

These principles may not, however, reflect the long-standing knowledge base,
ethos, and practices of early childhood education, or more recent neoliberal poli-
cies and practices influencing some jurisdictions, outlined in the next chapter. This
leads to a need for researchers to find ways to get closer to understanding children’s
experiences (discussed in Chapter 4), in order to provide empirical evidence of the
power of interests-based learning and be more analytical about children’s interests
to ensure they are not trivialised.

Notes

1 In this book, these theories and concepts are referred to as sociocultural, as sociocultural is
the term adopted by post-Vygotskian scholars whose work I describe and apply here. See
Hedges (2016) for the history and genesis of the various terms.

2 Strom et al. (2021) suggest the term new materialism be replaced by neomaterialism to
acknowledge that “labelling this kind of thought as ‘new’ has the potential to erase indigen-
ous scholarship that has been advocating for similar worldviews for millennia” (p. 201).

Interests and informal learning 29

References

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multiple contexts. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 34(1), 1–24. https://doi.org/
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Azevedo, F. (2006). Personal excursions: Investigating the dynamics of student engagement.
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3

CHILDREN’S INTERESTS

Debates, tensions, and possibilities in
practice and policy

Introduction
International curricular documents commonly include reference to children’s
interests as one source of curriculum (Buzzelli, 2020). Yet, as a non-compulsory,
and recently increasingly market-driven, sector of education, early childhood edu-
cation has been subject to a range of debates and tensions throughout its history
that have implications for how interests are understood, valued, and utilised in
education. Whereas teachers and families in particular contexts and settings might
know what works for their children and communities, as investment in early
childhood education increases, many people with different views—“policy makers,
politicians, celebrities, economists, and researchers” (Delaney et al., 2020)—expect
to influence what happens. Quality, affordability, and accessibility, reflected in
complex and split models of provision of education and childcare in many coun-
tries, are uncomfortable bedfellows in neoliberal policy imperatives for those of us
advocating for greater professionalism; in my case, a researcher promoting analytical
and theorised interpretations of children’s interests.

This chapter traces, critiques, and problematises some of the key ideas dominating
practices and policies in early childhood provision. Play, child-centredness, and child
development theory influence interpretations of, and provision for, children’s interests.
These terms come from Western ideas that do not necessarily fit well in a linguistically
and culturally diverse world. Scholarship steeped in sociocultural theory, children’s
rights, and childhood studies raise broader, more inclusive perspectives of children’s
capabilities as learners and citizens. These can expand definitions of children’s interests
offered in this chapter.

A confusing and, at times, contradictory and selective, blend of these ideas is
present in early childhood practice and policy internationally. Policymakers’ desire
for a return on investment in early childhood education, in keeping with the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003139881-3

Practices and policies 33

rhetoric of human capital theory and neoliberalism, is creeping in worldwide.
Consequently, I address the increased attention on the sector, centred on the school
readiness debate (also known as schoolification) that is prominent in concerns about
the purposes of early childhood education. I then propose capability theory as an
alternative. With its emphasis on social capital, well-being, and agency, it is an
approach aligned with contemporary views of children as capable learners, who use
play and inquiry to represent, explore, and learn through their interests.

Early childhood practice: curriculum and pedagogy

Where the previous chapter focused on connecting interests and informal learning,
this chapter enters into debates about interests within curriculum and pedagogy, two
terms for which there is no trouble-free distinction (Ross, 2000). Pamela Joseph
(2011) suggests that a curriculum comprises “visions and practice—including
assumptions about the needs and nature of learners, the role of teachers and
instruction, norms about subject matter, learning environments, curriculum plan-
ning and evaluation” (p. 20). Including “the role of teachers and instruction” in
this definition illustrates the blurring into pedagogy, a term usually taken to mean
those matters more specifically.

Curriculum in early childhood education aligns with William Pinar’s (2011)
dynamic understanding of curriculum as “lived experience,” ways “curriculum is
experienced, enacted, and reconstructed” (p. 1). Such a definition identifies that
every experience that children engage in is a learning opportunity, whether
through deliberate planning or spontaneous happenings. Pinar’s idea about curri-
culum aligns with the participatory learning discussed in Chapter 2. Curriculum
and pedagogy also focus on critical issues such as images of learners and learning,
how knowledge is constructed, the content of the curriculum (i.e., the subject
matter), the nature of outcomes, and how these outcomes will be assessed.

However, debates and tensions arise in ways teachers and policymakers prioritise
and apply beliefs, values, theory, and research globally. In this section, I describe
and critique ideas that have been widely influential in early childhood practice,
while keeping a focus on children’s interests central to discussion. Differing prio-
rities and a confusing blend of ideas are present in practice and policy worldwide,
examples of which serve to illustrate debates and tensions. Later, I address policy,
where emphases on the purposes, processes, and outcomes of early childhood
education have shifted from enabling children relative freedom to play, grow,
learn, and come to know in their own ways, towards more neoliberal agendas of
academic outcomes and accountability.

Play and children’s interests

Play, from a sociocultural perspective, is the leading activity of childhood
(Vygotsky, 1978), and is widely accepted as foundational to early childhood prac-
tice. Play is closely associated with the activities provided. In early childhood

34 Practices and policies

settings, activities encompass resources and equipment set up in indoor and out-
door spaces. Play opportunities typically comprise areas of creative and manip-
ulative activities such as paint and drawing materials, playdough, construction
materials, wooden blocks, books to browse and read with peers and adults, a
sandpit, a water trough, an area with physically active equipment such as swings
and slides, and so on. In some settings, children can determine their own choices of
activities most of the time they attend; in others, play is timetabled alongside more
teacher-directed group learning episodes.

Play is a complex notion that, like interests, has proven difficult to capture in an all-
encompassing definition. Brian Sutton-Smith (1997) aptly titled his book The Ambi-
guity of Play to capture the multiple ideologies, rhetoric, perspectives, tensions, and
debates that have grown historically. A plethora of literature continues to examine the
strong history of commitment to play, the wealth of scholarship and research on play,
and the way that play is framed in various jurisdictions. In relation to this book, three
points I elaborate on next are common regarding play and children’s interests:

1. Play is the context in which children represent and recreate for themselves
their interest in the activities and experiences they have engaged with in their
daily lives.

2. Play connects historically with child-centredness and child development
theory as foundations for understandings of children’s interests.

3. Play is a mechanism that fosters children’s engagement in interests-based learning.

Play and interests are both regularly associated with children’s choices of activities.
Play, from children’s perspectives and purposes, connects first with the family and
community experiences they participate in, then choose as interests to engage with
when they have the opportunity to be autonomous, take the initiative, and make
meaning. Children’s play involves adults and other children, and objects, resources,
and equipment. Play enables children to practise, recreate, explore, inquire, and
enact their interests. Play forms its own dynamic and creative zone of proximal
development for children (Lidz & Gindis, 2003). At times, play might appear dis-
organised as children pursue multiple interests and inquiries simultaneously.

Stig Broström’s (2017) recent depiction of characteristics of play align with the
understandings of informal interests-based learning in this book. Play:

is intrinsically-motivated;
involves some creativity and imagination;
results in a meaningful experience for children.

Broström suggests that children benefit when adults understand their interests and
empower their learning through interactions and communications. Therefore, in
early childhood settings, analysing play is fundamental to teachers noticing and
recognising children’s interests, before considering ways to respond, extend, and
expand these.

Practices and policies 35

Child-centredness and children’s interests

Child-centredness is another concept strongly aligned with play. Like play, it has
acquired multiple definitions and perspectives over time. Shunah Chung and Daniel
Walsh (2000) suggested the term had over 40 multiple, conflicting, developmental,
democratic, progressive, romantic, and individualised meanings. However, the term
has been taken at face value in early childhood, and so, for some time, commonly
interpreted as play and learning that is child-initiated and interests-led, and shows
understandings of children as diverse and capable learners (Ang, 2016). More
recently, respecting children’s capabilities, families, and cultures have been included
as principles of child-centredness (Campbell-Barr, 2017).

Coupled with a strong allegiance to play, child-centredness in practice has also
comprised provision of a well-resourced environment, from which children can
choose. Interests are regarded as emerging spontaneously from children’s play. As
scholars warned in the previous chapter, adults nevertheless have the power to
determine what is available for children to select from, decide how long they can
play for, and with whom they can play (see also later Cannella’s [1997] point that
choice is an illusion). Further, this narrow understanding discourages teachers from
thinking about active and intentional ways to support children’s interests.

In addition, child-centredness has been located in an oppositional relationship to
teacher-centred curricular provision. Teacher-centredness is viewed as representative
of didactic teaching approaches, often of subjects, topics, and ideas devoid of
authentic contextual relevance to children’s lives. Teacher-centred approaches
were used in intervention programmes that have taken a deficit view of children’s
home lives and offered compensatory opportunities to teach early academic con-
cepts (see Ansari & Purtell, 2018). Teacher-centred approaches are also likely to be
used in some settings to ensure that learning outcomes specified in policy docu-
ments are covered in efforts towards children’s school readiness (Ang, 2016; Wood
& Hedges, 2016).

On a positive note, the legacy of child-centredness has encouraged teachers to
recognise and value play and playfulness in an ongoing way. These have also
empowered children to have some control of choices and learning during their
participation in early childhood education. However, curriculum and pedagogy are
much more complex and less clear-cut than a dualistic binary of child-centred and
teacher-centred would suggest. Early childhood has been particularly affected by
dualistic binaries (Prout, 2005), including childhood–adulthood, nature–nurture,
incompetent–competent. These binaries relate to the long-standing reliance on
developmental theory as a basis, a foundational assumption that needs questioning
in light of the sociocultural perspectives presented in Chapter 2.

Child development theory and children’s interests

Early childhood education has been “encompassed by, determined by, enclosed
within, and limited by the assumptions” of child development theory (Vintimilla &