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THE EDUCATIONAL
MODEL
a
) The theoretical and epistemological basis
 The
theory of the educational and pedagogical model which is used at the crèche
"Goccia" is based on the attempt to integrate contributions of Gestalt
Psychotherapy to the theory of development with Daniel
Stern's theory which the school of Functional
and Physical Psychotherapy has drawn on.
From
Gestalt Psychotherapy we have
taken the model of development for the formation of relationships connected
with the "Awareness of contact"
in children from the age of 0 to 36 months. According to the Gestalt Psychotherapy
the decisive factor in a child's growth is the relationship "I"-"You"
which is established between mother and child from birth. In the first
three years, according to this approach, thanks to the relationship with
the mother, the awareness of contact is formed within the child, in other
words the child becomes capable of establishing relationships with adults.
However this is possible only if the relationship between mother and child
has gone through certain phases and moments (confluence,
introjection, projection,
retroflection, full
contact and post-contact),
each of which is characterized by a different awareness of relationships
on the part of the mother and different needs of relationships on the
part of the child.
From
the model of development of Daniel
Stern and from the Functional
and Physical Psychotherapy the basic assumption was taken according
to which a child from the age of 0 to 3 has to undergo certain basic and
fundamental experiences in order to form the idea of the self and to have
a healthy relationship with the environment. These experiences are useful
to become aware of the relationship with himself. For example a child
between the age of 0 and 6 months needs to experience his mother's ability
to accept him, to support him and to allow him to let himself go. These
experiences which are fundamental for the child's development subsequently
become the awareness of the relationship with himself. In other words
in the same way that he has been accepted, supported and allowed by his
mother to let go, when he is an adult he will be able to accept, support
and allow the other to let go.
Furthermore,
basing the work on Daniel Stern's
theory, it was possible to reflect on and to look again at two key concepts
in Gestalt Psychotherapy: the
concept of confluence and that
of post-contact which were applied
from a point of view of development.
Firstly
we are convinced, as Stern said,
and as was confirmed by the observations which were carried out, that
there is no such thing as a symbiosis
between the child and his mother during the first six months of life.
A new-born baby has already a well-structured concept of the self which
is based on his genetic heritage, on the experiences within his mother's
womb, on his physiology and on his physical dimension even if it is fragmented.
He does not need to have a symbiotic relationship with his mother, but
he needs an adult who is ever present, who understands his needs and wishes
and who satisfies those which are important for his development and not
those which are useless.
Therefore
the term confluence, from the point
of view of development, indicates the type of relationship a mother should
have with her child. She should understand his needs and wishes, be present,
be available for her child's needs, be ready to "flow together" with her
child, as the word "confluence" suggests, when and in the ways he requires
and needs. Therefore, from this point of view, symbiosis
becomes a pathology of the mother's relationship. It indicates an incorrect
manner of relating of the mother. She is convinced that her child will
always needs her and that without her, her child will not be able to live,
even when, already in the first months of his life, a child is independent
playing with his toys in his cot or play-pen. In this case the mother's
anxiety becomes a "message" for her child concerning the relationship
which is "you must always need me". In the long run the child will believe
this message and will behave as if he really needed her.
In
second place we believe that in the development of contact there is no
such thing as the phase of post-contact.
Seen from the point of view of the analysis of the relationship between
organism and environment, post-contact is linked to each moment of the
experiences which the child undergoes as he grows up. It is automatic
if the experience is ended and it is implicit in each phase of the process
of the experience, if this ends in an enriching way. On the other hand,
instead, we think that in the process of growing up there is not a phase
of post-contact because as the child is assimilating
the awareness of contact, he is
experiencing new relationships which are important as he enters the following
stage of development which is the triangular phase or that of the Oedipus
complex. From this point of view the formation of the Telling
story about self which Stern
talks about (the ability of the child to tell his own story) takes place
in the phase of full-contact alongside
the acquisition of the awareness of
contact of which it is a fundamental aspect.
Based
on the observations carried out by Daniel Stern on children aged from
0 to 3 and on the identification on his part of the phases in a child's
development, we have revised and changed the timing of the phases of the
development as described in Gestalt
Psychotherapy. Based on these considerations and ideas we have drawn
up a table for a child's development
which includes information on the relative parents' abilities which should
be used by adults and the basic experiences of the self which a child
needs to undergo to become fully aware of contact.
At
this point we asked ourselves if it was possible to apply our theoretical
ideas and elaborate an educational and pedagogical model for work with
children aged 0 to 3 in a crèche which was based on relationships and
experiences. This model would have to identify the phase of development
the children were in when they started the crèche, without considering
their age, the type of support relationship they needed (phase
of development of contact) and the type of experience of the self
they needed in order to acquire new knowledge (basic
experiences of the self). The model would also help the teachers to
give the correct support to the children, so that they could undergo the
previous and new basic experiences of the self which they lacked.
Two
other important factors must also be taken into consideration:
- the phase of development of the whole group of children; therefore methods
must be found which are worthwhile not only for the individual child,
but also for the whole group;
- the phase of contact in which the child starts the crèche and therefore
the pedagogical stage (acception, introjection, projection, retroflection,
contact, post-contact) in which the teachers and the children are in that
particular moment.
b)
The Educational Outcome
The
lessons which took place on Friday mornings were based on the above-mentioned
theoretical and epistemological factors: during these lessons the teaching
practice of the trainee teachers was supervised and recorded with the
use of a videocamera and different types of observation
were carried out: observation of the children on the part of the trainees,
observation of the trainees among themselves as they worked with the children
and direct observation on the part of a teacher trainer. All this was
followed by a discussion without the children. The pre-requisite for this
work was the organization of the observation: what to observe and how.
In
this part of the training the work carried out previously and at the same
time on the observation was very useful.
At
the beginning the observation was limited to a description of the children's
behaviour and the activities which the teachers were doing with the children.
Subsequently the style of the relationships of the children and the teachers
was observed, described and identified. Only during the final part, after
completing the theoretical presentation of the pedagogical model was observation
of the children carried out in order to identify their phases of development,
without considering their age, (phase
of development of contact) and the basic
experiences of the self which were lacking. In this way the teachers
at the crèche were able to know the real need of the child as regards
development and the correct support of relationships and experiences could
be provided. They could also understand better some types of behaviour
on the part of the children such as hair-pulling, biting and the need
for the dummy and consider them as actions undertaken by the children
to express their need of relationships and experiences.In other words
the teachers at the crèche could see what a particular child needed in
that stage of his development regarding support in relationships and the
need to undergo the new experiences of the self which he was still lacking.
Therefore
it was essential to establish what to observe, which factiors to observe.
The trainees were asked to observe the following:
- the ways in which way a child established a relationship with the other
children (how he moved towards the other, if he stood aside, if he hit
the other child, if he suggested games, if he suffered because of the
other child, if he waited for the other child to come near, if he was
naughty, etc);
- the type of games the child suggested and liked playing;:
- his level of independence compared with the other children and the adult;
- his type of behaviour in an aggressive situation;
- which experiences of growth he had had or he had had blocked;
- which functions of the self were blocked and / or not working;
- the ways he expressed himself and if he expressed his need of belonging;
- the type of reaction the child created in the adult who was observing
him or interacting with him (anger, nuisance, affection, suffering).
Another
type of observation was also important: auto-observation on behalf of
the adults of their own emotional state. This was discussed with the teacher
trainer in order to understand the child's feelings, his need of experience
and the adult's consequent reactions about accepting or refusing the child's
emotional state.
At
the beginning of the day, during the first stages of the work, the teacher
trainer told the trainees what to do during the day: for example to observe
the children as they played, to observe a colleague as she worked with
the children, or to observe an individual child. All the observations
were written down by the teachers in order to have notes which could be
then used during group work.
At
10.30 a.m., after about an hour of interaction and observation, one group
of the trainees met with the teacher trainer, while the other group continued
to work with the children. The work within the two groups went on for
about an hour.During the initial phase of interaction and observation,
from 9.30 a.m. to about 10.30, the teacher trainer visited the two groups
as they worked with the children, recorded the activities with the video-camera
and made notes on what was being recorded.
In
third phase of the work, the tasks given to the trainee-teachers in the
two groups did not change. In this phase the five teachers in each group
had to alternate the following roles:
- teacher A had to interact with the children;
- teacher B had to observe teacher A as she interacted with the children
(she had to verify the educational atmosphere and the types of relationship
A was able to establish with the children);
- teacher C had to interact with an individual child which had been chosen
each time with the teacher trainer;
- teachers D and E had to observe how C interacted with the individual
child.
The
teacher which was left out of the two groups played a sort of a "jack
of all trades" role.This person was not always the same as there were
eleven trainees, she changed nappies or carried out other tasks as they
became necessary.
Teachers
D and E had to observe in particular and to note down in detail everything
about the child's behaviour and about the interaction: child/adult/child
in order to see what type of messages the child was sending to the adult
and what type of answers the adult was giving.
There
were three aims in this phase:
- to see if and how the "educational atmosphere" established by teacher
A influenced relationships;
- to identify the phase of growth of the child being observed and his
development needs, both in terms of relationships (what type of support
the child needed according to the phase of contact he was in), and in
terms of experiences (which basic experiences of the self that particular
child had not undergone adequately which were essential to pass to the
following phase of development);
- to identify the necessary educational and pedagogical strategies to
respond to the child's needs.
Daniele
was 36 months old when the course took place and the observations were
carried out. From the observation and the direct interaction with one
of the teachers at the crèche the following was discovered:
- he had become quite independent, in some situations even too much;
- in his relationships with adults he had different types of behaviour:on
one hand he showed he did not want any help and he did not want to listen,
on the other he wanted to be helped to do those things he still found
difficult to do by himself such as going to the toilet;
- Daniele was a child who found it difficult to let himself go and to
let go as when he said to one of the teachers at the crèche who accompanied
him to the toilet: "it's difficult, I can't do it" ;
- in some moments he seemed particularly anxious and started to suck his
dummy frantically;
- he was very determined when he was with the other children and tried
to impose the games he wanted on others;
- when playing with one of his class-mates he took the lead and decided
how to play;
- he asked the adult for certain things clearly and precisely for example
when he said: "Can you put the dummy down?".
From the analysis of the data collected during the observation and from
the discussion with the teachers at the crèche, it was discovered that
Daniele was, from the point of view of development, in the phase of retroflection
, even though because of his age he should have already acquired awareness
of contact (or Stern's telling
story self stage).
In
other words Daniele had not received sufficient support from adults to
develop fully his sense of independence and to be able to let himself
completely go in the relationship with an adult which is typical of the
phase of full contact (he had different
types of behaviour with adults as when he said: "It's difficult,
I can't do it" and an excessive need to be independent,etc).
On
the other hand when he had problems, in particular in the relationship
with adults, he seemed to regress to the phase of introjection
(he sucked his dummy ) and to depend passively on an adult.
At
this point to understand what has just been said, we will now present
what the trainee teacher at the crèche who interacted with Daniele noted
during the observation:
Daniele
is quite an old child for his age, he is independent , he is a leader,
he plays and he has got initiative, he is inventive and he is sure of
himself. At a certain point he tells me he has got to go to the toilet.
I accompany him. He wants to sit on the big toilet, he stays there for
a while and then he says: "It's difficult, I can't do it". I answer him:
"Wait a minute,let's see if you can". He waits and then he tells me again.
"It's difficult, I can't do it ".
We go back to the classroom. Daniele stays near the door, he does not
want to go back into the classroom, he wants to stay in the corner near
the door. I understand that he likes it there and that he probably wants
to play there. So I don't do anything. Then he goes and gets his school-bag
and gets the dummy out and as he goes back near the door he starts sucking
it. After a bit I try to get him to go into the classroom, but I don't
manage. At this point another teacher of the crèche comes in, she is one
of Daniele's teachers and she starts to play with him. At that point he
decides to go back into the classroom. He still has his dummy in his mouth
and he starts to play. He looks at me. I am near him. Suddenly and quite
unexpectedly, I think, he takes his dummy out of his mouth, he gives it
to me and he asks me to put it back in his school-bag. I tell him : "Daniele,
you go and put it back ". At this point Daniele puts the dummy back in
his mouth and starts to play again.
From
what the teacher wrote down it is obvious that she did not understand
some of the child's needs. First of all "she left the child by himself"
when he went to the toilet because when the child said "it's difficult,
I can't do it", she simply answered "try again" and did not understand
that the child was asking for "help". The teacher should have, instead,
said: "Don't worry, you can do it" and encouraged and helped the child
to let himself go, to relax and to manage. In second place she did not
understand the child when he wanted to be "accompanied" yet again when
they went back into the classroom. This can be noticed because the child
stopped near the door. The child was left by himself again because the
teacher saw him as "quite old for his age, as a leader" and therefore
she thought that the child did not need any help on the part of an adult.
So the child regressed into another phase by getting his own dummy and
helping himself. Again, after going back into the classroom the child
asks the teacher for help, this time in an explicit way, asking her to
put away his dummy. In this case the teacher did not understand that the
child was asking for help. She answered, in fact : "you go and put it
back", to teach the child to grow up, to do things by himself and not
to ask adults for help. The child reacted by sucking his dummy again,
going back to playing and this time by not taking any notice of the teacher.
This
situation was discussed in the group in the presence of the above-mentioned
teacher and it was hypothesized that Daniele was in the phase of retroflection
and that he really needed the adult's help and support to be able to be
convinced that he could manage and could develop his independence without
regressing to previous phases of development such as that of introjection
as happened when he started sucking his dummy. Therefore it was possible
for the teacher to consider Daniele differently, not any longer as a leader
and a child who was old for his age, but as a child who did not have the
correct help when he was experimenting with his independence (phase of
retroflection). It was evident
that in his personal and family history in the period of separation from
adults and independence, the adults had left him all by himself, they
had abandoned him and they had not let him undergo the experience of separation
in the correct way and come back to them to renew the necessary energy
and strength to face his problems.
Shortly
after all this, the teacher accompanied Daniele to the toilet again because
he had asked her to. This time Daniele had the same problems, but the
teacher encouraged and supported him and he managed to let himself go
and relax.
By
understanding the child's needs regarding relationships, the phases of
contact he was in and what experiences of the self he lacked, the teachers
were able to establish different relationships with an individual child
both when they were together just the two of them or when they were part
of the group. They were able to give the support he needed and to organize
activities so that he could undergo the experiences he lacked, or they
were able to modify the experiences and the relationships which did not
work. In this way the teachers were also able to think of activities which
could help the individual child in his development.
It
is obvious that while organizing the above-mentioned experiences and activities
the teachers had to take into consideration what the other children needed
for their development, what the group of teachers felt about and how they
dealt with the childrens' problems and needs, the new experiences the
teachers had and the different types of reaction they had when they were
faced with those needs.
Mario
was, instead, 19 months old. He established a relationship with the other
children by biting them. This caused different types of reactions on the
part of the teachers such as : "Mario is naughty", "Mario is
a problem", or "Mario is a lonely child", "Mario makes me
feel tenderness". We worked with the teachers on their emotional reactions,
underlining the fact that Mario's behaviour reminded some of them of their
childhood ("When I was a child I felt I was a bad girl"), and they remembered
the anger they felt towards their parents and that the same anger was
coming out in the relationship with Mario but belonged to their past.
Another
child called Enrica and who was 25 months old behaved like Mario: she
pulled the other children's hair and she bit them. In this case the work
carried out on the teachers' emotional reactions showed how they were
blocked when they got angry.
After
this first phase the children were observed. The following data about
these two children emerged:
- they sought contact with the adult from far by gazing at her and by
waiting for the adult to make the first move;
- they both felt the need to belong to the adult a lot and they expressed
this feeling by asking to be picked up and wanting a lot of physical contact;
- they only went near the other children to take things away from them
and to attack them;
- after having attacked a class-mate, they looked at the adult to see
what she did and how she reacted;
- in difficult and anxious moments both of them sucked their dummy to
give themselves support.
From these observations we concluded that both children were "blocked"
between introjection and projection
(at about 10/11 months), in that very delicate transitional moment period
when children start, due to teething at about 8/9 months, to develop and
recognise their own energy and their ability to attack the world.
This
is obviously a very important and delicate moment because, on one hand
children need to be left free and be able to rebel, but on the other they
need to be looked after in the best possible way. The lack of correct
support and inihibition on behalf of the adult of the experiences connected
with the phase (spitting food, putting toys in mouths and biting them,
crawling away from adults, hitting objects and / or adults, turning the
other way when an adult calls,etc.) oblige children to introject their
energy, to repress it, instead of projecting it (making it come out in
the correct way thanks to the adult's help). In this case children will
use their energy in other ways and will become aggressive and will challenge
and try to provoke adults by biting and pulling other children's hair
in order to see how adults react.
At
this point it was important to think of activities or pedagogical experiences,
which will allow these children to experience these new functions (attacking
and biting the outside world) with their classmates and to have the correct
type of help. First of all we should explain what effect this would have
had in the group of the children of that class and in what way it was
possible to change the educational syllabus which was already being carried
out.
We
started with this initial consideration that the other children felt the
need to have more definite limits for and more useful ways of expressing
their aggressiveness. This idea clearly gave us more opportunities to
act on timing and methods in order to modify the educational syllabus.
The link between the length of the phases of the children's development
and school activities was also favourable in this sense. We were, in fact,
just after halfway through the school year and therefore far from the
activities used to welcome the children to the crèche and we still had
plenty of time before dealing with the themes of the last part of the
school year. We were therefore in a period in which it was possible to
deal with an important theme such as that of aggressiveness and it was
also useful in order to tackle topics such as abandonment and separation
which are connected with the end of the year. We agreed with the teachers
to carry out some activities with the children within the educational
syllabus such as the lion game, biting cushions, biting other objects,
shouting, singing songs in different keys, biting different types of food,
etc.
After
two months one of the teachers, talking about Enrica, observed the following:
"She does not pull hair any longer, she's livelier and happier and
she plays with her class-mates more". Mario's eyes sparkled more and
were brighter and he bit the other children less. Of course this did not
mean that the "problem" had been solved once and forever. It is obvious
that Enrica and Mario would, in certain moments, go back and behave as
they did before and that they would have other problems during their development
(it must not be forgotten that the context of their families had not changed),
but they now had more experiences and abilities in relationships for their
personal development, experiences and relationships which were now part
of their own self, in order to enrich it and to extend its boundaries
and their potential development.
One
of the risks which it is necessary to pay attention to, when working with
children is that, with their behaviour, they can respond to the adult's
unconscious needs including those of the teacher. It is possible that
the teacher might expect things from the child who will behave in a such
a way to satisfy the teacher's needs. This is what happened during the
interaction between one of the teachers at the crèche and one of the children
called Marco.
Marco
was 31 months old. One of the teachers at the crèche often said, outside
the obervations carried out on the child, that he always clung to her
and she did not know how to free herself. It had been noticed that there
were sometimes contradictions in the teacher's behaviour towards Marco
and in some of Marco's attitudes and behaviour. Therefore it was thought
that Marco was more in the phase of retroflection
than that of confluence and / or
of introjection. However all these
reflections and observations carried out with the above-mentioned teacher
were useless. She continued saying that Marco clung to her. It was discovered
that it was true. We had to admit that she was right: Marco did really
cling to her. Therefore it was decided to let Marco interact with another
teacher at the crèche who had a completely different style in order to
see what the child would do and how he would behave with the new teacher.
Would he have the type of behaviour belonging to the phase of introjection
and / or that of confluence or would he interact in a different way ?
It was a sort of a challenge for us.
The
new teacher interacted with Marco freely as we had not given her any particular
tasks. We had also told the other teacher not to be present to avoid influencing
Marco with her presence. The interaction between Marco and the new teacher
took place in a completely different way. The child was more independent,
he did not "cling" to the adult, he said "no" calmly when the teacher
suggested something he did not like. He managed to go away from the adult,
then go and look for her, to interact with the other children autonomously
and to stay by himself. He did not seem at all a child who clings to adults.
We
discussed all this in the small group with both teachers present. When
the teachers who had observed the interaction between the new teacher
and Marco had finished talking, the first teacher burst into tears. She
cried a lot and quite violently and then at the end of this liberating
outburst she exclaimed: "Now I have understood. I was conditioning
him. I had a fantasy about Marco which I have understood only now. I imagined
I had swallowed him up and I had him inside myself. It was a horrible
sensation".
It
took quite a long time for this teacher to get over this sensation and
to understand where it came from. However from that moment onwards she
managed to consider Marco in a different way and, in a certain way, to
change her style of interaction with him. Marco was no longer a clinging
sort of child!
During
the lessons on Friday mornings, but also during those of theory on Saturday
afternoons we discussed the needs of the other children and we identified
the phases of the development of contact they were in. As the observations,
the interactions and the discussions took place and as the trainees gained
more and more theoretical knowledge and practical experience, it was interesting
to notice how they gradually and spontaneously changed their ways of working
and interacting with the children and how they managed to understand their
needs better and to find the correct solutions. Of course a lot more work
could still have been done with the trainees, but the course was nearly
finished. The trainees had still a lot to learn and had to assimilate
what they had learnt on the course. Despite all this, the trainees were
now capable of "seeing" the children through different eyes.
We
would like to conclude by presenting what one of the teachers said about
her interaction with a child called Cristina who was 36 months old: "Cristina
looks at me from a distance. I sit in front of her and I respond to her
gaze. Shortly after she comes near me and I welcome her. I play with her
a bit. Then she goes away only to come back later.After a few minutes
she repeats this: she comes near me and then she goes away only to come
back again.I realize that she wants to stay with me.I am pleased, but
I don't let myself go completely. Then I decided to let go. Something
is released inside me and I decided to let myself go completely with her.
At this point Cristina doesn't go away any longer and she starts to climb
on me and to get up to all kinds of tricks. I play alongside her and I
enjoy the moments spent with her".
As
she reads what she has observed the teacher has got tears in her eyes
and she is overcome with emotion!
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