ABSTRACT

This article considers the relevance of Susan Isaacs’ practice and research for twenty-first century early childhood education, reflected in two studies conducted discretely nearly a century apart that theorize young children’s constructions of knowledge: Isaacs’ Malting House School study and the ‘Young Children Are Researchers’ study. The article reviews Isaacs’ work with particular focus on ‘discovery, reasoning and thought’, her values and three key disciplines that informed her practice and research: pedagogy, philosophy and psychology. Selected findings from Isaacs’ Malting House School Study and the ‘Young Children Are Researchers’ study are critiqued to build the argument that not only has Isaacs’ work left a powerful legacy to the field of early childhood education, but that it also has potential to benefit the field now and into the future. However, this proposition is contingent on early childhood educators who are highly knowledgeable and skilled: factors that have policy implications.

摘要

本文考虑了苏珊·艾萨克 (Susan Isaacs) 的实践和研究与 21 世纪幼儿教育的相关性，这反映在相隔近一个世纪离散进行的两项研究中，这些研究将幼儿的知识建构理论化：艾萨克的麦芽屋学校研究和“幼儿教育”。是研究人员的研究。文章回顾了艾萨克的工作，特别关注“发现、推理和思考”、她的价值观以及影响她实践和研究的三个关键学科：教育学、哲学和心理学。Isaacs 的麦芽屋学校研究和“幼儿是研究人员”研究的部分结果受到批评，以建立这样的论点，即 Isaacs 的工作不仅为幼儿教育领域留下了强大的遗产，但它也有潜力在现在和未来使该领域受益。然而，这一主张取决于知识渊博和技能娴熟的幼儿教育工作者：具有政策影响的因素。