The challenge of mixed-age settings

Katz, Evangelou & Hartman (1990) describe mixed-age groupings as situations where children “..who are at least a year apart in age…” are placed in the same ‘classroom’ groups.¹¹⁴ The same writers point out that the resulting range of competencies within a mixed-age group “..gives rise to cognitive conflicts and opportunities to lead, instruct, nurture, and strengthen skills and knowledge already acquired in the course of tutoring others”.²¹⁵ They suggest that curriculum should be oriented towards projects and activities that encourage collaboration and the use of peer tutoring, cooperative learning and spontaneous grouping of children. These points are consistent with the view that children are ‘communities of learners’ and the Vygotskian approach to scaffolding children’s learning. However it should be noted that the authors tend to refer to, and give examples of, situations where the age ‘spread’ is less that two years except where the group size is very small.¹⁶

While Greenman and Stonehouse ( 1997) also support mixed age contexts in their book Primetimes³, they also make the following important point.

“If the age range extends beyond 18 months, …[it]…is a challenge to provide the range of materials, equipment, and experiences needed by children of diverse ages within one space. There is often natural movement toward the lowest common denominator – that is, toward providing only materials and experiences that are safe and manageable for the youngest children and therefore do not fully meet the needs of the oldest children – or toward aiming for the middle, which slights both the older and younger children…there are … centres where twenty to thirty children under 5 years spend much of their day all in together ‘family’ grouping. This is a significant misnomer. Families are not of such size and this type of grouping places particular stress on the younger children in the group.” ⁴¹⁷

The centres of twenty-five to thirty described by Greenman and Stonehouse mirror the most common model we experience in our work with New Zealand services. Even though, in many situations, the ‘under two’s’ are separated from the older children for periods of the day, it is questionable how appropriate their learning environments will be given the overall space available.

The New Zealand experience offers particular challenges in relation to the provision of safe but challenging opportunities for exploration. It is common to visit centres where older children seldom have access to small, intricate objects (such as beautiful glass beads), potentially ‘dangerous’ equipment (such as nails, hammers and drills), or messy equipment (such as dye, screen printing). Similarly adult interactions with younger children in mixed age settings may focus on preventing children from exploring with their whole bodies – because the equipment is inappropriate.

The following ideas may be useful when considering how to create a safe but challenging environment for all children.

• Create some spaces specifically for infants, toddlers and older children while including large spaces which can be developed into environments for shared activities.
• Low physical barriers, such as risers, can be used to define areas for young babies by giving older children the message “…this is a ‘low’, ‘slow’ space…you’re welcome to join the babies but you need to go slow here”.
• Low, interesting fencing can be incorporated around spaces such as the carpentry ‘house’, so that very young children can interact with older children and use the equipment, but only with very close adult supervision.
• In a shared space fewer objects, such as complex puzzles, need be on display at any one time. A high shelf or cupboard, located close to a puzzle area, could contain puzzles for older children’s access.
• A high table with a rim (and adult chairs) can provide a surface for older children to work with very small, manipulative equipment.
• The creation of loft areas can provide spaces for older children while also offering young children interesting enclosures and small spaces underneath. Removing the first step of a loft ladder can maintain an age appropriate barrier. However, appropriate opportunities for very young children to climb ‘up and over’ should also be offered within the early childhood setting.

One has to question whether the provision of quality spaces, which are tailored to the needs of infants, toddlers and older children, can be achieved within NZ’s minimum requirement for 2.5 square metres of activity space.