Originally produced by Videatives in 2014

Infant competence assumes very subtle forms and emanates both from biological givens and early experience. To be a good teacher one must recognize these subtleties and be willing to speculate about the intentions of infants, to appreciate that their actions are reasonable strategies to reach their goals. This playlist contains 11 video clips that reveal how infants learn. These clips present a range of concepts infants work to understand and a range of supports and provocations designed for adults to use to help children learn. To see infants learning, we have to slow down and look closely. We have to watch the children’s eyes, study what they do with left as well as right hands, note what causes them to laugh or frown, figure out why they abort an action in mid-flight to redirect it elsewhere. We need to think about their reasons, not just their behavior. In these multiple ways, we are able to actually witness learning in situ and come closer to understanding the full competence of children too young to tell us what they think

Mode of access: World Wide Web