Developing 21st Century Essential Life Skills: Supporting Self-Regulation in 3-4 Year Olds

Self-regulation has been identified as a 21st Century Essential life skill, underpinning all other aspects of learning with a significant impact on a child's long term life chances. When it comes to Essential Life Skills there is no level playing field, any more than there is for more academic skills. The Department of Education's Effective Pre-School, Primary & Secondary Education Project (EPPSE) study identifies an association between socio economic background and self-regulation in the early years (Sammons et al., 2014) and social disparities in confidence later in adolescence. Research strongly suggests that Essential Life Skills are laid down during the early years in the family and preschool. It may be too late to intervene effectively during primary or secondary education; 'getting it right early' is the key to successful intervention. As children's early development of self-regulation is highly dependent on the quality of their early social interactions, early years educators are in a unique position to have a major beneficial influence on children's development beyond the home environment. There is increased interest in Self-Regulation with early years practitioners keen to understand how to best support the children that they work with to meet these goals. Self-Regulation is often defined and interpreted in different ways leading to confusion. This pilot action research project and the resulting manual comes at a particularly pertinent time for the sector as they explore the concepts. This pilot project has aimed to bring the maintained and voluntary nursery settings together in a joint training programme focused on supporting self-regulation in the Early Years.