Exploring Schemas in the Welsh Curriculum: A coming to know for practitioners and children

This paper explores one child’s use of their schema to construct their knowledge and understanding within the early years curriculum for Wales – the Foundation Phase (FP). It considers how a knowledge of schemas can facilitate practitioners in supporting children along their learning continuum and inform classroom pedagogy. This paper explores and defines what schemas are and examines prior research into schemas. It examines FP practitioners’ lack of knowledge and understanding of schemas within the chosen setting, thus providing the rationale for the research. Lastly, it charts Harri’s learning journey over two terms and how a coming to know about Harri’s trajectory schema facilitated a different understanding of his actions by practitioners and helped shape classroom pedagogy. The paper highlights how an informed knowledge of schemas supported Harri’s engagement in tasks and fostered his collaboration with others. This paper is useful for policy makers, practitioners and researchers, particularly in Wales, in understanding how nurturing and nourishing a child’s schema supports knowledge construction within a play-based curriculum such as the Foundation phase.edsw