Susan Sutherland Isaacs - Approach

Approach

Isaacs argued that it is important to develop children's skills to think clearly and exercise independent judgement. Developing a child’s independence is beneficial to their development as an individual. Parents were viewed as the main educators of their children with institutionalised care for children before the age 7 being potential damaging. Children learned best through their own play. For Isaacs, play involves a perpetual form of experiment..."at any moment, a new line of inquiry or argumemt might flash out, a new step in understanding be taken".

Thus play should be viewed as children’s work, and social interaction is an important part of play and learning. The emotional needs of children are also very important and symbolic and fantasy play could be a release for a child’s feelings. “What imaginative play does, in the first place is to create practical situations which may often then be pursued for their own sake, and this leads on to actual discovery or to verbal judgment and reasoning”. The role of the adults, then, is to guide children’s play, but on the whole they should have freedom to explore. Her book Intellectual Growth in Young Children explains her perspective.