Peripheral Participation Theory

Words: 1466
Pages: 6

After learning legitimate peripheral participation theories (LPP) in class, the writer is interested in to become a skilled educator in a childcare. This paper discusses how beginning early childhood educators improve teaching practice by applying legitimate peripheral participation theory. First, the author details the importance of communicating with other novices and experts in the workplace. Second, the writer explains how to improve teaching practice through observation and motivation. Third, the author illustrates that educators should be equipped with crisis management skills and resources network to comfort parents.
To Learn from conversations with Colleagues
To become an experienced early childhood educator, it is important for those
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New apprentices find it easier to build relationships with other apprentices than to establish master-apprentice relationships, because they suffer “benign community neglect” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 93) by the apprentice, and need time and effort to gain more proportion in the community of practices (Lave & Wenger, 1991). When applied to teaching in a childcare, less experienced educators can group together, sharing about their happiness and talking about their worries (Lave & Wenger, 1991). From effective communication with each other, beginning teachers can learn and draw an inspiration from other new educators’ way to deal with life difficulties (Lave & Wenger, 1991). For example, beginning teachers would get suggestions about how to balance the life and work effectively. Those suggestions help newcomers to develop a sense of belonging, and live a life with mental support.
In
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For teachers, an emergency situation is to handing parents’ concerns and complaints. For example, educators with less situational experience tend to be nervous and could not respond with the right words and offer solutions to an angry parent in a time-limited situation. Some less experienced educators would apologize first no matter what happened, but the apology ruins the childcare’s reputation if it is not the school’s fault. In contrast, senior educators would listen to the complaints with calm and patience, and then make a judgement about who should take responsibility for the things happened. Those experienced educators would apologize when an apology is needed, and put forward a solution to fix the problem; or illustrate the facts to complainants, and help them to deal with the issue. By listening and watching the process of how the experienced educators handle situations, new teachers can develop their ability to take action flexibly and effectively in their profession area. More importantly, novice educators’ “clinical judgement” and “common sense” (Taber et al., 2008) can be developed thought participation, since “The reality is that not every patient fits into a nice little column”. (Taber et al., 2008, p.