When I saw the PEDAL conference announced earlier in the year, I planned my whole summer week off around being able to take that date off in order to attend.

PEDAL stands for Play in Education, Development and Learning. A part of the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education, PEDAL is a centre for academic research all about the role of play in children’s lives. What an amazing institute right on the doorstep. This conference was the 10th year celebration of PEDAL and was also on the international day of play, June 11th. No more fitting of a day than that.

Here I plan to write about the day, the research, the vibe, the people and probably intertwined with a lot of my feelings. (I can’t help it, I’m a sensitive and analytical person!)

I arrived at the conference on my own and knew absolutely no one. Luckily there were some baked goods and tea available after collecting my name badge so I managed to step on bravely. Flying the flag for childminders as always by wearing my podcast t-shirt, it was very clear I was the only childminder in the room, and I was there with purpose to make sure we were represented and known about!

After the introduction and housekeeping from an official Professor of Play, Prof Paul Ramchandani, things kicked off with Stephen Morgan MP. Familiar tones to the PACEY conference in 2024 in my view, just this time tailored to a different audience. It was interesting to hear that he has been a playworker in a previous life before being an MP, but it wasn’t clear if this was a full time role for years or a shorter term placement as a young adult, but at least someone with a slight bit of experience in the role must be a positive step right? There was lots of talk about the goals for a good level of development of young children (75%) by the end of reception by 2028 and of course how government aim to achieve this with school based nurseries. School based nurseries of course offering Convenience to parents and children getting to know a school from a young age that they will be continuing to attend post EYFS. A somewhat dangerous point to have mentioned in a room full of researchers and professionals that was far wider than ‘school based nurseries.’ However he did try to soften this with the phrase ” A rich tapestry of settings..” which he surprisingly highlighted “…including childminders” (I wonder if my shirt had gotten noticed.) There was also talk about Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision, stating that mainstream schools were to become more inclusive and identifying that early years practitioner skills are crucial for identifying emerging needs and the role we play in supporting and reassuring families through SEND processes. Morgan also stated the need to value and support the sector which is why the ‘Little moments together’ campaign to drive people into the workforce was so prominent saying that it is a rewarding career path and that the government are focusing on free training, raising standards with stronger practice hubs and raising the profile through their campaign. Then onto the Q and A session.

Questions from the audience, an audience filled with people from all over the sector relating to childhood. Nursery practitioners, teachers, head teachers, psychologists, home education support workers, health visiting teams , researchers, students and many many more, and myself of course. (Childminding represent!) Questions such as, why are maintained nuseries not mentioned in any part of the plans? 7 areas of learning are being forgotten about because of the focus on English and Maths for the government goals, why are they not bringing it back to child development? How are government going to make sure families in need are able to access provision and how are government going to tackle the workforce issues, who are going to staff all of these nurseries? Generic responses again of having an attractive career path and that school based nurseries will sort out most of these things. Morgan did write down notes relating to bringing it back to child development and play, but I don’t personally hold out much hope for that to become the norm with current government goals.

Bo Stjerne Thomsen was next to lift our mood from all that policy talk. Thomsen was an early supporter of PEDAL and is Vice-President of the LEGO foundation. He reminisced about the late Professor Whitebread who was pretty much the creator of PEDAL and how 10 years on PEDAL is becoming an international beacon of early years. Thomsen created a much more playful vibe to the morning by sharing inquisitiveness. Quotes from his presentation such as “Play is the mechanism that can make everyone thrive” were far more inspiring and sincere than what we had heard 10 minutes ago. Thomsen has been involved in play labs around the world, both in classrooms and communities, even in hospitals. He suggests that if one wants to make a change in a non standard play setting by introducing play, you first need to convince people by talking about the difference play makes before you talk about the play itself. I think we have all been there facing barriers against play based learning and having to be the advocates for the difference it makes. Well I certainly have!

More tea before hearing from Dr Catherine Draper. Draper was talking about their research on ‘the next 1000 days.’ Draper has been working in South Africa, which seems to be a very different environment to England in terms of access to support. She stated that interventions must take into account the community experiences and that the way they were able to have the most impact with families was through whatsapp, where they created a chat bot to support families through emerging difficulties, giving clear feedback and resources to support their child in response to an assessment using the bot. There is still a lot of stigma around certain conditions in South Africa, so support was given through general themes rather than labels to create support for the resources rather than resistance.

Time to move to a different part of the building for neurodiversity-affirming play. There were 3 very quick presentations on offer in this 35 minute time slot from Dr Sinead McNally, Dr Samantha Friedman and Dr Emma Pritchard-Rowe. I felt like they were presenting the ideal from their research, however currently there is a dissonance between the society and educational system that we have and the ideals of research. In theory everything they said was a version of heaven. Summarising McNally, Educators shouldn’t be making children do things that just ‘look like play’ but instead should promote ‘authentic play’ for that child. Friendman saying we should give more opportunities for activities that promote ‘no wrong’ and Prichard-Rowe highlighting that Ausitic people enjoy playing with others and often in parallel play, even as adults. There was lots of talk about neurodiverse people being affirmed and their play not negatively approached. However as a practitioner who has worked with many neurodiverse children, I often find it is a neurodiverse individual who can not tolerate other people’s play. So I asked “How to handle neurodiverse play with others when they aren’t understanding the play language which causes conflict and generally less autonomy for everyone? That I need to be able to affirm their play but also be able to explain neurotypical play language to them so that everyone can get along.” The question wasn’t really answered, there wasn’t much time, although I did get to chat for a while afterwards with the three Drs (all of who women- go women in STEM!) and they could understand the current predicment of the future ideal world and the current world we live in. Food for thought anyway.

On that note time for lunch, dietary requirements provided for and a green space to sit on. Chatting with some other practitioners who had never been to a PEDAL conference before and also were very intrigued by my earlier question.

Afternoon time and we were onto the David Whitebread memorial lecture, which was all about risky play from Ellen Beate Hanson Sandseter from Norway, where preschool is between the ages of 1 and 6 years. Sandseter categorised risky play into 6 types including rough and tumble play, tools and dangerous elements. She also commented that the risk and chance of injury makes play more thrilling, so stopping these chances may be making play less engaging. Sanseter suggests that risky play needs educators to be taught how to build the environment and how to use a competency approach- not age, so this means that challenges are appropriate for each individual child.

Next up, something very topical right now, AI, toys and the future.(AI=Artificial Intelligence) Prof Rosie Flewitt discussed the use of AI powered robots for assessment. It could record non verbal responses and engage more with children than adults who are more autorotative figures which means children may alter their response. This felt a little like it was leaning into parasocial relationships to me, and it is worth considering in moral decisions if researchers use these social robots in future research, not just the bias that Flewitt said they may be prone to. Prof Hatice Gunes was more interested in how technology is in every part of a toddler’s life now. Even though there is a digital disparity, her figures suggest the average number of devices per household is 12.55 but the range was between 1-40 on individual answers, so the average is most certainly not the norm for many families. But tech is everywhere from washing machines, smart speakers and vacuum cleaners to doorbells. Parents are creating games while using AI assistants according to her research and Flewitt also highlighted that these devices are not included as screen time, but they are part of the technological world that children are accessing. Flewitt wants to see a drastic improvement in the guidance relating to AI. Dr Emily Goodacre however was the most excited by AI it seemed by her enthusiasm about her research which is so brand new in research terms that it was almost difficult to present. Goodacre informed us of AI toys that are already out there, marketed for preschool children and highlighted that we don’t know the impacts of these toys because there is no research out there. Goodacre also questioned if there was a need for AI literacy- how children understand and use AI, but at the moment until more research is done, for anyone interested she suggested that AI literacy can be linked to computational skills, as we don’t know yet if it is a whole different set of skills.

Just two more presentations left in the day and up came Dr Nikhit D’Sa who has been working in crisis situations to support children’s development in Haiti. This was a very inspirational talk about overcoming adversity. Another researcher who echoed taking into account community experiences, and that there is no one size fits all approach. D’Sa listed the tactics he and his team used which included training teachers (this had a large impact), saturating with the same message in all settings (by settings this was school, churches and healthcare and radio). This meant that parents were more likely to follow interventions as they were hearing a clear consistent message. Trauma informed approaches were also important, teacher well being and parent reflection work more than with the children as their experiences affect their interactions with children, and hopefully will end cycles of trauma. It was great to hear someone so confidently passionate about their work, and it definitely sounds like it has been and continues to be impactful to children and families in a very difficult set of circumstances.

However the final talk of the day was my personal favourite. Dr Julian Grenier approached the front and I was immediately taken with the fact that this was an introverted leader. Not something you see every day. Grenier was discussing his question of “How to turn a space into a place?” A place being somewhere special to a person. Grenier was speaking from experience of being a frontline practitioner, in particular a headteacher of a nursery school in a disadvantaged area. It was obvious Grenier’s real experiences shone through with anecdotes about challenges and rewards, telling us to “be real about difficulties for communities.” He commented that children need to be involved and active and given spaces for them to occupy. I really resonate with this approach and I eagerly listened to all of the approaches he mentioned that I need to spend time looking up. At the end I asked a question (again) about how can we as a society make sure children get the chance to turn the space of local communities into a place, when so many people we interact with everyday in local areas don’t even speak to children directly, they talk to them through me?” Grenier instead of answering that question stated that he wanted to leave that as the final note for everyone to think about as it was such an important issue. (Yeah- Childminders, we deal with community every day!)

After a final thoughts and thanks from the PEDAL team there was a little networking to be done. Unexpectedly lots of people came up to me afterwards talking about my questions and how they were thought provoking. There were times when people didn’t really know what a childminder was so luckily I was on hand to explain.

Most astoundingly though, there are still people in the early years sector who do not know that childminders are registered childcare providers. When I got home I double checked my knowledge with my ever listening partner about how long childminders have been required to register for in England. Turns out childminders were officially recognised in the Childcare Act 1948 where local authorities were required to keep a register of nurseries and childminders. You can read it here. Isn’t that something?

Overall I had a great time. It was an amazing price at £20 to be in the front row of hearing the dissemination about recent high calibre research. I fully hope to be able to attend again in future, and hopefully next year, more childminders!

It has also given me thoughts about my own career progression. As a childminder there isn’t really an obvious route of ‘what next in X amount of years time?’ We loose so many childminders to shop work once their own children are in school or by secondary school rather than keeping them in the sector, and this is a real travesty. Having clearer what next routes that aren’t working in a nursery or school would be very helpful. Keeping that knowledge and experience in the sector is vital, as well as trying to hold onto childminders in that role too. It has made me consider if I should take on further studies now I have had a break since my degree, or if I should go into practitioner based research. Who knows what will happen, but it has at least given some ideas to think about.

In the mean time keeping my setting running happily and well whilst developing the podcast will be keeping me busy for a while yet.