SUGANDHA MATHUR, EARLY YEARS AND PRIMARY EDUCATION LEADER; MASTER OF EDUCATION (MEd), UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, UK; NPQH; RESEARCHER & WRITER ON CONDITIONS FOR LEARNING
Context
In my teaching and leadership practice, I have always been intrigued by a deceptively simple question: what helps Reception children to genuinely engage with learning?
During my master’s at the University of Cambridge, I explored this through a small-scale practitioner inquiry into conditions for learning (CfL) in a Reception classroom (Mathur, 2014). Drawing on Rudduck and Flutter (2000), I defined CfL as environmental, organisational and relational factors shaping children’s sense of status, belonging and commitment to learning. My study foregrounded young children’s voices in expressing how classroom conditions either supported or constrained engagement.
Since then, the national conversation around the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) has evolved. Policy cycles have shifted between expansion and accountability, from Ofsted’s ‘Bold beginnings’ (2017) to the EYFS Framework (DfE, 2025) and the extension of funded places for two-year-olds. Alongside this, major research such as the Effective Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education (EPPSE) Project (Sylva et al., 2014), Birth to 5 Matters (Early Years Coalition, 2021) and recent studies on agency (Gear and Torr, 2026; Manyukhina, 2025) have deepened understanding of the relational and participatory dimensions of engagement that policy often underplays.
Approach
My original research adopted a naturalistic case study design in an independent London primary school rated outstanding by Ofsted. Thirty-eight Reception children aged four to five took part.
Ethical principles (BERA, 2011) underpinned the study. I employed participant observation alongside informant interviewing, respondent interviewing, document analysis and reflective participation. This multi-method approach allowed children’s experiences to be captured in both structured and informal contexts.
Triangulation across methods, data sources and theoretical frameworks (Denzin, 1978) strengthened validity. Prolonged engagement over 10 days (Lincoln and Guba, 1985) provided sustained observational depth and opportunities for informal member checking with children’s responses and behaviours. A mix of self-initiated, teacher-directed, group and independent activities were observed in order to understand the CfL arising from both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
Credibility was further strengthened through reflexivity (Lincoln and Guba, 2000), as I continuously documented interpretive reflections alongside field observations. As a practitioner-researcher within the setting, my positionality shaped both access and interpretation, requiring constant reflexive awareness.
Analysis moved iteratively between inductive and deductive coding. Codes were refined through constant comparison across observational and interview data. Eight CfL emerged from the literature review: agency, belonging, communication, diversity, equity, faith, growth mindset and resources. These were treated as interdependent systems shaping engagement.
The study had limitations. Being a small-scale case study as part of a master’s thesis, it provided limited scope for multiple school contexts; therefore, generalisations cannot be claimed. Future research in multiple contexts and with the inclusion of nursery children (ages two to three) would broaden perspectives across the Early Years children. Nevertheless, this study significantly informed my teaching and leadership practice, and findings were consistent with similar studies.
As a methodological limitation of working as a lone researcher, it was not possible to carry out step-wise replication or researcher triangulation (Lincoln and Guba, 1985). Instead, I relied on theoretical triangulation (Denzin, 1978) through empirical literature.
Key findings
All eight CfL identified in the literature were present in practice. Four emerged as most powerful because they consistently acted as enabling conditions that activated and sustained the others.
Teacher support and trust
Teacher support was foundational across all CfL. Consistent with research from Hendrick (2004), relational quality provided children with agency, emotional security and care. Teachers actively shaped engagement by developing agency, belonging and communication through guidance, mediation of conflict and extension of learning dialogue.
They offered structured choice, emotional support, knowledge scaffolding and clear boundaries, alongside flexibility in participation. This balance enabled both safety and autonomy. They were instrumental in meeting the diverse needs of children.
Teachers ensured equity in participation by adapting tasks, providing additional time and supporting expression for diverse learners. Their faith in children’s capacity fostered high expectations, while scaffolded challenge encouraged growth mindset dispositions.
Teachers also mediated physical and temporal CfL by organising routines, curriculum and behavioural boundaries while preserving autonomy and initiative.
Creative use of space and time
Flexible structuring of time, routines and environment enabled predictability alongside responsiveness. Children experienced stability and freedom, fostering ownership of learning spaces. This reflected intentional leadership for learning across the school.
Cooperative play and companionship
Children showed keenness for initiating play, conversations and support for peers, siblings and adults. They demonstrated social belonging through peer teaching, collaborative play and mutual support across activities.
Children’s will, interest and effort
Children’s will, interest and effort facilitated intrinsic motivation, strengthened by recognition and tailored challenge provided by the teacher. This CfL was a key characteristic of most children in the project.
Ecological pattern across CfL
An ecological pattern emerged across findings. When relationships, time and space were intentionally designed, children exercised agency, sustained attention and negotiated learning collaboratively.
CfL were not independent variables but mutually reinforcing conditions. Engagement was co-constructed through pedagogic intention and socio-emotional interaction between children and their environment.
The teacher emerged as the central mediator of CfL, shaping how organisational, relational and environmental conditions translated into lived classroom experience.
Engagement was co-constructed through pedagogic intention and socio-emotional interaction between the environment (including processes, provisions, relationships, routines and resources – most significantly the teacher) and children. This interplay brought out children’s will, interest and effort, showing that CfL are both extrinsic and intrinsic to the child.
Connecting early findings to recent evidence
Relational micro-conditions
Teacher support aligns with sustained shared thinking (Siraj-Blatchford et al., 2003). These dialogic interactions, where adults and children jointly reason and reflect, are strongly associated with cognitive and socio-emotional development. Gear and Torr (2026) further emphasise adult language as central to agency development.
Designed flexibility
Creative use of space and time aligns with structured freedom (Manyukhina, 2025), where predictable routines support autonomy. Cognitive load theory (Sweller et al., 2011) suggests that reduced cognitive burden supports exploration, while Whitebread (2010) highlights structured environments as supportive of self-regulation and metacognition.
Relational pedagogy and play
Cooperative play reflects relational pedagogy (Pascal et al., 2017; Ofsted, 2024), where teachers facilitate rather than direct interaction. Belonging functions as both a condition and an outcome of engagement.
Implications for teachers and leaders
CfL operate as both pedagogical and organisational constructs requiring intentional design and sustained attention.
Relational pedagogy as expertise
Neuroscience shows that affective attunement activates attention and executive networks (Neville, 2013). Teachers cultivate this attunement through reflective cycles with planning, analysing interactions and peer coaching, making emotional labour a professional skill and thereby demonstrating that teachers are one of the most valuable resources.
Leadership as meta-condition
CfL were sustained when leadership enabled professional autonomy and adaptive practice. Leadership for learning (MacBeath and Dempster, 2009) requires space for practitioner judgement rather than procedural prescription. In contexts of workforce expansion, there is risk of over-standardisation; however, evidence suggests that reflective practitioners sustain higher-quality engagement (DfE, 2024). Leaders should therefore assess whether CfL are present during learning processes, and not only outcomes.
Children’s voice as diagnostic evidence
Consulting children about their experiences is methodologically powerful. Young children’s commentary often anticipates issues that formal audits miss, such as overstimulating noise, rushed transitions or inequitable turn‑taking. Embedding routine consultation converts children’s perceptions into continuous quality data. In doing so, schools align classroom practice with Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989) and commit to evidence from those who experience teaching first-hand.
Implications for policy
Accountability and engagement
The findings suggest a gap between the CfL for engagement and the formal conditions of accountability. The EYFS framework (DfE, 2025) foregrounds enabling environments but does not explicitly articulate agency, belonging or relational dimensions of learning. Birth to 5 Matters (Early Years Coalition, 2021) more explicitly recentres these elements.
National assessment frameworks prioritise measurable attainment, while longitudinal evidence from the EPPSE (Sylva et al., 2014) and Ofsted (2017) suggests that children’s engagement is associated with positive long-term outcomes. The findings of this study suggest a form of policy dissonance, whereby practitioners balance accountability for measurable outcomes with pedagogical approaches that foster engagement through relationships, enabling environment and children’s agency. This does not suggest that assessment and engagement are incompatible; rather, it highlights the challenge of reconciling outcome-focused accountability with the process-oriented CfL in practice.
Accordingly, this interpretation is offered as a diagnostic lens rather than a definitive critique of current policy. The findings suggest that conceptions of educational policy for quality may benefit from recognising both measurable attainment and the relational and environmental dimensions of CfL, which together contribute to children’s long-term development and engagement.
Expansion and expertise
Increased access through expanded provision alone risks diluting practitioner expertise unless matched with professional development. CfL evidence suggests that adult–child ratios cannot substitute for training in responsive interaction. Policy may therefore benefit from linking funding more explicitly to professional learning in the design and facilitation of CfL, rather than prioritising delivery hours alone.
Opportunity: CfL as diagnostic framework
Despite these tensions, CfL offer a potential bridge between practice and accountability by embedding CfL within future EYFS evaluation frameworks, aligning developmental science with practitioner knowledge.
Conclusion
Revisiting the 2014 inquiry suggests that core mechanisms underpinning engagement have remained stable while policy contexts have shifted. Engagement emerges when children experience reciprocal trust, structured freedom, social belonging and purposeful challenge. These are shaped by reflective teachers, enabled by adaptive leadership and supported through policy frameworks. CfL mediate between policy intention and classroom reality, translating structural aims such as curriculum, assessment and funding into children’s lived experience of learning.
