Learning Through Struggle: How First-Hand Experiences Shape Development

Guest Post by Dr. Stella Louis

Mar 31, 2025

Hey PLAYlisters,

This month’s fantastic guest article is from Dr Sella Louis! She is looking at the importance of first-hand experiences in young children’s learning and development, exploring how children learn through interaction with people, environments, and materials, often encountering struggle as part of their executive function development.

It’s free to everyone so give it a share to someone who’d find it interesting and make sure to find Stella’s links at the bottom of the article!

Enjoy!

Learning Through Struggle: How First-Hand Experiences Shape Development

By Dr. Stella Louis

We know that children learn best from their first-hand experiences. These experiences are the most important source of information for supporting children’s learning since they build on what children already know and can do. Children under five years old have limited experience and will need to be offered plenty of meaningful first-hand experiences to develop their play.

Children learn through interacting with people, environments, objects and materials. Sometimes this process includes an element of struggle. Birth to Five Matters (2021) describes struggle as executive function, they note it is very important that adults develop children’s possibilities in this. Struggling within their zone of proximal development (ZPD) can help children to develop problem solving skills. It can increase their confidence and persistence to reach their goal. Importantly, struggle teaches children vital lessons about self-discipline and perseverance, such as not giving up but instead to keep on trying to achieve their aim. The process of struggle enables children to encounter risk and challenge so that they can work things out for themselves through trial and error. Struggle can also help children to learn about managing difficult emotions, such as feeling frustrated, overwhelmed or angry. Struggle is critical to learning and gives the adult observer information about when to provide support. For example, if we observe a child trying to balance a tower of blocks if it is within the child’s capabilities or ZPD then it is good struggle, however, if it is not then the adult should intervene to support the child where necessary.

Children manipulate, explore and learn about what they can do while they are at play. They use their senses, they touch, look at, listen to what people are saying, and put objects into their mouth as a way of getting information from them. They can often be observed staring intently at people and objects. For, example, while out with her mum two-year-old Bella spots a chalked arrow on the pavement. She studies this intently before pointing to the arrow and saying “up”. Bella has an interest in lines and transporting. The learning here is interesting. Bella is recognising the arrow she knows about it on boxes and linking the arrow’s purpose (up) for the box and applying it to the arrow on the pavement. She is recognising the way her cultural context uses this symbol. Recognising how the culture uses a symbol is important if children are going to make their own and to use the symbols of the culture.

Children can be seen to adjust their hands and fingers in order to grasp or hold on to an object, that is how they develop their manipulative skills. Children make discoveries as they fill and empty containers, packing them tightly, putting lids on and taking them off, they may compare objects. They may line objects up, combining them in a variety of ways. What is vital is that we provide children with worthwhile materials so that they can not only manipulate them but makes discoveries, comparisons and connections with their everyday life. For example, two-year-old Joe picked a fig from the fig tree in the garden. Very purposefully he cupped it in his hand and carried it all the way into the kitchen, opened the fridge door, and placed it carefully inside. He shut the door with a triumphant bang. Joe shows his learning in how he makes a link with the fig on tree and the fig that is later preserved and eaten.

It goes without saying that children will also need opportunities to explore, experiment and repeat in play. Piaget emphasised ways in which human learning takes place through repetitive action with material and objects situated in the immediate surroundings. Vygotsky demonstrated the importance of learning through and with other people. Children need both people and objects if they are to be successful learners.

Schemas are a key way in which children learn and can be observed as operating at four different levels. Let’s take the rotation schemas as an example. This is where children are interested in things that twist, turn, and spin. They may rotate themselves or their play-things

Level 1: sensory motor - a child may run round and round a piece of furniture, again and again. Twist and turn things or they may spin the wheels on the cars. It’s the physical sensation that appeals to them. Level 1, links to how they are learning through their senses. Babies and toddlers operate at this level, but so do older children depending on the context and situation. Even as adults we never lose this level of functioning.

Level 2: symbolic representation - this is when children use one thing to stand for another. A plate can become a steering wheel, they may mix stones in a bowl pretending that it is food or draw circles and spirals in their mark making activities to represent their experiences. Level 2 tells us that children are able to think in imaginative and creative ways, and it links to children becoming symbol users, which is an important aspect of development for reading, writing and understanding number symbols. I think we are all familiar with examples like his in symbolic imaginative play. However, I’m not sure whether the supreme significance of this is always realised.

Level 3: functional dependency - this is when children demonstrate that they know that one function is dependent on an another, they may pretend to turn the key in the door before going inside. Level 3 demonstrates their understanding of cause and effect.

Level 4: abstract thought - abstract thinking is when children move from the literal to the abstract. They may continue to use props or not need them. But the use of the props will be imaginative so that they can rearrange reality or use secondary symbols to create symbolic and abstracted meanings. For example, they may create a story about space explorers

in their play who twirl about in outer space. They decide where space people eat and sleep etc.

In each of the levels, children are exploring the rotation schema in four different ways. What is important is that adults not only pay attention to the schema but also the level at which the child is functioning. Each level is equally important and it is vital that children are supported to explore the level that they are at fully and thoroughly without being rushed.

Ultimately children learn when they have plenty of opportunities to rehearse newly acquired skills. For example, Ben aged 2 years 1 month has been attempting to get his own shoes on for a few weeks. He hears his older brother Jack being asked to put his shoes on. Ben knows that this is because his family are planning to go out to the beach. Without further ado he goes straight to the box of “garden shoes”, finds a pair of crocs which are slightly too large, slips his feet inside and goes to join his brother. But where does this fit in the learning as he has the wrong size croc. The way in which Ben shows he has learnt a new skill lies in his ability to put on shoes in order to be part of the family outing, and he chooses the most accessible shoes he can find in order to achieve this.

Babies, toddlers and young children will develop competence, control and mastery in what they do when they have opportunities to draw on their first-hand experience, struggle with new experiences, manipulate and discover, explore, experiment, repeat and practise newly acquired skills in meaningful ways. Tina Bruce (1996) describes this as ‘the network for learning’ that helps children to understand and make connections with their everyday lives.
From observing babies, toddlers and young children it is clear that they use the network for learning. Being specific about what we observe children doing can help us to have a deeper understanding of the individual child’s development needs and learning.

DR STELLA LOUIS

Dr Stella Louis is an independent early years consultant, trainer, and author, collaborating with a range of nursery settings, parents, nursery schools, local authorities, government departments, and charities. She specialises in providing training and consultancy, with a particular focus on the role of observation in supporting children's learning, especially through the exploration of schemas. Stella leads a small team of Froebelian travelling tutors, dedicated to promoting, developing, and delivering the Froebel Trust's short courses across England. Her work extends both within the UK and internationally, including in South Africa, where she has supported teachers in embedding a Froebelian approach to teaching and learning.