Explore the work of Margaret

McMillan and Susan Isaacs

Estelle Martin
Monday, March 8, 2021
Straddling the 19th and 20th Centuries, both Susan Isaacs and Margaret McMillan had ideas
ahead of their time. Today is a great opportunity to revisit their thinking about the great
outdoors and child-led practice.

McMillan advocated free flow play.

Key points

 McMillan was a great advocate of providing outdoor spaces for children to move with
freedom
 She believed that practitioners must look after the holistic needs of children, including the
education, social, physical and emotional wellbeing
 Isaacs encouraged nursery staff to allow children to make sense of the world at their own
pace and through their own experiences
 Some of the activities Isaacs encouraged have parallels in the modern Forest School approach

Note: This article was first published in the November 2007 edition of eye

The second part of our series looking at the work and theory of early childhood pioneers, explores
two true greats of the sector, Margaret McMillan and Susan Isaacs, whose ideas are still as relevant
today as they were in their own time.

Go to the bottom of the article for practical activities which link their teaching...

Margaret McMillan (1860 - 1931)

McMillan was an inspirational and politically aware educationalist at the beginning of the 20th
century, who established nursery education for young children in Deptford, London. McMillan
adopted an holistic approach towards the education of children. She pioneered the need to understand
the importance of caring for, and educating, the whole child within the context of their social and
economic circumstances, all of which must be underpinned by sound health.

McMillan established the Rachel McMillan Teacher Training College (named after her sister) in
Deptford in 1930, where she introduced sociological perspectives into teaching practice. This meant
that teachers were encouraged to know more about the communities and the circumstances of the
children and families in the community in which they were teaching.

This sociological perspective was important to McMillan who believed that teachers and parents
were involved in the same task of nurturing and meeting the developing needs of the child. Home
visits were advocated as a means of helping nursery workers gain insights into the child’s experience
at home, and to aid collaboration with parents.
Relevance for early years practice now – partnerships with parents and other agencies

Today, home visits and working in partnership with parents are seen as effective early years practice
throughout the foundation stage. We recognise this as a ‘multi disciplinary’ way of working in order
to holistically meet the needs of children.

Welfare, health and poverty

The welfare and health of the children she worked with was fundamental to their ability to learn and
develop; and so the physical health of the children needed to be addressed if they were to progress.
The problems encountered by many children in the Edwardian era resulted from the implications of
living in extreme poverty and this, as we now know, affects children’s health and later developmental
outcomes.

It is important to recognise that there was no National Health Service at this time in history. During
her lifetime, children often died of diseases resulting from poor living conditions, which were
common in the ‘slums’ of Deptford – as she referred to them in her writings.

Poverty continues to be an obstruction to children’s holistic development and wellbeing, both in the
UK and at an international level, and early years educators must continue to consider the impact of
poverty and provision to support children’s wellbeing. McMillan was an advocate for the
improvement of the lives of families caught in poverty traps, including the health and medical
treatment of the children.

Rachel, her sister, was also engaged in promoting nursery education and the holistic wellbeing of
young children and their families. McMillan placed an emphasis on the improvement of both the
child’s and the mothers’ health and wellbeing, which meant the sisters had to develop expertise in
child development and health education to share with the mothers of the children in the school and
camps they had established.

It was believed that children who lived in severe poverty and overcrowded housing suffered higher
rates of disease than those from different social classes. It was these children that McMillan wanted
to offer outdoor provision. The children would be outdoors as much as possible in the camps and
would even sleep outdoors to improve their health – it was believed that this would reduce disease.

McMillan was an activist who lectured widely to generate an understanding of the need to reduce
poverty, poor health and hygiene, which impacted on the whole community, in addition to children
and young people who continued to suffer into adulthood. Housing conditions were appalling for a
significant number of families during the early 1900s and McMillan knew the damaging effects on
children’s health and life expectancy.

The sisters worked together to establish the open-air camps and the Rachel McMillan nursery school.
These were child-centred environments that allowed children to use outdoor spaces to the maximum
and supported their physical, cognitive and socio-emotional development. These principles, of
providing outdoor environments for children to play and learn in a holistic manner can still be
recognised in early years settings today.

Play and learning activities were incorporated into provision by giving children ample space to move
around freely. For optimum development to occur, children were given every opportunity to
experiment with, and to discover the properties of, the garden and other natural materials all year
round.

The enduring influence of the Rachel McMillan Nursery School can be seen in the integration of
children’s learning through active play in purpose-built environments, with verandahs that allow
children to move freely between the indoors and the outdoors and to extend their play scenarios as
part of the outdoor curriculum.

McMillan was influenced by Friedrich Froebel in her advocacy of free-flow play, although this was
developed to enable nursery teachers to create an environment where children could develop self-
expression and autonomy in their holistic development and learning. She achieved this by providing
a ‘total environment’ for the children that included health promotion, learning, nutrition and meals.
The children were cared for in their overall physical wellbeing, intellectual and social development.

Susan Isaacs (1885 -1948)

Susan Isaacs has made a major contribution to the field of early childhood education. Isaacs was
awarded a CBE for her services to education in 1948. Prior to this achievement, after initially being a
governess and then training as a teacher and gaining a degree in philosophy, she studied psychology,
lectured in infant education and trained as a psychoanalyst.

Isaacs was the head of an experimental school for children aged between two-and-a-half years to
seven-and-a-half years-old, which was known as the Malting House School, for four years (1924-8).

Subsequent publications about her educational approaches, and the observations of the children at
this school have been widely read and have been influential in both educational practice and
psychology.

Isaacs was the first head of the Department of Child Development at the University of London
(1933), where she was able to influence generations of early years educators with a multi-disciplinary
approach, incorporating both her child development and psychological training, her academic
achievements and her experiences with young children.

Later, she was involved in a research project in Cambridge that focused on the experiences of
children as evacuees, and their carers, at the outbreak of war (1939). The publication of this
research, The Cambridge Evacuation Survey (1941), served to inform policy and practice, and
enhances our understanding of transition and attachments, which continues to be relevant to multi-
disciplinary work with children and families today.

There has been criticism of Isaacs’ work. The Malting House School was not set within a mainstream
context, being independent and catered for. Its children were generally healthy and advantaged by
wealth and ability. The pupils were predominantly boys. This can be viewed as unrepresentative of
mainstream educational practice. However, it must be remembered that there was no policy of
‘education for all’ at the time.

Isaacs had a well-resourced environment at the school, which enabled children to use real equipment
and tools for their discoveries and curiosity. There was an emphasis on free movement and
interaction between indoors and outdoors, allowing children to learn about nature, living creatures
and environmental processes. The equipment and resources were all child-sized and readily
accessible for the children to use and maximise their interests and quality of play.
Influence of Isaacs

Her ideas about the promotion of young children learning through play and child-led experiences
were influenced by Friedrich Froebel. John Dewey’s philosophy of social learning and collaboration
also informed her thinking and ideas. The contribution of psychoanalytic theories is also evident,
especially in her perceptions of children’s emotional and social selves.

Isaacs constructed a curriculum that was child-centred, which meant that the children’s interests were
the signposts for their development and learning. The role of the educator was to follow the interests
of the children and support the social interactions and relationships required by the children for their
learning process.

She was clearly interested in holistic development and argued that play was the ‘work of children’
and the way in which they could develop holistically. In addition, the children were trusted to
construct their own learning, with the adults supporting through listening and taking part in
conversations, showing respect and allowing the children to feel safe and secure in the knowledge
that they could take risks and learn through their discoveries and rehearsals of trial and error.

Observation leads to understanding children

Isaacs’ writing, about the observation of children, was predominately based on the Malting House
School period. These were later published in The Intellectual Growth in young Children (1930)
and Social Development in Young children (1933).

She was able to demonstrate the important and helpful way that observations of children in the
nursery setting, when recorded in detail, inform early years practice and allow practitioners to
understand child development from a child-perspective rather than as a fixed measure.

Isaacs demonstrated through her lectures and publications that observations enable practitioners to
interpret behaviour and understand children’s interests more accurately than other forms of
measurement, and argued that children’s development came through their personal experience as
opposed to being simply a fixed stage in development.

Piaget visited her in the mid-1920s, a trip that she reciprocated, and through their dialogues Isaacs
was able to articulate her criticisms of Piaget’s stage theory approach. She believed that social
relations and the inner emotional life of the child were influential in learning, to a far greater extent
than Piaget had acknowledged.

Key arguments

Isaacs argued that the inner emotional life of the child was part of their intellectual growth – this is
discussed in her writings – recognising that intellectual and emotional development are
interdependent.

She argued that all practitioners working with children should be trained and educated about the
importance of observation and child development.

The curriculum should be child-centred, should enable curiosity and follow children’s interests. Self-
initiated play and experiential learning are essential for optimum child development. Isaacs
encouraged all early years practitioners to observe and reflect upon how they relate to young
children: ‘With continuous support from adult justice and adult love, little children can carry on
sustained cooperative pursuits, but their ability to do so seems to rest heavily upon this binding force
of the love and approval of adults.’