A good start in pondering how you think children are motivated to understand themselves, other people and want to make a better world is to remember what mattered to you as a child.
When I was seven years old, I was in top infants with the Froebel-trained Miss Joyce Greaves. I paid tribute to her in a chapter I was invited to write for a millennium book edited by Lesley Abbott and Helen Moylett in 2000 (republished in Bruce 2020).
This is an extract from my tribute to her: ‘The appreciation young children feel for the rest of their lives towards those adults who have contributed in a major way to how they feel about themselves as learners is rarely spoken. It is an abstract, intuitive thing which they take with them through their lives. And yet, it anchors them forever, and it is sometimes called having a sense of well-being… Good teachers help you to learn the things you find hardest in ways which are right for you.’
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