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Montessori, Steiner, Froebel, Piaget... These aren't the foreign players in a football team, but some of the theorists that have helped to shape how we think about early years education. And as I've been asked about each of them in the past week or so, I can only presume that our students have once more been asked to find out about them.

The College holds a number of book titles which are useful in researching this area, but if you'd like to dig a little deeper than there are some high-quality internet resources available. Probably the most useful is the Thinkers on Education series from the International Bureau of Education, a collection of articles which takes an in-depth look at the life and work of over 120 individuals. A similar list of key theorists is available from the PSI cafe website, which provides links to further reading about various thinkers; sadly it appears that the site is no longer being maintained, although enough of the links are still working to make it worth a look.

Two further sources of interest are infed - a free encyclopaedia of "informal education" - and a useful list of links to child development theories provided by the North Coast Institute in Australia.