The development of neural circuits involves a diverse array of endogenous and exogenous signals, including both spontaneous and environmentally driven neural activity. Early seminal experiments illustrated the remarkable sensory-driven plasticity of the developing visual system, and later studies have established that activity is not just permissive but plays an instructive role in the formation of visual circuits. Evidence suggests that neurons can learn about the spatiotemporal properties of the visual environment by utilising temporally asymmetric Hebbian learning algorithms, such as spike-timing dependent plasticity. However, it is not known how developing systems control the statistical properties of their activity in order to ensure that features in the environment are translated into functional properties of their circuits. I will describe results from a series of experiments using in vivo recordings in the optic tectum of Xenopus laevis embryos during early stages of development. These show that the receptive field of tectal neurons can be “trained” by repeatedly presenting a visual stimulus and that the resulting changes reflect the spatiotemporal properties of the training stimulus. At these stages of development, tectal neurons are establishing their synaptic connections with presynaptic glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons. I will present evidence that local GABAergic circuits are critical for sensory-driven plasticity. When GABAergic transmission in the tectum is disrupted, the instructive effect of the visual input upon receptive fields is eliminated. This elimination of instructive learning is linked to changes in spike-timing patterns because when GABAergic inputs are blocked, there is a substantial increase in the spike-timing correlations between tectal cells and greater potential for tectal-tectal synaptic plasticity. In support of this, instructive learning is eliminated when spike-time correlations between tectal neurons are artificially increased by electrical stimulation and the relative timing of synaptic inputs to tectal cells is consistent with this role for GABAergic signaling. Rather than decreasing the variance in spike-timing, as they do in many adults systems, early GABAergic circuits in the optic tectum enhance spatiotemporal differences in spiking patterns and minimise correlations that may be introduced via recurrent excitation. This may provide a mechanism to ensure that receptive field changes are primarily instructed by the statistics of the visual environment.