Developmental Education For Young Children

Developmental Education is an approach to education in school that aims at promoting children’s cultural development and their abilities to participate autonomously and well-informed in the cultural practices of their community. From the point of view of Cultural-historical Activity theory (CHAT), a play-based curriculum has been developed over the past decades for primary school, which presents activity contexts for pupils in the classroom that create learning and teaching opportunities for helping pupils with appropriating cultural knowledge, skills, and moral understandings in meaningful ways. The approach is implemented in numerous Dutch primary schools classrooms with the explicit intention to support the learning of both pupils and teachers. The book focuses especially on education of young children (4 – 8 years old) in primary school and presents the underpinning concepts of this approach, and chapters on examples of good practices in a variety of subject matter areas, such as literacy (vocabulary acquisition, reading, writing), mathematics, and arts. Successful implementation of Developmental Education in the classroom strongly depends on dynamic assessment and continuous observations of young pupils’ development. Strategies for implementation of both the teaching practices and assessment strategies are discussed in detail in the book.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

Historical anthropology is a revision of the German philosophical anthropology under the influences of the French historical school of Annales and the Anglo-Saxon cultural anthropology. Cultural-historical psychology is a school of thought which emerged in the context of the Soviet revolution and deeply affected the disciplines of psychology and education in the 20th century. This book draws on these two schools to advance current scholarship in child and youth development and education. It also enters in dialogue with other relational approaches and suggests alternatives to mainstream western developmental theories and educational practices. This book emphasizes communication and semiotic processes as well as the use of artifacts, pictures and technologies in education and childhood development, placing a special focus on active subjectivity, historicity and performativity. Within this theoretical framework, contributors from Europe and the U.S. highlight the dynamic and creative aspects of school, family and community practices and the dramatic aspects of child development in our changing educational institutions. They also use a series of original empirical studies to introduce different research methodologies and complement theoretical analyses in an attempt to find innovative ways to translate cultural-historical and historical anthropological theory and research into a thorough understanding of emerging phenomena in school and after-school education of ethnic minorities, gender-sensitive education, and educational and family policy. Divided into two main parts, “Culture, History and Child Development”, and “Gender, Performativity and Educational Practice”, this book is useful for anyone in the fields of cultural-historical research, educational science, educational and developmental psychology, psychological anthropology, and childhood and youth studies.

This book continues a tradition of offering future teachers of children ages 2 to 5 a complete, developmental approach to early childhood education...giving them the specific skills they need to function effectively with the children in their care. This popular book is unique in that it combines a practical, realistic approach with a firm foundation in pertinent research topics. Rather than stressing such curriculum topics as art or science, this book focusses on the whole child and what he/she needs from the learning environment in order to thrive. It pictures the child as being made up of selves - emotional, social, physical, creative, and cognitive...examines each of those selves in turn...and recommends methods and materials for enhancing growth in each area. Includes a new chapter on the emergent approach to fostering cognitive skills.

The long-awaited new edition of NAEYC's book Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs is here, fully revised and updated! Since the first edition in 1987, it has been an essential resource for the early childhood education field. Early childhood educators have a professional responsibility to plan and implement intentional, developmentally appropriate learning experiences that promote the social and emotional development, physical development and health, cognitive development, and general learning competencies of each child served. But what is developmentally appropriate practice (DAP)? DAP is a framework designed to promote young children's optimal learning and development through a strengths-based approach to joyful, engaged learning. As educators make decisions to support each child's learning and development, they consider what they know about (1) commonality in children's development and learning, (2) each child as an individual (within the context of their family and community), and (3) everything discernible about the social and cultural contexts for each child, each educator, and the program as a whole. This latest edition of the book is fully revised to underscore the critical role social and cultural contexts play in child development and learning, including new research about implicit bias and teachers' own context and consideration of advances in neuroscience. Educators implement developmentally appropriate practice by recognizing the many assets all young children bring to the early learning program as individuals and as members of families and communities. They also develop an awareness of their own context. Building on each child's strengths, educators design and implement learning settings to help each child achieve their full potential across all domains of development and across all content areas.

Written in a warm, engaging style, this text embraces the emergent approach to fostering cognitive skills in children from birth through age five. It provides a complete developmental approach to early childhood education, giving teachers the specific skills they need to teach the whole child-emotionally, socially, physically, creatively and cognitively. The author believes that physical and emotional health are fundamental to the well-being of children and provides practical methods and materials that address the entire individual, not just curriculum topics. A strength of the book is while it focuses on the five developmental selves of children, it places them in the context of contemporary family life and the multicultural world of today. - Thoroughly updated with current research and expanded topics - Over 100 new citations and references, updated statistics, and new or expanded topics. education with new discussions on advocacy, child abuse and neglect, outdoor play, multiple intelligences, asthma, and many more - Increased coverage of Diversity - Incorporates content on infant and toddler education and care throughout. - Material on the Reggio Emilia approach - Offered throughout the text wherever its strategies are appropriate and effective - Three types of review questions featured in each chapter - 1) Content - related, 2) Integrative, and 3) Diversity - Annotated updated references at the end of each chapter includes Pick of the Litter features to denote citations that are particularly interesting. - Hundreds of references classified by type in one of the most extensive bibliographies of any text in the field.

Understand the important milestones of development in children in five developmental domains: physical and motor, social and emotional, communication and language, cognitive, and approaches to learning. Learn strategies to observe and document children's progress and develop partnerships and establish communication with families. Updated for alignment with state standards.

This book introduces current theories and research on disability, and builds on the premise that disability has to be understood from the dialectical dynamics of biology, psychology, and culture over time. Based on the newest empirical research on children with disabilities, the book overcomes the limitations of the medical and social models of disability by arguing for a dialectical biopsychosocial model. The proposed model builds on Vygotsky’s cultural-historical ideas of developmental incongruence, implying that the disability emerges from the misfit between individual abilities and the cultural-historical activity settings in which the child with impairments participates. The book is a theoretical contribution to an updated understanding of disability from a psychological and educational perspective. It focuses on the first years of the life of the child with impairment, and travels through infancy, toddler, preschool and early school age, to track the developmental trajectories of disability through the dialectical processes of cultural, social, individual, and biological processes. It discusses a number of themes that are relevant for the early development and support for children with various types and degrees of disability through the lens of Vygotsky’s cultural-historical developmental theories. Some of the themes discussed are inclusion, mental health, communication, aids and family life.