Creating%20Developmentally%20Appropriate%20Classrooms

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Creating Developmentally AppropriateClassrooms
Chapter Ten

• The Importance of Age and Developmental Status

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Rationale for Developmentally Appropriate Practice

• ?Developmentally appropriate practice (DAP)
  involves providing learning environments,
  instructional content, and pedagogical practices
  that are responsive to the major attributes and
  salient needs and interests of a given life
  period in order to facilitate continuing
  developmental progress

Continued
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• Developmentally appropriate practices result from
  decisions about the education and well-being of
  children based on three important kinds of
  knowledge
• ?What is known about child development and
  learning
• ?What is known about the strengths, interests,
  and needs of each individual child
• ?What is known about the social and cultural
  contexts in which children live

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Barriers to Developmentally Appropriate Practice

• According to the NAEYC, the goal of early
  childhood education, helping each child be
  ready to learn when he or she enters school,
  has not been fully realized.
• Economic goals for schooling place pressures on
  schools to teach more and more cognitive material
  to younger and younger children.

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Developmentally Appropriate Practice and Early
Childhood Education

• Early childhood education seeks to advocate for
  the nurturing of young children as a necessary
  means to achieve the democratic goals of a just
  society.
• In some ways it acts in opposition to strictly
  economic goals for education.

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Theoretical Basis for Developmentally Appropriate
Practice

• Universal theories
• Cognitive developmental theory (Jean Piaget)
• Psychosocial development (Erik Erikson)

• Particularist theories
• Constructivist theory (Lev Vygotsky)
• Cognitive development (Jerome Bruner)

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Constructivist Thought in Developmentally
Appropriate Practice

• Children of all ages are understood to be active
  constructors of their own knowledge.
• Concepts and perceptual development are enhanced
  through wide experiences with people, materials,
  and events.
• Curriculum is expected to provide multiple
  opportunities for direct and concrete engagement.

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The Idea of Cognitive Structures

• The term structure refers to the concepts, ideas,
  and understandings that children construct
  through transactions with their social and
  physical environment.
• Knowledge is made by the knower, who
  assimilates new experiences within knowledge
  structures already present, and accommodates to
  experiences that do not fit neatly into those
  structures.

Continued
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• Motivation to learn comes from the fact that
  childrens cognitive structures are constantly
  challenged.
• The need to understand provides the impetus for
  acquiring new knowledge.
• This need to understand is internal.
• The teachers task is to provide a match between
  what the child is ready to learn and what is
  available to the child to learn.

Continued
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• The constructivist view differs from the
  traditional view of readiness by emphasizing that
  cognitive readiness is not determined simply by
  biological maturation.
• Rather, readiness also depends on the
  transactional nature of the childs environment.
• At any point in time, a child is ready to learn
  if learning experiences are at an optimal level
  of novelty or incongruity.

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Characteristics of a Developmentally Appropriate
Classroom

• Constructivist ideas gained scientific support
  and integrity in the 20th century through the
  work of Piaget, Vygotsky, and Bruner.
• The work of both Vygotsky and Bruner placed
  greater emphasis on the social-cultural context
  of children than did the work of Piaget.

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Pedagogies Old and New

• Historical antecedents
• Comenius in the 17th century
• Rousseau in the 18th century
• Pestalozzi and Parker in the 19th century
• Dewey in the 20th century

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Child-Centered Instruction

• Use of small group organization
• Use of activity centers
• Project-based learning
• Provision for student choice
• Joint teacher-student planning of learning
  activities
• Integration of content

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Roles Old and New

• Teachers work in collaboration with students,
  other teachers, and other adults.
• The goal is to support the learning and
  development of all children.
• Teachers need to know as much as possible about
  each childlearning styles, interests,
  preferences, personality, temperament, skills and
  talents, challenges and difficulties.

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Place of Content Knowledge Old and New

• Early childhood education is concerned with the
  process of learning and its effect on child
  development.
• Knowledge acquisition is seen as necessary for
  the child to reconcile incongruities and solve
  problems thus students may learn different
  things from the same lesson.
• Early literacy learning involves playing with
  language.
• Deductive reasoning, basic to mathematical
  understanding, is an inherent capability of young
  children.

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Assessment Old and New

• Screening and assessment should never be used to
  close educational doors to children, but to open
  them.
• Observation of children in natural activity
  contexts is an important factor in assessment.
• Also important is looking at collections of
  childrens work and maintaining ongoing
  communication with parents.

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Perspectives on Age and Development

• School experiences profoundly influence and are
  influenced by peoples development as human
  beings.
• Development refers to systematic changes in the
  individual that occur from birth to death.
• What implications does this have for schooling?

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Sensitive Periods and Developmental Crises

• Sensitive periods are points in development when
  children learn readily.
• Childhood sensitive periods depend, in part, on
  the life history of the child and on the childs
  experiences in school
• Adolescence a period of physiological,
  emotional, and cognitive change
• Ego identity, or the development of ones sense
  of self, is a lifetime enterprise.

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Individual Differences and Developmental Domains

• Individual differences may be related to
  biological, psychological, social, and cultural
  factors.
• The nature vs. nurture debate is ongoing and
  refers to the question of whether differences are
  innate or learned they are probably both.

Continued
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• Developmental domains refers to aspects of
  development that progress more-or-less at the
  same time, if not at the same rate
• Motor development
• Cognitive development
• Language/communication development
• Social/emotional development

Continued
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• Milestones (e.g., first words, independent
  walking) and transitions from one stage to
  another can be influenced by many factors
• Gender
• Geography (e.g., climate)
• Genetics
• Specific environment
• Differential cultural values and expectations
• Disabilities

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The Importance of Developmental Knowledge

• Necessary for effective use of developmentally
  appropriate practice
• Necessary in order to take individual variations
  into account
• Especially important in inclusion classrooms

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Examples of Cultural Variations

• Values, such as the notion of independence
• Ideas of what constitutes childhood
• Expectations for the proper time to acquire
  specific knowledge (e.g., knowledge of sexuality)

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Something to Think About

• Much of the story of human development must be
  written in light of cultural influences in
  general and of the particular persons, practices,
  and paraphernalia of ones culture. And chief
  among these, of course, in any complex culture,
  will be such educational institutions as
  apprenticeships or formal schools.