Learning & Development

Shiyu Wang I think state standards in early childhood serve as a necessary, even essential, guidance for early childhood educators and caretakers to understand more comprehensively about the processes of learning and development in young children, as well as to assist them in considering ways that would promote children’s development, provide children meaningful and authentic life experiences, and guide them to become good and informed citizens. State standards might be more important at this level of human development because they contribute to creating a more children-based, understanding environment that promotes children’s natural development and prepares them for the challenges in life later on. However, the implementation of state standards might be tricky because, as also mentioned in the “Basic Concepts” reading, the zeitgeist of calling for accountability and overemphasizing the benefits of uniform standards and education may mislead people to adhere to standards while neglecting the individual differences in development or misunderstanding the initial purposes of these standards.

Shiyu Wang The reading “Basic Concepts” explores the state standards on children’s conceptual development as reflected in curriculum arrangements and performance expectations, whereas the NAEYC’s position statement provides a broader picture that encompasses multiple aspects of children’s learning and development, including physical, social, emotional, intellectual, artistic, and academic development. The position statement emphasizes the significance of developing developmentally appropriate and meaningful content and practices, as well as highlights the necessity of expertise and collaborations among multiple stakeholders when creating, implementing, and evaluating standards of effective early learning and education. In addition, both readings share similar views of the benefits that the more uniform perspectives and consistent standards regarding children’s learning and development will have on ensuring high quality early childhood education practices. While the NAEYC’s position statement provides rich details of what it means to use developmentally appropriate practices and to maintain the standards in a more comprehensive and consistent way, from the review of basic concepts in state standards we can see that there are still different perspectives of states as to which concepts are more elaborated and valued than others.

Shiyu Wang The comparison of state standards revealed that almost all the states have or are developing standards based on children’s learning and development, but focused mostly on academic achievements and curriculum content. The standards have fewer details and less common standards regarding children’s social and emotional development. These results show that although we start to be attentive to different domains of children’s development, we still tend to consider academic achievement and intellectual development the most when we think about early childhood education and development, and that we still need a more in-depth understanding of how to integrate multiple aspects of development into constructing academic content, implementing and evaluating curriculum.

If Casey were a student in my classroom I would want to work with her on her letters and sounds. I would probably use letter cards and have her identify the letter and the sound it makes. I would also want to work on her following directions. I would try to give her prompts to get her to follow through on what is asked of her. I would also want to give her more opportunities to practice large motor skills like hopping. I would also want to gather more information on her and her skills and abilities and identify specific things that she needs more help with.

I would want to know more about her academic development and what knowledge she has of things like numbers, shapes, and quantity. I would also want to know more about her letter knowledge as she did not know what letter or sound her name started with. I could find this information by asking her questions that probed her knowledge of these concepts. I would also want to observe her in more physical activities to see if she has trouble with other large motor skills that are similar to hopping. I would also want to observe more of her social interactions and the language she uses.

 Academic – Casey has developed knowledge of animals and their sounds. Casey is able to sing the alphabet song, but does not know the sound or letter her name starts with. She shows knowledge of colors when she points out that her friend has blue socks.

What are some things you would do next if Casey were a student in your classroom? According to the observations, there are several occasions when the teacher seemed to ask Casey to do the appropriate behaviors but did not follow up after the child’s action (such as telling Casey to hang the lunchbox but did not respond after Casey failed to aim the hook and the lunchbox fell down, or telling Casey to put the books back but did not follow up and acknowledge what Casey did). If I were Casey’s teacher, I would focus more on acknowledging and complimenting her appropriate behaviors by saying explicitly what she did right, and pay more attention to what Casey does after I give her instructions. As for academic curriculum, I would pay more attention on matching the letter sounds with the letter pronunciations (such as “what sound does b make?”). I would use small group instructions and choose some children who have acquired more knowledge of letter sounds to engage in the group activity with Casey so that she would have chances to engage in observational learning. I would probably use a token economy at first to increase motivations to learn, but later on embed letter sound games during transition periods to do a recap of what the children have learnt.

What other information would you want to know before making a plan for Casey? How would you find that information? I would like to know more about Casey’s concept development in other areas such time/sequence, number, quantity, etc. I would also like to know more about her interactions with peers and teachers during small group and large group time. I would like to know more about what Casey’s interested in, good at, and not very good at, as well as what learning activities that the class has throughout the day to promote her learning. It would be helpful to also see situations where she is upset or throws a tantrum, and to see how she processes those emotions and what the teachers would do in those situations.

I think the role of state standards in early childhood education is to specify what children should be achieving in all areas of their development (academic, social, emotional, physical, creative, and intellectual). State standards give teachers an idea of what children should be able to do at each level. Standards for quality of care are more important at this level because the early care children receive influence all aspects of their development and determine how successful they will be later on.