Early Childhood Education

Tags: early childhood learning and early education, Infant Education, Early Childhood Care and Education ECCE,

Programs Related to early Childhood Education

1. Montessori
2. Reggio Emilia approach

From Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_childhood_education

Early Childhood Education/ Early Childhood Learning and Early Education

• Definition
  • Refers to the formal teaching of young children by people outside the family or in settings outside the home.
  • 2 Definitions of early childhood
    • Most Nations: before the age of normal schooling – five years
    • U.S. National Association for the Education of Young Children: before the age of eight.
• What is it about?
  • Early childhood education focuses on childrens learning through play, based on the research and philosophy of Jean Piaget. This belief is centered on the "power of play". It has been thought that children learn more efficiently and gain more knowledge through play-based activities such as dramatic play, art, and social games. This theory plays stems children's natural curiosity and tendencies to "make believe", mixing in educational lessons.[1]
    • Preschool education and kindergarten
      • emphasize learning around the ages of 3–6 years. The terms "day care" and "child care" do not convey the educational aspects, although many childcare centers use more educational approaches.[citation needed] The distinction between childcare centers and kindergartens has all but disappeared in countries that require staff in different early childhood facilities to have a teaching qualification.
    • Parent's Influence
      • Researchers and early childhood educators both view the parents as an integral part of the early childhood education process.[2] Often educators refer to parents as the child's "first and best teacher".
      • It is very important for parents to stay engaged in their child's learning process, even if they are getting most of their education from a daycare, day home, school etc. The knowledge learned from a parent will be more cherished and remembered by a child then if any other person taught them, especially at an early age. Early childhood education is crucial to child development and should be entered into cautiously with someone you trust will help benefit your child.
    • Children
      • Much of the first two years of a child's life is spent in the creation of a child's first "sense of self"; most children are able to differentiate between themselves and others by their second year. This is a crucial part of the child's ability to determine how they should function in relation to other people.[3] Early care must emphasize links to family, home culture, and home language by uniquely caring for each child.[according to whom?]
      • Children who lack sufficient nurturing, nutrition, interaction with a parent or caregiver, and stimulus during this crucial period may be left with developmental deficits, as has been reported in Russian and Romanian orphanages.[4] Children must receive attention and affection to develop in a healthy manner. There is a false belief that more hours of formal education for a very young child confers greater benefits than a balance between formal education and family time. A systematic, international review suggests that the benefits of early childhood education come from the experience of participation; more than 2.5 hours a day does not greatly add to child development outcomes, especially when it detracts from other experiences and family contact.[5]
• How to Approach Early Childhood Education via Theory and Practice
  • The Developmental Interaction Approach
    • based on the theories of Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, John Dewey, and Lucy Sprague Mitchell. The approach aims to involve children in acquiring competence via learning through discovery.[6][7][8]
    • There are five developmental domains of childhood development- -Physical -Social -Emotional -Language Development -Cognitive Skills
      • Physical This section refers to how well your child is developing physically. You should keep an eye on their eyesight and how their motor skills are developing; they should be able to do small crafts and puzzles.
      • Social This section refers to the connections they've made with people and how well they are interacting with them.
      • Emotional This section refers to the emotional connections and amount of self-confidence they have.
      • Language Development This section refers to how well they communicate with people. Also how they represent their feelings and emotions.
      • Cognitive Skills This section refers to how the child lives in their everyday environment and how they solve everyday problems.
  • Global Perspective
    • first World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education took place in Moscow from 27 to 29 September 2010, jointly organized by UNESCO and the city of Moscow. The overarching goals of the are to:
      • Reaffirm ECCE as a right of all children and as the basis for development
      • Take stock of the progress of Member States towards achieving the Education for All EFA Goal 1
      • Identify binding constraints toward making the intended equitable expansion of access to quality ECCE services
      • Establish, more concretely, benchmarks and targets for the EFA Goal 1 toward 2015 and beyond
      • Identify key enablers that should facilitate Member States to reach the established targets
      • Promote global exchange of good practices[12]
  • Michigan Experiment
    • Example in Ypsilanti, Michigan, 3- and 4-year-olds from low-income families who were randomly assigned to a group that did not receive preschool education were five times more likely to have become chronic lawbreakers by age 18 than those who did receive it.[9] low-income individuals who were enrolled in a quality preschool program earned on average, by age 40, $5500 per year more than those who were not.[10] Furthermore, the study found that low-income people who were in preschool programs as a child are more likely to graduate from high school, own homes, and have longer marriages. Another study, The Abecedarian Project, shows that low-income children in quality preschool programs are less likely to repeat grades, need special education, or get into future trouble with the law.[11]

Infant Education

• Definition
  • The education of children before they would normally enter school.
  • Typical Definition: children between the ages of 1 month and 12 months.
  • Some countries/states e.g. United Kingdom: an infant school caters for the earlier years of primary or elementary education for children aged between four and seven years of age.
    • children are separated into age groups, teaching the youngest in a separate building from the older pupils. Belief that education at pre-school ages can significantly affect a person's ability to deal successfully with later life. Some studies supporting this point of view are detailed below.
      • "Why Does Infant Attention Predict Adolescent Intelligence?" by Sigman, Cohen, and Beckwith. This study found that speaking often to children between the ages of 8 and 24 months of age could significantly improve intelligence later in life. It appears in volume 20 (1997) of the journal Infant Behavior and Development.
      • A report by Rose and Feldman, August 1997 edition of Child Development suggests that visual recognition skills and tactile-visual skills at ages 7 to 12 months are a significant indicator of later IQ scores.
      • Visual stimulus and response time as early as 3 months is an indicator of verbal and performance IQ at age 4 years: Dougherty and Haith of the University of Denver, "Infant Expectations and Reaction Time as Predictors of Childhood Speed of Processing and IQ", published in volume 33 (1997) of the journal Developmental Psychology.
      • Otitis media (a condition that affects hearing) significantly impacts the advancement of infants. "The Effect of Otitis Media with Effusion (ie., with fluid accumulation) on Infants' Detection of Sound" by Lynne Werner and Jeffrey Ward from the University of Washington, Infant Behavior and Development, 20 (2), 1997.
      • Robert Titzer, of Southeastern Louisiana University, reported on a longitudinal case study in which an infant who was exposed to an interactive video involving words was able to visually recognize more than 100 words by 12 months of age and more than 500 words by age 15 months.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensatory_education

Compensatory Education

Compensatory education offers supplementary programs or services designed to help children at risk of cognitive impairment and low educational achievement succeed.[1][2]

Who are at Risk?

Impact of Poverty on Children.

Poor children do worse in school than their well-off peers.

They are more likely to experience learning disabilities and developmental delays.[3], scoring between 6 and 13 points lower on various standardized tests of IQ, verbal ability, and achievement.[4]

Poverty also has a negative impact on high-school graduation [5] and college attendance.[6]

Children raised by a single parent, children who have more than two siblings, children by teenaged parents and children raised in poverty-stricken neighbourhoods are also at risk of low academic achievement.[7]

How to Help them?

American programs of compensary education are Head Start, the Chicago Child-Parent Center Program, High/Scope, Abecedarian Early Intervention Project, SMART (Start Making a Reader Today), the Milwaukee Project and the 21st Century Community Learning Center.

Germany and Great Britain Early Excellence Centres are widely discussed programs of compensatory education. Not all of that programs have been proven to be effective. However scientist were able to identify social programmes that work.[8]Among these are the High/Scope Perry Preschool Project,[9][10][11] the Abecedarian Project,[12][13][14][15][16] and SMART.[17][18]

Jensenism

What is it?

The theory that IQ is largely determined by genes, including racial heritage.[19]

Named for psychologist Arthur Jensen, the term came into use amid debates surrounding the publication of his controversial 1969 paper, "How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?".[20] The paper begins, "Compensatory education has been tried and apparently has failed," and concludes the educational achievement gaps persist because genetic based differences in IQ predominate socioeconomically based inequalities in education.[20][21]

In their controversial book The Bell Curve, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray put forth the same opinion. The book has been both criticised and supported by scientists.

1. Katy Independent School district: Compensatory Education

2 Garber, Howard L. (1988): Milwaukee Project: Preventing Mental Retardation in Children at Risk

3 FPG Snapshot; No. 42, April 2007 - Poverty and Early Childhood Intervention. [1]

4 The Future of Children, Children and Poverty Vol. 7, No. 2 – Summer/Fall 1997 [2]

5 Duncan, G.J., Yeung, W., Brooks-Gunn, J., and Smith, J.R. How much does childhood poverty affect the life chances of children? American Sociological Review, in press.

6 FPG Snapshot; No. 42, April 2007 - Poverty and Early Childhood Intervention. [3]

7 Hans Weiß: Frühförderung mit Kindern und Familien in Armutslagen. München/Basel: Ernst Reinhardt Verlag. ISBN 3-497-01539-3

8 Social Programs that work

9 Lawrence J. Schweinhart, Helen V. Barnes, and David P. Weikart. Significant Benefits: The High/Scope Perry Preschool Study Through Age 27 (High/Scope Press, 1993)

10 Lawrence J. Schweinhart, PhD. The High/Scope Perry Preschool Study Through Age 40: Summary, Conclusions, and Frequently Asked Questions (High/Scope Press 2004)

11 Perry Preschool Project (High-quality preschool for children from disadvantaged backgrounds)

12 Campbell, Frances A., Craig T. Ramey, Elizabeth Pungello, Joseph Sparling, and Shari Miller-Johnson. “Early Childhood Education: Young Adult Outcomes From the Abecedarian Project,” Applied Developmental Science, 2002, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 42-57

13 Leonard N. Masse and W. Steven Barnett, A Benefit-Cost Analysis of the Abecedarian Early Childhood Intervention, New Brunswick, N.J.: National Institute for Early Education Research, 2002 [4]

14 Campbell, Frances A., Elizabeth Pungello, Shari Miller-Johnson, Margaret Burchinal, and Craig T. Ramey. “The Development of Cognitive and Academic Abilities: Growth Curves From an Early Childhood Educational Experiment,” Developmental Psychology, 2001, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 231-242

15 Abecedarian Project (High-quality child care/preschool for children from disadvantaged backgrounds)

16 FPG Snapshot; No. 42, April 2007 - Poverty and Early Childhood Intervention. [5]

17 Baker, Scott, Russell Gersten and Thomas Keating. When less may be more: A 2-year longitudinal evaluation of a volunteer tutoring program requiring minimal training. Reading Research Quarterly, Volume 35, Number 4; Oct-Dec. 2000.

18 Social programs that work: SMART - Start Making a Reader Today (Volunteer tutoring program for at-risk readers in early elementary school)

19 "Jensenism". Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary. United States of America: Barnes and Noble Books. 1996. p. 1026. ISBN 0-7607-0288-8.

20 Edson, Lee (August 31, 1969). "jensenism, n. The theory that I.Q. is largely determined by the genes". New York Times.

21 Jensen A R. "How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?" Harvard Educ. Rev. 39:1-123, 1969

Resources and References

• 2004 Jun UNESCO Policy Brief on Early Childhood - Ministerial Collaboration in Early Childhood Training in Singapore ://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001374/137413e.pdf
• 2004 Sep UNESCO Policy Brief on Early Childhood - Curriculum in Early Childhood Education and Care http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001374/137401e.pdf