Lev Vygotsky believed that language was the most significant milestone in a children’s cognitive development. He believed that what a child learns comes from the culture around him, that the difference of what the child can do on his own, and what he can do with help is due to the zone of proximal development (ZPD). The ZPD is the ranges of potential children have for learning, with their learning being shaped by the social environment in which it takes place. The role of the teacher aids in the child’s development through scaffolding, or the adjustable support that is offered in response to the child’s level of performance.

Howard Gardner viewed intelligence as "the capacity to solve problems or to fashion products that are valued in one or more cultural setting" (Gardner & Hatch, 1989). He created the concept of multiple intelligences that proposes that one form of intelligence is not better than another, that all eight are equally valuable and viable, which include:

Verbal - Linguistic Intelligence: The ability to use language and words continues throughout childhood. Children who are accomplished in this intelligence enjoy:

Logical-Mathematical Intelligence: The ability to categorize and to use numbers, patterns, sequencing, and cause and effect to solve problems.

Musical – Rhythmic Intelligence: The awareness of noises and rhythms.

Visual - Spatial intelligence: The ability to discriminate the faces around the infant. Creating visual images with shape, color, and form opens up new understanding

Bodily - Kinesthetic Intelligence: Self-exploration develops through information gained from muscles, sensations, reflexes, coordination, and movement

Interpersonal intelligence: The ability to understand other people and their actions, moods, and feelings

Intrapersonal intelligence: Ability to understand oneself, to appreciate one's feelings, fears, and motivations.

Naturalist Intelligence: Interest in seeing, smelling, and touching nature and the natural world

Early childhood education refers to the programs and settings that serve young children from birth to eight years of age. The number of young children enrolled in early education is on the rise and it is important that during these years, a child’s physical, intellectual, emotional, and social growth be supported within the home, childcare facility, school, and community. It is important that the philosophy of developmentally appropriate practices is recognized. Developmentally appropriate practice happens when the curriculum planning philosophy expressed by the NAEYC recognizes that each child learns and develops differently in physical, intellectual, cultural, emotional, and social growth.

Development is defined as systematic and adaptive changes in the body and mind based on sequence and patterns of growth and maturity.

The early months of infancy are crucial in creating a foundation for all areas of development. Infants learn about their surrounding by physically moving around, through sensory exploration, and by social interaction. Emotional attachment develops as the child learns to expect that special person to make him feel valued. The teacher also has a significant responsibility to the infant in their care.

A child in the second year of life grows and learns rapidly. This is a time of mobility, autonomy, and self-help skills. Children at this age love to repeat new skills that they use over and over again. They learn a great deal through imitation and from observing demonstrations accompanied by verbal explanation. Appropriate teaching techniques require the building of trust between the child and the teacher.

Three-year-olds are anxious to try new things and tend to get frustrated when they cannot do what they set out to do. They are more talkative and although they can play with others, they tend to find cooperating with others more difficult.

Four-year-olds are full of energy and they have an increase in large and small muscle control, which allows them to develop a greater sense of self-confidence. They love to learn new things and are eager to learn.

Five-year-olds are becoming more social, tend to experiment with language, have more self-control, and are more explorative, which is important to their development.

During this age group, the body growth is slower and steadier. Their motor coordination begins to improve. They can think and learn in more complicated ways and language and communication development in these years is dramatic. They are becoming more independent and are extremely curious about their environment.

The teacher should support a positive sense of self-identity in each child. It is important for a teacher to provide many opportunities for teacher-child interaction. Teachers should include the parents in the program; this will encourage their support and provide the teacher more insight into the child. Another way that teachers can gather data about the child is through observations.

Cultural context in the development and learning of young children is important for the early childhood educator to recognize. Social contexts shape children’s development and to affirm these differences and similarities. The early education environment should encourage the exploration of gender, racial and cultural identity, developmental abilities, and disabilities. To eliminate bias and create an anti-bias atmosphere the teacher needs to actively challenge prejudice and stereotyping. A child needs to be appreciated by the teacher and other significant adults.

It is important that the teacher understands the intrinsic quality of creativity. Creativity within the child should be encouraged as an opportunity to be expressed and that it is genuinely valued. Creativity is the process of doing, of bringing something new and imaginative into being.

Play is the core of developmentally appropriate practice; play is a behavior that is self-motivated, freely chosen, process-oriented, and enjoyable. Play allows the child to create, invent, discover, and learn about their world.

Unoccupied behavior usually occurs during infancy and early toddlerhood. A child occupies himself by watching anything. Sometimes they appear to not be playing at all.

Onlooker play: This stage involves watching other children, but not becoming directly involved in play or interaction with these other children.

Solitary play: This play involves voluntary playing with one's own toys near other children.

Parallel play: This stage involves independent play in close proximity to peers.

Associative play: This play involves the engagement of a group of children in a mutual activity, although there is not a common goal.

Cooperative play: This stage of play involves a division of labor among children in order to reach a common goal. This is perhaps the most difficult area in which to achieve a truly inclusive model for play. Cooperation in play is an achievement in itself among young children, and often the challenge of cooperative play may cause children to become absorbed to the point that they are not aware of the need for including all peers in the task.

Symbolic or dramatic play: Dramatic play includes role-playing, puppetry, and fantasy play. It does not require interaction with another. Socio-dramatic play is dramatic play with the additional component of social interaction with either a peer or teacher (Mayesky, 1988; Smilansky, 1968). Creative dramatics involves spontaneous, creative play. It is structured and incorporates the problem solving skills of planning and evaluation. Children frequently reenact a scene or a story. Planning and evaluating occurs in creative dramatics (Chambers, 1970, 1977).

Teachers have a responsibility to help children develop in their use of play. Play can be a valuable means of gauging a child’s developmental progress.

Planning and scheduling are important in early education classrooms. As teachers of young children, consider the following: long-range planning includes setting up goals and objectives. Goals and objectives should involve developmentally, individually, culturally, and creatively appropriate practices.

The schedule and routine component of planning can help create a framework of security for young children. All early childhood programs include basic timelines, curricula, and activities that form the framework of the daily schedule. The secret of classroom management is getting the children used to routines. A schedule (See Figures 1-5, 1-6, and 1-7) should be comprised of:

Remember that routines are teachable moments.

It is the teacher’s responsibility to keep the lines of communication open to families. Success in the education of young children is built on the teamwork of the teacher and family, because families are the primary educators of their own children. The learning process that teachers and parents always face in the educational experience is a two-way street. Teachers should always take into account the child’s culture and living environment and also recognize special circumstances of a child and her family.

Things to take into consideration while reading this chapter are:

• Curriculum is child-centered or child-initiated
• Curriculum provides for all areas of a child’s development
• Curriculum encourages children to learn by doing
• Curriculum includes appropriate supports and services for children with special needs
• Curriculum promotes opportunities to support each child’s diverse cultural and linguistic heritage
• Curriculum invites creativity
• Curriculum facilitates physical activity and play
• Curriculum involves reciprocal relationships between teachers and families

Process of Curriculum Development

Curriculum building is an ongoing process that through the selection of themes, projects, integrated curriculum areas, equipment, and materials should be based on sound child developmental theories. When building your curriculum take into consideration the developmental and cultural needs and interest of the children in your classroom.

Dr. Maria Montessori started her program to meet the needs of the impoverished children of Italy. According to her philosophy, children learn best in a child-sized environment that is stimulating and inviting for their absorbent minds. She believed that children learn through hands-on activities, that this is a critical time for brain development, and that parents should be partners in their children’s education.

Head Start programs are the largest publicly funded educational program for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. They require parent participation and provide developmental services to children. They also provide a low child-staff ratio.

Lucy Sprague Mitchell looked at education in a different way by developing a type of educational experience for all children, which focused on child-centered learning. She used developmental interaction method to foster all aspects of a child’s development. The teachers arrange the classroom environment into distinct learning centers such as math, science, art, dramatic play, and music. Teachers and children learn from each other.

David Weikert started this program for low-income and at-risk children. Today the program serves a full range of children, adapting to the special needs and conditions of their group, their setting, and their community. The program supports active learning, which is their central belief for all age levels. It emphasizes that children learn best through active experiences with people, materials, events, and ideas. This program is influenced by Piaget and Vygotsky’s theories of cognition and social interaction.

Named after a city in Italy by the local parents and created after World War II, Reggio Emilia School’s philosophy is based on the feeling that children must have some control over the direction of their learning. Children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, seeing, and hearing. It also believes that children have a relationship with other children and with material items in the world. These children must be allowed to explore and have ways and opportunities to express themselves. (See Figure 2-2)

Exploring gender, culture, race/ethnicity, and differences offers opportunities to develop new insights about yourself and the children in your care. Exploring your feelings about individuals who differ from you culturally, racially, or with special needs is another step in the anti-bias curriculum development process.

The Anti-Bias Curriculum was developed to offer helpful guidelines, activities, and materials that create an early education environment rich in possibilities for valuing differences and similarities.

One must learn their beliefs of their culture, that children are born with rules that are represented by their culture, and the child brings their culture into the groups with which they associate and interact.

Culture is the sum total of a child’s or family’s ways of living and their values or beliefs, language, patterns of thinking, appearance, and behavior. A multicultural/ anti-bias curriculum is one that actively challenges prejudices and stereotyping and represents an opportunity for the development of mutual respect.

The following guidelines can help provide a developmentally appropriate, multicultural, anti-bias, environment for young children:

Children with learning, behavioral, or physical disabilities are now included in early childhood classrooms. Inclusion efforts reflect the blending of practices from early childhood education and early childhood special education.

A written individualized family services plan that identifies the needs and goals of the young child and their family must be developed for children aged birth to three in an early childhood setting.

An individualized education plan is a legal document that must be written for a child with special needs over the age of three and his family, specifying learning objectives that are part of regular classroom activities and routines. They must include:

To manage in an early education setting, one must understand child development. The environment represents all the conditions and surroundings affecting the children and adults in an early childhood setting. The role of the teacher in a classroom is having the ability to think about and react to many things at once. Setting limits means security for young children and the rules should be kept simple, few in number, and clear and reasonable for the age of the child. A teacher must be empathetic, patient, and understanding to help calm the distraught child.

Arranging appropriate indoor and outdoor areas in an early education program is significant to curriculum development. Teachers and children spend many hours in the classroom and on the playground.

The indoor learning environment should make the child feel like they are cared about. Learning centers are curriculum centers that are well-defined areas, where materials and supplies are combined around special groupings and common activities. The following learning centers are suggested for early education classrooms and outdoor areas:

These centers involve hands on experiences with a variety of materials. The placement of the centers is important for balancing the number of noisy and quiet activities. Remember to keep in mind the children’s ages and development when creating these centers.

Developing the curriculum for the outdoor environment in a way that parallels the indoor environment is essential. As part of learning, children explore and test the environment, and so the playground, like the indoor classroom, must have limits, such as fences. Safety should always be the first priority with adequate supervision to keep an eye open for safety. Outdoor play is an essential part of the overall primary grade curriculum and recess may be the only opportunity for some children to engage in social interactions.

Indoor equipment and supplies should be developmentally appropriate for the children in the classroom. Since many activities can and will be done on the floor, the floor covering should be childproof. In the outdoor environment, play structures should be lower and wider for young children. The materials should emphasize safety, durability, and age appropriateness for all children. The teacher should always think of creating new ways to bring the indoor activities outdoors.

The core of the curriculum development is the teacher’s capability to integrate the child’s needs, interests, and abilities with the teacher’s conceptual plan for implementing goals and objectives. Thematic curriculum is one that focuses on one topic or theme at a time. This allows the teacher to tie in the major content areas. A theme is a broad concept or topic that enables the development of a lesson plan and the activities that fit within this curriculum plan, a unit is a section of the curriculum based on the unifying theme around which activities are planned. The basic concepts of developing thematic curriculum are:

Projects are an in-depth investigation of a topic that is worth learning about. Projects usually involve children applying skills, asking questions, making decisions and choices, and assuming responsibility. The first phase of a project is to choose a topic, and then you should investigate and develop the topic, when the project reaches its maximum point, end the project.

A lesson plan is an outgrowth of theme, selection, brainstorming, and selection of projects. Think about the following when creating a lesson plan:

Make sure to utilize an activity plan.

Transitions are activities that move children from one activity to another; you should implement a transition active to direct children from:

Assessment refers to the collection of information or data collection on young children through observation and recordkeeping of what they do and how they do it as a basis for making educational decisions.

Evaluation is the process of demining if the philosophy, goals, and objectives of the early childhood program have been met.

Observation is the process of observing various aspects of an early childhood program by taking in information and interpreting it for meaning.

An anecdotal record is a brief, informal narrative account describing an incident of a child’s behavior that is important to the observer.

Checklist is a record of direct observation that involves selecting from a previously prepared list the statement that best describes the behavior observed.

Reflective Log or Dairy is a teacher or administrator’s record of the most significant happenings.

A case study is a way of collecting and organizing all of the information gathered from various sources to provide insights into the behavior of the child being studied.

Portfolio Assessment is an evaluation method based on a systematic collection of information about a child and the child’s work gathered by both the child and the teacher over time from all available sources.