Term Paper on "Early Childhood Education the Onset"

Term Paper 5 pages (1855 words) Sources: 0

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Early Childhood Education

The onset of early childhood education encompasses the formative moment of a child's first social experience coping with people and settings outside of the family. Nursery, Preschool, and Kindergarten environments are the home to a child's most nascent external social development, when their peer interaction increases, play becomes cooperative and social, and individually initiated friendships are formed. Psychologists, parents, and educators stress the developmental importance of play at this stage, when a child's relationship to play structures physical, social, intellectual, and emotional growth.

Because of the importance of treating whole development, early childhood curriculum must be structured around play as an educational tool, incorporating physical, dramatic, and celebratory play in both structured and unstructured settings.

At the heart of educational structure is an understanding and incorporation of the natural development of a child. "Child development research and theory can help educators understand what young children can know," writes educational scholar Bernard Spodek. "What children need to know is determined by what society thinks is important; Kindergartens have taught children various things at different times." As competing concerns conceptualize the structure of early childhood education, the bombardment of varied ideologies cycle between developmental curriculums, child-centered and content-centered debates, and en vogue theories of the moment. Despite the constant cycle in focus and emphasis in classroom theory, the reality of play in a child's life and as an actuality in the classroom is unfettered.<br />

Allen and Marotz, in their psychological analysis of child development, examined the importance of developmental continuities between children that limn the conversational for curricular structure. "Development," they write, "although different for every child, does follow a fairly predictable path or course of progression." As children develop from the gross and fine motor skills to greater interaction, their non-linear development exists in a continuous, cumulative, and integrated process. The pattern and sequence of development does, however, provide for a range of normalcy that allows for both precious success and non-noteworthy failures. They say that social growth, which is area oriented into speech and language, cognitive, social and behavioral, fine motor, gross motor, self-help, sensory, health, and psychological phases, is discontinuous, and interrupted by moments of disequilibrium. As such, with early childhood development addressing the child in its most nascent social stage, the educator has to prepare for children in a variety of stages, transitions, and movements, and plan therein; involving children in educational social play not only addresses the children in individual manners, but it provides an outlet for accessing each child in his or her own stage.

The ideology of early childhood education is "supporting children's personal development, with education following development... supporting children's learning and is concerned with teaching content." Historical purposes of early childhood curriculum were to teach children philosophical idealism, learning about Man, God, and Nature through activities and materials symbolic of unity. Since the introduction of kindergarten in the American educational system, developmentalists like G. Stanley Hall and Edward L. Thorndike redesigned the curriculum to teach children "proper habits" for adults behavior; psychoanylists brought a new wave of theory to the table. Despite leadership incentive and current educational trends, play remained very important in the quotidian existence of early childhood education as it rose to popularity.

The romantic ideology of cultural transmission reflected the wor of Rousseau, Frobel, Gesell, and Feud, but ignored the needs of behaviorism addressed by progressive trends. Piaget introduced a construction of education for the young child that addressed not only the child's developmental stage, but also the educational needs of that child and how natural activities, like play, might further the role of the teacher.

Such work gave rise to the guidelines established in Develomentally Appropriate Practices (Bredekamp, 1986) issued by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. However, in proposing these guidelines a basic new question is posed: What does the early childhood teacher teach and how well is it taught?

In China, and hyper-structured schools elsewhere, young learners in preschool and kindergarten have twenty to twenty-five-minute lessons every day in which they remain focused and attentive, and after which pursue related activities. There, the process of early childhood curricula develops a socialization to the school environment, where younger children are baited with more interesting lessons than their elders but are structured in a similar situation. Rote learning, shunned by most American educators, serves a purpose of detracting child from play, contrastingly embraced by psychologists and teachers here.

The early childhood education forum is the home of a child's first connection to other people in their own right, mixing increased independence with the fragility of developing relationships. Early childhood contexts should use play to foster feelings of confidence, self-esteem, and security, particularly through exploration. Play not only furthers these causes, but also provides a mechanism for learning to follow rules, respect others' needs and feelings, and function cooperatively with shared resources.

Examination of early childhood curriculums in a linear New England study provides insight to the child's interaction to the education system through play. Children, who spent their mornings in structured play activities meant to teach academic lessons, were allowed free play only after the assigned activities had been successfully completed. Children were interviewed about their perception of class and their classroom situations and asked to describe their activities as work or play. "These categories seemed distinct and separate in their minds." As if explaining the obvious, one interviewed child said, "when you work, it's not playing."

The children described most of their classroom days as work-related activities. Each child approached the activities from a distinct perspective, some calling one activity play that another called work; researchers correlated the relations to a child's individual interests. "Work" included painting paier-mache sculptures, linstening to stories, completing math worksheets, baking banana bread, and even resting at their desks. However, "play" activities agreed on by nearly all included building with blocks, listening to records, painting pictures, and playing a math game. Researchers were further surprised to learn that the same children might describe coloring a picture on one morning as play and as work the next day. From an adult perspective, most of those activities are play, but the structured activities from a child's perspective largely constituted work. Play was summarily individually chosen, executed without deadline, and meant for the youth-explicit purpose of fun.

Early childhood play fosters the mastery of self-management skills. Decision-making, goal-setting, and planning through interaction with peers and school community members. Physical movement activities, like dance and structured skill development - learning how to play a specific sport in a large group or succeed at hopscotch in a small-group setting - combines free and structured play to monitor physical activity in the daily life in a way that incorporates other children for reliance and success. Physical games promote a shared focus, listening to others, taking turns, and responding to clear instructions, which promote greater social interaction outside of the game.

Dramatic play was first encouraged by Piaget and soon followed in support by Vygotsky and Bruern. Through pretend, dress-up, the archetypal tea parties and cowboy and Indian games, children become active explorers of their world. Formal dance exercises and theatrical instruction as well as musical engagement allow for a child to discover multiple meanings to simple things, something important to their understanding of multi-faceted characters in their external social fabrics. Dramatic play in all forms - symbolic, pretend, or imaginative - allows children to assume different identities, not only exploring ideas for their own self-creation, but understand the choices, feelings, and decisions of others. The integration of dramatic play into the classroom ensures an early exposure to empathy, understanding, and compassion.

Unstructured play is as vital to the curriculum for social development as social play. At the preschool and kindergarten ages, many children still lack the social skills to initiate joining others' play. As a child approaches others, they face both acceptance and rejection, and those playing are presented with the opportunity include and exclude. While children work out quickly the structures of society with simple remarks, "Can I play too?" And "No!," a child is given the opportunity to explore dealing with difficult peer situations. Faced with the problem of joining, a child problem solves to find out how to join a group, either by asking or self-inclusion. Should a child be rejected, he or she must choose how to navigate the social atmosphere; find another active group?, turn to solitary play?, or perhaps, confront the authority figure, or teacher, and seek assistance in achieving a social goal?

Play can also serve to further a child's connection to the society to which he or she belongs. Spodek and others have studied the phenomenon of culturally specific early education environments, common in the United States. Across the board, children use play to not only acquaint themselves with the holidays celebrated in school, like Columbus Day, Thanksgiving, and Valentine's, helping children to "relate to American history and traditions." These celebrations, explicit forums for serendipitous play, develop a sense of social belonging to the spectrum… READ MORE

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