Approaches to Early Childhood Education

Early childhood education (ECE) is a multisectorial and multidisciplinary field within education that embraces the challenges of complexity, diversity, and multiple perspectives. Early childhood education occurs in many different kinds of settings, is represented in many forms, and serves diverse populations. Guided by research and theory from a number of scholarly disciplines--including developmental psychology, cultural psychology, childhood studies, and psychological anthropology--as well as by history, philosophy, and teacher lore, early childhood education seeks to integrate and to utilize our best knowledge and ideas for understanding children and for finding ways of enhancing their development, learning, and well-being during the early years from birth to age 8. This book provides current information across a number of important areas within early childhood education: child growth and development, environment, curriculum-content planning and implementation, instruction and communication, assessment, professionalism and leadership, and families, communities, and cultures. This text meets the demands of educating children in an ever-inclusive, multicultural postmodern world. In this regard, early childhood professional educators must be "inclusionists" who can work with all children who are differently "abled," and they must be culturally nonmyopic in order to serve the great diversity of children and their families in a complex, fast-changing, and pluralistic global community. Early childhood education is a tapestry created by the energies of many different people, working with many different children and families in diverse neighborhoods, communities, and cultures. Weavers of this tapestry are all who have the thread of conviction and dedication to put into practice what they know and believe is the best for children. This book exposes the reader to a multitude of ideas and applications emanating from diverse historical, cultural, theoretical, and philosophical sources. A seminal question remains: "What concepts, realizations, insights, and ideas tied to early childhood educational practices are relevant for use in local, particular situations in today's world?" Readers are urged to judge for themselves what is meaningful to them as they strive to construct a composite, integrative view of the early childhood profession. In particular, how does one weave an understanding of current initiatives and challenges relevant to educating young children in these dynamic and turbulent times that are marked by distinct social and educational trends? Sociodemographic changes in the United States and globally, coupled with the ever-increasing numbers of children in poverty, children who are homeless, children of immigrants and migrant children, single-parent families, children living in "trial families," lesbi-gay families, and the globalization of childhood, have all presented new challenges to early childhood education. Teachers working with young children must constantly try to find the right balance between their need to make developmental demands on children and their need to show appreciation of individual expression. Educational trends in the early childhood area include a renewed call for effective curricula brought on by the public's growing awareness of low-quality child care in the United States and elsewhere, together with better appreciation of the importance of early social and cognitive stimulation spurred, in part, by early brain development research. There is heightened concern over curricula for English language learners, the academic performance of low-income children and children of color, and disproportionate numbers of children of color placed in remedial and special education classes in the United States. At the same time, as we achieve consensus on the importance of early education, more and more state governments are legislating, often without sufficient fiznding, univRoopnarine, Jaipaul L. is the author of 'Approaches to Early Childhood Education', published 2004 under ISBN 9780131408111 and ISBN 0131408119.