1) Discuss some of the historical figures that shaped the field of Early Childhood Education. How were they influential with the education of young children or education, in general? 2) Discuss the educational movements that contributed to the field of early childhood education (kindergarten, nursery school and progressive education).
What impact did they have with the education of young children? What were some of the issues with some of these educational movements? 3) Discuss the evolvement of the High/Scope model and the developmental-interactional approach (DIA). How have they contributed to the field of early education today? 4) Discuss the three European approaches and their significance in the field of early education. How do they support the development of toddlers and young children?1) The concept of childhood and treatment of children through history has always been tied to economic, religious, and social factors. During the 20th century, the view of early childhood as an important part of human development was valued. The below mentioned historical figures have influenced the early childhood education system in the following ways: John Amos Comenius(1592-1670) was a bishop in Czechoslovakia, who supported the idea of universal education. He understood and stressed the importance of the early years and emphasized the value of active learning, hands-on experiences, and the involvement of parents in their children’s education.
His 1658 publication “The World of Pictures” is viewed as the first picture book for children. He believed that teachers should work with the natural order of child development. http://www.tostepharmd.
net/hissoc/top100events.htmlJohn Locke (1632-1704) was an English doctor and philosopher. He believed that children were born tabla rasa, like a blank slate and the child’s experiences would determine what a he would become. He said that education should be pleasant. The school systems should get rid of harsh discipline and restrictive practices (like swaddling).
He understood that, children are gradually filled with ideas, concepts, and knowledge from experiences in the world. He concluded that the quality of early experiences, particularly how children are raised and educated, shapes the direction of a child’s life. Jean Jacques Rousseau(1712-1778) was a French philosopher who claimed that children at birth are innately good and not evil and their natural tendencies should be protected against the corrupting influences of the society. He also recognized that children’s way of thinking and learning is different than that of adults.Johann Pestalozzi(1746-1827) believed that all people, even the poorest, had the right to education as a way of helping them develop their moral and intellectual potential. He stressed on imparting education according to nature, which in turn is tied to experience and observation.
Johann understood the importance of mother-child relationship in children’s earliest experiences. He actually worked with children (unlike Rousseau), developing educational methods that we still use today. Friedrich Froebel(1782-1852) believed that nature and the child’s developing mind were connected. He also stressed that children are at different stages at different times.
Friedrich recognized the importance of play in early childhood education. According to him, play was a pure and natural mode of learning.Sigmund Freud(1856-1939) developed the theory and techniques of psychoanalysis. In the psychoanalytic view, early experiences shape one’s personality for an entire lifetime, and psychological problems in adulthood may have their origins in difficult or traumatic childhood experiences.John Dewey(1859-1952) is known as the father of progressive education.
In the late 1800’s, schools were very teacher-centered and subject-centered, not child-centered. There were harsh punishments and rote learning was the norm, literacy was taught through memorization and repetition. He developed a child-centered approach, where child was the focus of learning and the activities were built to suit the development and understanding of the childhood. Many of his principles and practices like nursery school, emphasis on play and parent education still influence the education system today.Maria Montessori(1870-1952) was a true feminist of her time, she was the first female doctor in Italy who worked with children with cognitive disabilities.
Maria thought that their problems were more educational than medical. She had an opportunity to prove herself when the government asked her to take charge of a children’s day nursery. Maria was very impressed with the great capacity of children to learn so much during the first years of life. She believed that all children have an absorbent mind, which can be compared to a sponge, absorbing information.
She also believed that if you expose their minds to appropriate learning experiences at appropriate developmental times, their minds will grow. Maria was the first to use the term prepared environment to describe the match of the right materials to the child’s stages of development, some of these are related to sensory discrimination (sorting by size, sound, shape, smell, etc) while others demonstrate that children learn through practical skills (polishing shoes, setting a table, etc)Jean Piaget (1896-1980) claimed that children construct new knowledge by applying their current knowledge structures to new experiences and modifying them accordingly. His perspective was called constructivism. He thought children were like other organisms in that they adapted to the environment around them. He was a biologist who believed that when something new presents itself, it doesn’t fit the old structure, so in order to return to equilibrium, adaptation takes place. He stressed that babies are only born with a few think index cards, but with experience, they create new cards and dividers to store their information.
Erik Erikson (1902-1994) his theory is psychological, which spans childhood and adulthood and focuses on specific social tasks that need to emerge for healthy development in each of the eight stages. Like Freud, he saw each stage defined by conflict, but he thought conflict was healthy and resulted in opportunity for personal growth.B.F Skinner was the most famous of Watson’s followers.
He has had an enormous effect on all aspects of education. He believed that behavioral modification is possible and the behavior can be changed or modified by manipulating the environment (socially and physically). He also emphasized that almost all behaviors are learned through experience and can be increased or decreased based on what “happens next” for example, if something pleasant consistently happens after a child engages in a specific behavior, he is likely to repeat the behavior.2) Friedrich Froebel was the creator of Kindergarten.
The name Kindergarten signifies both a garden for children, a location where they can observe and interact with nature, and also a garden of children, where they themselves can grow and develop in freedom from arbitrary political and social imperatives. Froebel believed that play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child's soul. In my opinion, Froebel’s approach to early childhood education changed the way education was viewed. It was the first practical and successful model of it’s kind that we use even today. Froebel stressed the importance of play and development and learning through play. Every early childhood education program can find it’s roots to this play based learning approach.
“It was a search for metaphysical unity, in which the potential growth to wholeness of the individual child within the natural world would fulfill an harmonious ideal within the mind of God. " Peter Weston in The Froebel Educational Institute: the Origins and History of the College. Source-http://froebelweb.orgMargaret MacMillan and Rachel McMillan were the first to develop a nursery school system. They developed the concept of the nurse-teacher and organized the child’s day around a flexible schedule, stressing the freedom of choice for children in activities and making the outdoors and freedom of expression an integral part of all daily activities. They proposed the idea of nurture in education to deal with the child’s complete development.
The use of sensory and perceptual-motor training, the recognition of the importance of the child’s imagination through self-expression experiences, teaching self-care skills, and the care of gardens and pets to teach responsibility, were the educational programs they supported. Their work for poor and underprivileged children helped to provide all young children with a head start in life.John Dewey, was a principal figure in the “Progressive Education Movement” from the 1880s to 1904, he set the tone for educational philosophy as well as concrete school reforms. Education according to Dewey is the “participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race” (Dewey, 1897, para.
1). As such, education should take into account that the student is a social being. The process begins at birth with the child unconsciously gaining knowledge and gradually developing their knowledge to share and partake in society. The educational process has two sides, the psychological and the sociological, with the psychological forming the basis. (Dewey, 1897). A child’s own instincts will help develop the material that is presented to them.
These instincts also form the basis of their knowledge with everything building upon it. This forms the basis of Dewey’s assumption that one cannot learn without motivation. The method of teaching is focused on the child’s powers and interests. If the child is thrown into a passive role as a student, absorbing information, the result is a waste of the child’s education. (Dewey, 1897). Information presented to the student will be transformed into new forms, images and symbols by the student so that they fit with their development and interests.
The development of this is natural.To repress this process and attempt to “substitute the adult for the child” (Dewey, 1897, para. 52) would weaken the intellectual curiosity of the child. However, it was soon realized that this system of education gives too much control in the hands of the child and therefore the teachers found that it was very difficult to control the classroom environment. It is argued that progressive education is anti-intellectual. Another common argument is that progressive education is based on feeling and not on content.
3) The High Scope model evolved from give-and-take among a team of people who had definite ideas about how to do things, but were open to new ideas and could integrate them into their thinking and practice. Piaget offered a conceptual structure around which an early childhood education model could be built, an explicit rationale for the preschool activities. Piaget offered the idea of the child as an active learner, an idea not only with intuitive appeal but also with strong roots in early childhood tradition dating back at least to Friedrich Froebel (1887) in the nineteenth century. Later, the work of psychologist and educator Lev Vygotsky (1934/1962) became the foundation for the High Scope teaching model, particularly the notion that development occurs within socio-cultural settings in which adults scaffold children’s learning.
. source: http://bfi.uchicago.eduThis method of teaching believes that much of the child's knowledge comes from personal interaction with ideas, direct experience with physical objects and events, and application of logical thinking to these experiences. The adult's role is largely to supply the context for these experiences, to help the child think about them logically, and, through observation, to understand the progress the child is making and scaffold further learning based on the child’s developmental level and interests.An important aspect of the High Scope model is the role of the teacher in interacting with the child.
Teachers in this model listen closely to what children plan and actively work with them to extend their activities to more challenging levels as appropriate. Adult questioning style is important. The adult emphasizes questions that seek information from the youngster that will help the adult participate.The teacher is a participant rather than an imparter of knowledge.
"Did you see that butterfly?" "May I touch the pizza, or is it too hot?" This questioning and conversation style permits free interaction between adults and children and models language for child-to- child interaction. This approach permits the teachers and the children to interact as thinkers and doers rather than in the traditional school roles of active teacher and passive pupil. All are sharing and learning as they work.The High Scope model's daily routine is made up of a plan-do-review sequence, group times and several additional elements.
The plan-do-review sequence is the central device in the model that permits children opportunities to express intentions about their activities while keeping the teacher intimately involved in the whole process.
