Early Childhood Development

Early Childhood Development

Introduction

Early childhood is a time of continual growth in all domains of development. The development of children in the preschool years is being guided by family members, childcare providers, and preschool teachers (Schultz 2003). At this point, there is no national system to oversee the learning environment of these young children. In turn, there is no systematic way of identifying young children who are at-risk for future school failure. Before the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), a small percentage of students were identified as qualifying for special education services. Currently, elementary schools across the United States are universally screening their students, identifying those that are possibly at-risk for school failure, providing interventions to those students, monitoring their progress and intensifying interventions as needed. This empirically based, systematic approach is defined in the Individuals with Disabilities Improvement Act (IDEA, 2004) as Response to Intervention (RTI). Research has shown that when targeted interventions are used that match the students? areas of weaknesses, there are improved educational outcomes and a reduction in the number of students requiring special education services.

Learning

Learning is a complex process that begins in infancy and occurs continually throughout development. Nearly everything infants and young children do involves learning, including walking, talking, managing social interactions, and, eventually, mastering early academic skills. Successful and optimal learning requires children to set goals, plan, and revise their behaviors as necessary. Once children have reached their goal, they must attempt increasingly challenging tasks in order to continue learning. When children try something that is new and challenging, however, they almost always make errors and must modify their behavior in order to reach their goal and learn the task at hand (Schultz 2003).

Thus, errors made in the context of a challenging task are integral to learning. The focus of the current work is on how to best characterize the significance of children's reaction to challenge and errors. It is well accepted that many factors influence children's learning, with their behavioral and emotional responses to challenge and error playing particularly important roles. Despite the fact that children's behavioral and emotional responses are both important factors to consider, researchers have separately examined these variables from two different approaches: achievement motivation research and self-evaluative emotion research.

Achievement motivation provides a framework for describing children's behavioral response to challenge, which then influences a variety of variables, such as preference for challenging tasks, persistence in the face of difficulty, school engagement, and, ultimately, achievement. Self-evaluative emotion researchers provide a framework for describing children's emotional responses to challenge (Schultz 2003). Similar to achievement motivation, children's self-evaluative emotions, particularly shame, have also been shown to be related to variables important for learning, including children's preference for challenging tasks, persistence, perceived competence, and academic achievement. Although researchers have examined achievement motivation and self-evaluative emotions independent of one another, behavioral and neuropsychological research has shown that these variables are not only related to learning, but are also related to one another and begin developing ...