INTERNATIONAL APPROACHES TO LEARNING

International Approaches to Learning

International Approaches to Learning

Introduction

How should 5-year-olds spend their day? Should taxpayers fund preschool play time? Should 4-year-olds be expected to name the letters of the alphabet? Should they be expected to count to 10 or 20? These questions reflect debates about the purposes and goals of early childhood education. The most influential organization addressing these concerns is the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), a professional association representing over 100,000 early childhood professionals. NAEYC's efforts have shaped how people think about the education of young children both in the United States and abroad (Raines & Johnston, 2003). The organization has influenced policy and practice by publishing position statements and research briefs designed to influence policy and legislation, by developing a gold-standard accreditation system for private and public child care centers and schools, and by providing professional development and literature for the early childhood community.

In 1997 the statement was revised and expanded, and it is currently undergoing a second revision.

NAEYC's advocacy has focused national attention on the need for quality early childhood education. Still, DAP is controversial. According to NAEYC, developmentally appropriate practice is an approach to early childhood education that employs “empirically based principles of child development and learning” (Bredekamp & Coppie, 1997, p. 9). Such a proposition seems inarguable. How can anyone dispute that the education of young children should be based on scientifically derived knowledge? But the matter is not so simple. The universal acceptance of DAP has faced significant challenges (Dickinson, 2002). DAP casts early childhood education as a dichotomy in which practice is either developmentally appropriate or inappropriate. Many in the early childhood field object to this dichotomized way of thinking about educating children. DAP is also plagued by definitional, empirical, and theoretical difficulties. These difficulties result in misunderstandings about and misapplications of DAP (Raines & Johnston, 2003). Unfortunately, most people who work with young children are not well-trained (Karp, 2006), so early childhood practitioners often lack the expertise to adapt DAP. Finally, many in the early childhood field argue that DAP reflects Caucasian, middle- and upper-class values and object to labeling other cultures' ways of raising children as inappropriate (Delpit, 1988; Lübeck, 1998; O'Brien, 1996).

This chapter discusses these challenges and makes recommendations for reconceptualizing early childhood best practice. NAEYC has responded to previous critiques by revising the position statement, which it intends to do every 10 years. Although regular revision is helpful, it is unlikely that everyone in NAEYC's broad sphere of influence will simultaneously revise their beliefs and practices. Despite many helpful changes in the 1997 revision, many of the ideas found in the 1987 statement (such as an age-based definition of DAP) still affect thinking about early childhood education. Thoughtful analysis of DAP must consider how the concept has been articulated and used from its inception. Therefore, this analysis considers DAP as a conceptual whole: as it is represented in both the 1987 and 1997 statements (and their accompanying documents) and how it is ...