Week 6: Current Challenge in the Education for Young Children Course: Teaching Methods in the Education for Young Children

Two Curriculum Models Direct Instruction Model Children are passive learner. The model is based on learning/behaviorist theories. Teachers’ role is instructor. The model uses tests for the assessment of children’s achievement. Child-Centered Model Children are active learner. The model is based on developmental/constructivist theories. Teachers’ role is guide. The model uses performance or portfolio for the assessment of children’s achievement.

Two Curriculum Models Direct Instruction Model Based on learning theories Aim to increase children’s academic skills and subject knowledge Teachers transmit subject content knowledge Use of standardized assessments is possible Hard to maintain children’s interest in learning Child-Centered Model Based on developmental theories Children are active participants and architects in their learning. Weakness: lack of (reliable) specific data or criteria describing children’s achievement Project Approach, Reggio Emilia

What is DAP(Developmentally Appropriate Practice)? Knowledge of age-related characteristics permits general predictions about what experiences are likely to best promote children’s learning and development. What teachers learn about each child has implications for how best to adapt and be responsive to that individual variation. The values, expectations, and behavioral and linguistic conventions shape children’s lives at home and in their communities that teachers must strive to understand in order to ensure that learning experiences in the program are meaningful, relevant, and respectful for each child and family.

DAP Principles All the domains of development and learning-physical, social and emotional, and cognitive-are important and they are closely interrelated. Many aspects of children’s learning and development follow well documented sequences, with later abilities, skills, and knowledge building on those already acquired. Development and learning proceed at varying rates from child to child, as well as at uneven rates across different areas of a child’s individual functioning. (normal range of variation) Development and learning result from a dynamic and continuous interaction of biological maturation and experience.

How Do Children Learn Best? Relationships with responsive parents and teachers Active, hands-on participation Meaningful experiences appropriate for their age Opportunities to construct their understanding of the world optimally through play

Debate on Two Curriculum Models First, you and your partner discuss strengths and weaknesses of each model. Then, let’s split into two groups. One group becomes an advocate of a direct instruction model while the other supports a child-centered model. Two groups now start debating on these two models.

Process vs. Content Anti-intellectual vs. Intellectual, high standards, and moral guidance

Strengthening Content Learning It is not enough to depend on children’s self- directed activities in the centers as the sole source of content acquisition. It is necessary to provide time for children to process new information gained from teacher- directed activities through their own individual lens. Teachers need to identify the key ideas in the main subject areas: science, mathematics, social studies, and language and literacy.

The Importance of Teachers’ Content Knowledge While explicit teaching of the concept is not appropriate, the structure of the experiences and the teacher’s facilitation is guided by her understanding of the concepts and how children learn them. Her questions, comments, and probes draw the children’s attention to the concept. In the study of snails, the children were interested in lots of things—whether snails liked each other, how they had babies, how they got in their shells. The teacher can pick up on one of those interests and a basic characteristic of animal behavior and adaptation—how they move. This kind of teacher guidance and facilitation is based in each teacher’s understanding of the concepts behind the children’s work and enables her to encourage children to notice and reflect on key aspects of the phenomenon they are exploring.

Teaching Roles Leading: A teacher transmits a large amount of social and content knowledge through modeling, demonstrating, explaining, and directing. Introduces new knowledge and guides practice. Seeding: (putting learning in their way) Setting up the classroom, organizing materials for use by children, providing materials in a timely manner in order to stimulate further activity without direct instruction, and observing what happens. Feeding: feeding information(content knowledge) by engaging in authentic conversations that pick up on children’s ideas and feelings (by offering language and fostering development of understanding by raising questions).

“Teachable” Moments Teachable moments offer prime opportunities for feeding. These moments occur when children are in the midst of discovering, experimenting, and solving problems in activities of their own choosing. Teachers’ involvement can include: (1) a momentary contribution, such as adding information or providing language labels; (2) validating strategies a child is using; or (3) an interaction that elicits children’s thinking or reactions, helping them to clarify a problem to be solved.

Dewey “Experience and Education” John Dewey believed that schooling was often arid, pedantic, and detached from the real lives of children. Progressive education movement: developing children’s intimate relationship with the subject matter through the problem-solving, or inquiry-based approach

The Quality of Experience 1.Agreeable/exciting/enjoyable or disagreeable 2.Its influence upon later experiences (Every experience lives on in further experiences): The central problem of an education based upon experience is to select the kind of present experiences that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences.

The Importance of on Experience Discussion encourages children to think about what they have experienced, listen to the experiences of others, and think over their ideas. Similarly, representation using a variety of media—including drawing, writing, and collage— encourages children to observe closely and think over their experiences over time as well as build vocabulary and language structures.