Peer-reviewed article
Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Education
Meghan Lettington ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This literature review examines how developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) in early childhood education affect children's social and emotional development. DAP guidelines were created over 30 years ago and remain a topic of discussion among educators, administrators, and policymakers. The review draws on scholarly articles and reliable sources to understand the relationship between DAP implementation and young children's social-emotional outcomes.
Key points
- DAP guidelines have been subject to ongoing debate in the early childhood education field for over three decades
- The review focuses specifically on the impact of DAP on social-emotional awareness in young children
- The work synthesizes evidence from scholarly articles and reliable sources
Limitations
The document is a metadata and abstract only, providing no actual findings, data, or conclusions from the literature review itself. We cannot assess what the review found about the effectiveness of DAP or specific evidence about social-emotional outcomes.
Abstract
This literature review explores the impact developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) have on social emotional awareness in early childhood education. Guidelines for DAP were developed over 30 years ago and have been greatly debated amongst early childhood educators, administration, and policymakers ever since. This literature review consists of scholarly based articles and information from reliable sources to take a detailed look at how developmentally appropriate practices impact early childhood education and social emotional development of young children.