Observing children during their familiar routines and activities can be the basis for accurate assessment. However, children are often missed in early childhood systems when they have a delay because of barriers with the Child Find system and ineffective practices used to assess children. Infants, toddlers, and preschoolers with special needs will benefit from early detection of developmental delays so that timely services for the child and their family can begin as soon as possible. The objectives of this chapter are to share effective practices for: (a) early identification of risk, delay, and disability, (b) rationale and purposes of authentic assessment, and (c) operational features of authentic assessment used for early identification of developmental delays.
This paper aims to assess and estimate parental investment in children in four activities: education, health, leisure and nurture. The author first analyzes constructed composite scores and observed similarity for parental investment in health and differences in the other activities but the investment level is little enough. The author next provides new empirical evidence to shed light on the relationship between the level of parental investment and characteristics of the child, the mother and the household. Using Poisson and Negative Binominal regression models on household micro-data, the author finds good investment level in health but weak in education and almost unawareness of leisure and recreation. The education is linked to mothers' attitude and the household lifestyle is slightly valuable for the Center-Eastern area and the capital city. On the contrary, nurture activity is not linked to the lifestyle and exhibit regional differences. Moreover, households in the East of the country are more investing then those in the west.
The ancient Indian teaching-learning system was propelled by the Guru-Shishya parampara. It is a comprehensive system that provides learners with value-based learning, wide knowledge, and life skills. Moreover, pedagogical innovation is seen as a critical component of high-quality teaching, and it has garnered international attention. During the last several decades, several legal frameworks have arisen to accommodate the evolving demands of diverse instructional approaches in early childhood education. National strategy 2020 is a significant endeavor to integrate the conventional system with modern technologies in order to control the teaching and learning process. Early childhood education 4.0 integrates value-added student experiences, innovation, teaching and learning approaches, and more with the use of new technology. This study begins to explore innovative teaching and learning pedagogies in early childhood education, as well as their viability as we move towards early childhood education 4.0.
Physical education in early years makes a unique contribution to the learning experience of children and support physical, cognitive, and social development. Teacher plays an essential role, but early childhood teacher professional development remains unclear. Literature review has shown that it is influenced by individual and social factors. Teacher professional development may have an impact on student motor development in this stage. The objectives of this chapter were to study early childhood teachers' professional development in PE and to analyze the influence and impact of early childhood teachers' professional development on their students' motor development. This chapter describes the results and conclusions of two different studies which have been developed. They highlighted that the variables that affect professional development are initial training and professional development, external perception of physical education, and personal perspective. Furthermore, findings have revealed that these three variables condition their students' motor development most.
Cristina Honrubia Montesinos, Pedro Gil-Madrona, Luisa Losada-Puente
Metacognition is an important skill not only for school but also for life. Although earlier literature underestimated young children’s metacognitive competencies, recent research reported that between the ages of 3 and 7, there is a qualitative rapid development in metacognition, and children can show evidence for metacognition as young as 3 years old. In this sense, some practices can be employed to reduce the potential discrepancies among children and the impacts of previous scarce experiences. Those pertain to initiating social interactions with family members and peers for other- and shared-regulation, delivering instruction encompassing metacognitive interactions, and using the language of thinking during those interactions. Moreover, children should be presented with biologically valid, relevant, meaningful, contextualized, structured, familiar, and interesting tasks in an environment bearing perceptual cues to support metacognitive engagement and provoke positive emotions such as the feeling of success or motivation. Regarding recent technological developments, e-learning opportunities can also be employed. While these practices can enhance metacognition in children, assessment can be done via think-aloud, observations, interviews, questionnaires, and naturalistic tasks. Assessment should also serve to understand metacognition opportunities in an environment to calibrate children’s competencies. Finally, assessment practices should include peer- and self-assessment to support children’s independence and authenticity.
This study aims to describe the smart teaching of kindergarten teachers in teaching literacy. Smart teaching literacy is the ability of teachers to teach literacy. The problems found in literacy teaching are related to the ability to recognize the alphabet, write the alphabet, and read. This research is qualitative research using observation and in-depth interviews and documentation. The data analysis techniques used are data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion drawn. The results of this study show that smart teaching carried out by kindergarten teachers in teaching literacy as a means of exploration, experimentation, and self-expression for children uses various types of media used in smart teaching, including digital media, namely through the Kids Academy application. Smart teaching literacy is expected to have open and effective communication, involve parents, create a positive environment, and provide rewards and consequences to children.
Ensuring access to high-quality programs and services can improve children’s long-term health and education outcomes and reduce inequities in health, income, and education in the population. The professional well-being of those working in the early childhood education sector has been negatively associated with levels of turnover, which in turn can impact program quality more broadly. Considering the variability of professionals working in the field of early childhood, it is important to better understand how their experiences influence their professional well-being. This study aims to address this gap, through a mixed methods exploration of survey responses to items on an Early Childhood Professional Well-Being questionnaire. We conducted both an Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) on 27 items and also a conventional content analysis of one open-response item and then compared and contrasted results to create a fulsome illustration of patterns of early childhood professional well-being. The LPA revealed five distinct profiles of professional well-being: highest well-being, generally high well-being, active agency, comfortable well-being, and low wellbeing. Years of experience and newcomer status had a relationship to profile membership, with more years of experience associated with higher professional well-being and newcomer status with lower or medium levels of well-being. Our content analysis revealed mostly negative perspectives regarding professional well-being, most often due to various, overlapping external factors. Greater understanding of profile membership and what may impact it as well as the larger external systems that affect early childhood professionals will help to inform policy supports for professional well-being of specific individuals, thereby promoting professional wellbeing and, in turn, overall program quality.
This article focuses on the national policy framework for early childhood education (birth to 5 years) in England – the Early Years Foundation Stage, specifically the use of child development theories as the underpinning knowledge base for practice. The aim is to understand what constructions of learning and development are foregrounded in policy, and their implications for curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Critical Discourse Analysis methods are used to expose learning and development as messy constructs, and to propose three arguments. First, the evidence base for the Early Years Foundation Stage relies on selective appropriation of child development theories, and findings from government-funded research. These sustain normative discourses, reflecting a Piagetian ontology of ‘development leads learning’, through which children become ‘knowable’ and ‘measurable’. Second, the Early Years Foundation Stage shifts from developmental processes to learning outcomes as the basis for constructing curriculum, assessment of children’s outcomes and school readiness. Third, the Early Years Foundation Stage constitutes a discursive regime, which influences how practitioners must fulfil performance criteria that serve multiple purposes of assessing outcomes, evaluating standards and defining ‘quality’. From a critical perspective, this analysis questions the efficacy of the Early Years Foundation Stage in addressing the problems of equity and inclusion in diverse societies. The Early Years Foundation Stage exemplifies the policy technologies that can be discerned in international contexts, through which specific forms of curriculum coherence and control are produced. An alternative ‘learning leading development’ onto-epistemology is proposed, which offers potential for challenging the (il)logic of the Early Years Foundation Stage.
Abstract In contrast to the huge amount of research in music and music education that deals with intrapersonal, environmental, and developmental processes, research on the natural abilities that typify giftedness is far less represented in the research literature. To encourage further interrogation of this area, this chapter discusses the role of natural abilities that are evident to a greater or lesser degree in all children after birth. These natural abilities, evident from birth, develop further in the early years of life and beyond through maturation and informal exercise, even though they are, to a certain extent, partially controlled by genetic influences. Natural abilities fit into four mental processes (intellectual, creative, social, and perceptual), and two physical abilities (muscular and motor control). These abilities help us understand the types of early indicators and predispositions evident during infancy that subsequently shape a child’s potential to engage with music in a more meaningful way.
The purpose of this chapter is to highlight importance of training Early Childhood Development (ECD) practitioners to ensure safety of learners in ECD centres, known as ECE in other countries. Several government departments have established policies to ensure effective implementation of health and safety practices in ECD centres. The problem with ECD policy implementation seems to be minimal training and support of practitioners and caregivers focusing on health and safety issues in ECD centres. Policy cannot always mandate what matters to outcomes at ECD centres because individual practices ought to be central to local responses. ECD policies in South Africa provide guidelines that direct the day-to-day practices of ECD practitioners. However, health and safety of young children appears to be in the hands of untrained practitioners and caregivers. Furthermore, ECD policy implementation reveals an uncertain relationship between policies and program implementation.
