Early Childhood Development is an investment for life. But in countries where poverty, armed conflict, natural disasters, and HIV/AIDS threaten a child's family and community support structures, Early Childhood Development (ECD) programs seldom take priority.
Against such odds, many nations and communities—including some of the world's poorest—are committed to meeting the cognitive, social, emotional, and physical needs of their most vulnerable young children. The evidence is mounting: Increased global investment in children under 8 years of age today builds a better educated, prosperous, and peaceful citizenry tomorrow.
Children who participate in ECD programs, when compared with children who don't, are more likely to enroll in school, plan their families, become productive adults, and educate their own children. They are less likely to repeat a grade, drop out of school, or engage in criminal activities. Through interventions that engage young children, as well as their parents, caregivers, and communities, Save the Children's ECD programs ensure that young children survive and thrive—that they are physically and emotionally healthy and intellectually curious—and school readiness programs prepare them for school success.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
Children Educated at Home Don't Learn like they do in School
Robyn Williams: Bertrand Russell never went to school; it didn't appear to do him much harm either, as he still got to Trinity College Cambridge, revolutionised 20th century mathematics, won the Nobel Prize for Literature and did quite a bit for philosophy and politics as well.
Avoiding school was commonplace for the British aristocracy. But does it have a place in today's education? Alan Thomas has done a study on this question. He's Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Northern Territory in Darwin, and his results are quite surprising.
Alan Thomas: Education means schools and classrooms, and always has. Not any more. A growing number of parents now take their children's education into their own hands and teach them at home. Why do parents turn away from a freely available system of schooling and assume the huge responsibility of doing it themselves, usually without any training? For a variety of reasons: some have different educational philosophies, others because their children experience problems in school. Are they successful? By and large, yes. Sometimes, startling so. What about social development? Most parents go to great lengths to ensure their children don't miss out on having friends.
He said, study children educated at home because of the unique opportunity it gave me of looking into what for centuries has been assumed to be the very essence of good teaching: one-to-one dialogue between teacher and learner.
To get me started, I took up an invitation to spend a week "living in" with a home educating family. The experience was a complete eye opener for me, and started me off thinking about what I've come to call "The Child's Theory of Learning" which contrasts sharply with the way children are expected to learn in school.
What struck me most of all during that week was that nothing much seemed to happen, at least on the surface, especially when compared with the sense of purposeful industry you get when you look into a typical classroom. We went for walks; the two children, aged 11 and 13 certainly read a lot; they worked on their own projects; there were various outside activities - there was band practice; one of them was doing a project on infant development and was helping a neighbour with her new-born baby. There were friends around after school and there was a schools musical Eisteddfod which one of them took part in. But they didn't seem to be learning as children in school do, at least not as far as I could see.
Towards the end of the week, their mother saw I was a bit perplexed and said that they did do some maths and English exercises, adding with a smile that they were "just for the Inspector, in case he calls". She didn't think they were really part of home education because both she and the children hated them. There is no doubt these children were learning, though obviously not in the way I expected them to be. Both went on to study part-time at adult and further education classes, and successfully take public examinations.
But how did they learn if they didn't do much learning, at least in the school sense? They were certainly always busy. They read a great deal. Voracious reading seems to be a feature of home education. Perhaps they've simply got plenty of time to do it. They presumably learned a great deal from discussing their projects and other activities with their mother, who acted as a kind of mentor. This you might expect to be an advantage of home education, having a teacher on top as it were. And it was. But what struck me most was incidental conversation. Whether we were out walking, sitting around the kitchen table, engaged in some other activity such as drawing, making something, or working on a project, eating or just out in the car, there seemed to be an incredible amount of incidental talk. For example, one day we were all sitting around the kitchen table doing our own thing. Topics of conversation, often unrelated to what we were doing, kept cropping up. Among other things, we talked about slavery, Nelson Mandela, saltwater crocodiles and levels of groundwater, and whether to go down the shop for some sticky doughnuts!
Children in school rarely have the opportunity for this kind of informal conversation with an adult. I began to wonder just how important it might be. It reminded me, as a developmental psychologist, of the way all children learn before they go to school, even though these children were 11 and 13 years old.
During the first few years of life, all children learn a tremendous amount without being deliberately taught, largely through this kind of informal, everyday conversation. We don't deliberately or consciously teach children to talk, but they still learn the highly complex structure of language. Similarly, nearly all pre-school children pick up fundamental number and literacy skills. They learn to count, and the conceptual bases of addition and subtraction. They learn to recognise letters and other literacy basics. They also acquire a tremendous amount of general knowledge. It's surprising just how much teachers expect children to know already when they start school. And nearly all this learning happens informally, in a welter of chaotic haphazardry. Yet somehow or other, all the bits and pieces manage to coalesce into a coherent body of knowledge about the culture the child has been brought up in, including academic knowledge and skills.
How do we pass on all this knowledge to infants and young children? Well, from birth, almost instinctively, we as parents provide our children with a kind of communication support system. We even respond to babies' burps and farts as if they're conversation openers, which in a sense I suppose they are! As children get older, we answer hordes of questions, we point out things we think might be of interest and talk about them. And we take up anything our children show an interest in and talk about that, all in the course of day-to-day living. In other words, we are constantly in tune with the Child's Theory of Learning, which they have to abandon once they start school. This has been graphically described in the celebrated study by Professors Barbara Tizard and Martin Hughes at London University.
They compared the quality of learning of three to four year olds in pre-school, which the children attended in the mornings, with unintentional learning at home in the afternoons. Against all expectations, the researchers were struck by the high quality of language and learning at home, irrespective of the parents' level of education. I quote from the introduction to their book:
"At home, children discussed topics like work, the family, birth, growing up and death - about things they had done together in the past, and plans for the future; they puzzled over such diverse topics as the shapes of roofs and chairs, the nature of Father Christmas, and whether the Queen wears curlers in bed. But at pre-school, the richness, the depth and variety which characterised the home conversations were sadly missing. So too was the sense of intellectual struggle, and of the real attempts to communicate being made on both sides. The questioning, puzzling child we were so taken with at home was gone. Conversations with adults were mainly restricted to answering questions rather than asking them, or taking part in minimal exchanges about the whereabouts of other children, and play material."
So, I wondered, what if, on reaching school age, children didn't go to school? Could they go on learning as they did in infancy? Would The Child's Theory of Learning still hold good as they got older? So to my research: I am just completing a study of 100 home educating families in Australia and the UK.
Most parents who educate at home start off fairly formally, with textbooks and timetables and plans and so on. This makes sense, because the school model is the only model they know. But it's not the child's model. Nearly all parents come up against and - to a greater or lesser extent - adapt to their child's theory of learning. Here's a typical example:
"When we started I thought we ought to sit down and do school with a blackboard. She tried to be the little schoolgirl, but she had a different vision. She just didn't know what it was. We persisted for two weeks, then it slacked off."
Children may not be able to articulate their theory of learning, but they do know what it isn't. And the most powerful way they have of influencing their parents not to teach them formally is simply by not paying attention. You soon learn not to lecture if your child is not listening: there's simply no point in going on. Some children went further and strongly resisted school-type learning with the result that some parents had cut it down to as little as a couple of hours a week. It was as they reduced structured learning that many parents came to realise that somehow or other, their children went on learning anyway.
Understandably, and with good reason, given the untried aspect of this kind of education, most parents compromise between structured and less formal learning. But just a few families completely abandon school altogether. Here's a parent who took her two children out of school. The Head Teacher helpfully suggested she bring in the children's work each week for her to monitor.
"At first she said we should go in and show her work, and we did, but this quickly lapsed. I felt somehow it was for me to put on a performance for her. I used to set things up for the boys to do and go to great lengths to explain to them, but not anymore. I now see us as carrying on living, rather than me educating them."
Here's another:
"After a year in school, we went back to a style of learning similar to that before starting school."
Don't get the wrong idea. Informal learning for these children is not licence. Children won't learn if they're left to their own devices any more than they'd have learned to talk if they hadn't had someone to talk to.
What we have here is a kind of informal apprenticeship. There may not be a clear structure for everyone to see as there is in school, but there is an underlying structure, within the mind of the child. Incoming knowledge which dovetails into what they already know, or captures their interest, is absorbed. And what isn't is filtered out. For example, one child I observed wanted to make a doll's house out of a cardboard box and got involved in quite sophisticated measurement to put a window where she wanted it - at the centre of one side of the box. Another got interested in tessellations, a kind of geometric decoration, having been fired by the tessellated pavement on the coast of Tasmania. This led to an interest in all sorts of tessellated possibilities. Maths? Yes, even maths, though few are brave enough not to follow a mathematics course. One parent said, "I do follow a maths course, but more maths seems to happen outside maths." And another, "Maths happens naturally, but I did have to teach her 'carrying'."
Another thing that struck me about informal learning was its sheer volume. I was sitting in a car with one family, on a ten minute drive to the local shopping centre. As soon as we got out, I wrote down what I could remember of the conversation during the journey. I couldn't recall everything, but here's what I could:
This was in London. We talked about IRA bombs that had destroyed a flyover, glass in factory windows not being flat because the reflections are distorted; that glass needs to be floated in water when it's being made if it's to be flat; making carbon dioxide which the older one had done recently. We saw cranes lifting up concrete blocks and there was talk of balance of the weight at the back end of the horizontal arm of the crane; there was talk of a myths workshop to come, and everybody wanting to be Midas in the role play. There was discussion of savings in the Post Office, that you can draw out money at any one of them anywhere in the country. There was a camel on a poster; there was a mistake apparently with regard to the number of humps on it. What happens if you cross a two-humped camel with a one-humped camel? One long hump, apparently! That's incidental learning for me, if you like.
Of course, children who go to school also experience this kind of learning at home as well. But nothing like to the same extent. Or, I wonder, how much of the progress children make in school, might be attributable to informal learning at home?
The next stage in this fascinating research is to try to find out just how children do structure what they learn informally. Trying to see into the brain of a child is not easy, but I'm having a go, and I'm making a start with a copious record one parent has kept of her child's informal learning over a couple of years.
In this talk I have focused on informal learning, but the families I studied varied from very formal to completely informal. I'm not suggesting that any one approach is better, only that children can continue to learn informally through the primary school years, and beyond, without going to school.
Robyn Williams: Alan Thomas, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Northern Territory in Darwin.
Avoiding school was commonplace for the British aristocracy. But does it have a place in today's education? Alan Thomas has done a study on this question. He's Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Northern Territory in Darwin, and his results are quite surprising.
Alan Thomas: Education means schools and classrooms, and always has. Not any more. A growing number of parents now take their children's education into their own hands and teach them at home. Why do parents turn away from a freely available system of schooling and assume the huge responsibility of doing it themselves, usually without any training? For a variety of reasons: some have different educational philosophies, others because their children experience problems in school. Are they successful? By and large, yes. Sometimes, startling so. What about social development? Most parents go to great lengths to ensure their children don't miss out on having friends.
He said, study children educated at home because of the unique opportunity it gave me of looking into what for centuries has been assumed to be the very essence of good teaching: one-to-one dialogue between teacher and learner.
To get me started, I took up an invitation to spend a week "living in" with a home educating family. The experience was a complete eye opener for me, and started me off thinking about what I've come to call "The Child's Theory of Learning" which contrasts sharply with the way children are expected to learn in school.
What struck me most of all during that week was that nothing much seemed to happen, at least on the surface, especially when compared with the sense of purposeful industry you get when you look into a typical classroom. We went for walks; the two children, aged 11 and 13 certainly read a lot; they worked on their own projects; there were various outside activities - there was band practice; one of them was doing a project on infant development and was helping a neighbour with her new-born baby. There were friends around after school and there was a schools musical Eisteddfod which one of them took part in. But they didn't seem to be learning as children in school do, at least not as far as I could see.
Towards the end of the week, their mother saw I was a bit perplexed and said that they did do some maths and English exercises, adding with a smile that they were "just for the Inspector, in case he calls". She didn't think they were really part of home education because both she and the children hated them. There is no doubt these children were learning, though obviously not in the way I expected them to be. Both went on to study part-time at adult and further education classes, and successfully take public examinations.
But how did they learn if they didn't do much learning, at least in the school sense? They were certainly always busy. They read a great deal. Voracious reading seems to be a feature of home education. Perhaps they've simply got plenty of time to do it. They presumably learned a great deal from discussing their projects and other activities with their mother, who acted as a kind of mentor. This you might expect to be an advantage of home education, having a teacher on top as it were. And it was. But what struck me most was incidental conversation. Whether we were out walking, sitting around the kitchen table, engaged in some other activity such as drawing, making something, or working on a project, eating or just out in the car, there seemed to be an incredible amount of incidental talk. For example, one day we were all sitting around the kitchen table doing our own thing. Topics of conversation, often unrelated to what we were doing, kept cropping up. Among other things, we talked about slavery, Nelson Mandela, saltwater crocodiles and levels of groundwater, and whether to go down the shop for some sticky doughnuts!
Children in school rarely have the opportunity for this kind of informal conversation with an adult. I began to wonder just how important it might be. It reminded me, as a developmental psychologist, of the way all children learn before they go to school, even though these children were 11 and 13 years old.
During the first few years of life, all children learn a tremendous amount without being deliberately taught, largely through this kind of informal, everyday conversation. We don't deliberately or consciously teach children to talk, but they still learn the highly complex structure of language. Similarly, nearly all pre-school children pick up fundamental number and literacy skills. They learn to count, and the conceptual bases of addition and subtraction. They learn to recognise letters and other literacy basics. They also acquire a tremendous amount of general knowledge. It's surprising just how much teachers expect children to know already when they start school. And nearly all this learning happens informally, in a welter of chaotic haphazardry. Yet somehow or other, all the bits and pieces manage to coalesce into a coherent body of knowledge about the culture the child has been brought up in, including academic knowledge and skills.
How do we pass on all this knowledge to infants and young children? Well, from birth, almost instinctively, we as parents provide our children with a kind of communication support system. We even respond to babies' burps and farts as if they're conversation openers, which in a sense I suppose they are! As children get older, we answer hordes of questions, we point out things we think might be of interest and talk about them. And we take up anything our children show an interest in and talk about that, all in the course of day-to-day living. In other words, we are constantly in tune with the Child's Theory of Learning, which they have to abandon once they start school. This has been graphically described in the celebrated study by Professors Barbara Tizard and Martin Hughes at London University.
They compared the quality of learning of three to four year olds in pre-school, which the children attended in the mornings, with unintentional learning at home in the afternoons. Against all expectations, the researchers were struck by the high quality of language and learning at home, irrespective of the parents' level of education. I quote from the introduction to their book:
"At home, children discussed topics like work, the family, birth, growing up and death - about things they had done together in the past, and plans for the future; they puzzled over such diverse topics as the shapes of roofs and chairs, the nature of Father Christmas, and whether the Queen wears curlers in bed. But at pre-school, the richness, the depth and variety which characterised the home conversations were sadly missing. So too was the sense of intellectual struggle, and of the real attempts to communicate being made on both sides. The questioning, puzzling child we were so taken with at home was gone. Conversations with adults were mainly restricted to answering questions rather than asking them, or taking part in minimal exchanges about the whereabouts of other children, and play material."
So, I wondered, what if, on reaching school age, children didn't go to school? Could they go on learning as they did in infancy? Would The Child's Theory of Learning still hold good as they got older? So to my research: I am just completing a study of 100 home educating families in Australia and the UK.
Most parents who educate at home start off fairly formally, with textbooks and timetables and plans and so on. This makes sense, because the school model is the only model they know. But it's not the child's model. Nearly all parents come up against and - to a greater or lesser extent - adapt to their child's theory of learning. Here's a typical example:
"When we started I thought we ought to sit down and do school with a blackboard. She tried to be the little schoolgirl, but she had a different vision. She just didn't know what it was. We persisted for two weeks, then it slacked off."
Children may not be able to articulate their theory of learning, but they do know what it isn't. And the most powerful way they have of influencing their parents not to teach them formally is simply by not paying attention. You soon learn not to lecture if your child is not listening: there's simply no point in going on. Some children went further and strongly resisted school-type learning with the result that some parents had cut it down to as little as a couple of hours a week. It was as they reduced structured learning that many parents came to realise that somehow or other, their children went on learning anyway.
Understandably, and with good reason, given the untried aspect of this kind of education, most parents compromise between structured and less formal learning. But just a few families completely abandon school altogether. Here's a parent who took her two children out of school. The Head Teacher helpfully suggested she bring in the children's work each week for her to monitor.
"At first she said we should go in and show her work, and we did, but this quickly lapsed. I felt somehow it was for me to put on a performance for her. I used to set things up for the boys to do and go to great lengths to explain to them, but not anymore. I now see us as carrying on living, rather than me educating them."
Here's another:
"After a year in school, we went back to a style of learning similar to that before starting school."
Don't get the wrong idea. Informal learning for these children is not licence. Children won't learn if they're left to their own devices any more than they'd have learned to talk if they hadn't had someone to talk to.
What we have here is a kind of informal apprenticeship. There may not be a clear structure for everyone to see as there is in school, but there is an underlying structure, within the mind of the child. Incoming knowledge which dovetails into what they already know, or captures their interest, is absorbed. And what isn't is filtered out. For example, one child I observed wanted to make a doll's house out of a cardboard box and got involved in quite sophisticated measurement to put a window where she wanted it - at the centre of one side of the box. Another got interested in tessellations, a kind of geometric decoration, having been fired by the tessellated pavement on the coast of Tasmania. This led to an interest in all sorts of tessellated possibilities. Maths? Yes, even maths, though few are brave enough not to follow a mathematics course. One parent said, "I do follow a maths course, but more maths seems to happen outside maths." And another, "Maths happens naturally, but I did have to teach her 'carrying'."
Another thing that struck me about informal learning was its sheer volume. I was sitting in a car with one family, on a ten minute drive to the local shopping centre. As soon as we got out, I wrote down what I could remember of the conversation during the journey. I couldn't recall everything, but here's what I could:
This was in London. We talked about IRA bombs that had destroyed a flyover, glass in factory windows not being flat because the reflections are distorted; that glass needs to be floated in water when it's being made if it's to be flat; making carbon dioxide which the older one had done recently. We saw cranes lifting up concrete blocks and there was talk of balance of the weight at the back end of the horizontal arm of the crane; there was talk of a myths workshop to come, and everybody wanting to be Midas in the role play. There was discussion of savings in the Post Office, that you can draw out money at any one of them anywhere in the country. There was a camel on a poster; there was a mistake apparently with regard to the number of humps on it. What happens if you cross a two-humped camel with a one-humped camel? One long hump, apparently! That's incidental learning for me, if you like.
Of course, children who go to school also experience this kind of learning at home as well. But nothing like to the same extent. Or, I wonder, how much of the progress children make in school, might be attributable to informal learning at home?
The next stage in this fascinating research is to try to find out just how children do structure what they learn informally. Trying to see into the brain of a child is not easy, but I'm having a go, and I'm making a start with a copious record one parent has kept of her child's informal learning over a couple of years.
In this talk I have focused on informal learning, but the families I studied varied from very formal to completely informal. I'm not suggesting that any one approach is better, only that children can continue to learn informally through the primary school years, and beyond, without going to school.
Robyn Williams: Alan Thomas, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Northern Territory in Darwin.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Playcentre Early Childhood
here's is discussion about playcentre,
Playcentre is an early childhood education and parenting organisation which operates parent-led early childhood education centres throughout New Zealand and delivers the Diploma in Early Childhood and Adult Education. Playcentre is indigenous to New Zealand, but is now also established in Japan.
Their mission is stated as "Whānau Tupu Ngātahi - Families growing together."
Playcentre is a family organisation where:
* Empower adults and children to, play, work, learn and grow together
* Honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi and celebrate people’s uniqueness
* Value and affirm parents as the first and best educators of their children
so that whānau are strengthened and communities enriched.
Contents:
* 1 History
* 2 Philosophy
* 3 Practice
* 4 Structure
* 5 Education programme
* 6 Notable Playcentre people
(1) History
The Playcentre movement started during the Second World War to provide a break for mothers as well as means to allow for the social development of the child within a cooperative environment. The first such Playcentre was established in 1941 in the Wellington suburb of Karori. There are currently over 450 centres around New Zealand with Playcentre being the dominant provider of early childhood education in rural areas.
Playcentre was instrumental in introducing the concept of education through play and through child-initiated activities to the early childhood setting in New Zealand. This philosophy has since been adopted throughout all New Zealand early childhood education centres through the New Zealand national curriculum for early childhood education. Playcentre remains a champion of child-led non-structured play as the best form of education in early childhood.
The Playcentre model has been copied by groups in other countries, including the Japan Playcentre Association.
(2) Philosophy
Playcentre believes that parents are the first and best educators of their children and children learn best when they initiate their leaning through play (child-initiated play). Within Playcentre children and adults learn alongside each other, in agreement with the socio-cultural model of learning which posits that a child learns best when surrounded by trusted members of his or her community.
Playcentre is a cooperative. Parents decide how their centre will run and are responsible for the education of their children. Parents also make decisions giving direction to how their association (regional body) and The New Zealand Playcentre Federation (national body) will run.
(3) Practice
* Children may attend from birth to school age, 0-6yr,
* Children attend half day sessions, 1 per day, no more than 5 per week
* Minimum of 1 adult per 5 children during sessions
* Sessions are normally mixed age
* Parents run the sessions
* Parents manage the Playcentre, they are responsible for the the building, administration and education of themselves and the children.
(4 ) Structure
Every Playcentre is part of a regional association, there are currently 33, which provides support and training and is governed by the Playcentres. In turn each association is supported by the national body, The New Zealand Playcentre Federation. The Federation is governed by the associations and provides support to met the goals of the associations.
Playcentres are chartered early childhood education providers with the New Zealand Ministry of Education. Independent research and audits by the Education Review Office confirm the quality of Playcentre's programmes.
(5 ) Education programme
Playcentre Education administers the NZQA approved Playcentre Diploma in Early Childhood and Adult Education. The course provides parents with skills to improve their parenting and to provide high quality early childhood education in a Playcentre setting. The programme also assists members with learning learn how to work in a cooperative as well as being the training ground for Playcentre adult educators. The adult education programme is delivered at no cost to the learner.
(6) Notable Playcentre people
Famous Playcentre alumni include New Zealand's first female Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Jenny Shipley, New Zealand's first female Governor General, Dame Catherine Tizard, the Olympic gold medallists, Caroline Evers-Swindell and Georgina Evers-Swindell, Colin Simon (designer of the Christchurch Commonwealth Games 1974 games - Christchurch, New Zealand symbol and the Playcentre Logo), Valerie Burns (Companion of the Queen's Service Order) and a host of sporting, media, business and political luminaries.
Playcentre is an early childhood education and parenting organisation which operates parent-led early childhood education centres throughout New Zealand and delivers the Diploma in Early Childhood and Adult Education. Playcentre is indigenous to New Zealand, but is now also established in Japan.
Their mission is stated as "Whānau Tupu Ngātahi - Families growing together."
Playcentre is a family organisation where:
* Empower adults and children to, play, work, learn and grow together
* Honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi and celebrate people’s uniqueness
* Value and affirm parents as the first and best educators of their children
so that whānau are strengthened and communities enriched.
Contents:
* 1 History
* 2 Philosophy
* 3 Practice
* 4 Structure
* 5 Education programme
* 6 Notable Playcentre people
(1) History
The Playcentre movement started during the Second World War to provide a break for mothers as well as means to allow for the social development of the child within a cooperative environment. The first such Playcentre was established in 1941 in the Wellington suburb of Karori. There are currently over 450 centres around New Zealand with Playcentre being the dominant provider of early childhood education in rural areas.
Playcentre was instrumental in introducing the concept of education through play and through child-initiated activities to the early childhood setting in New Zealand. This philosophy has since been adopted throughout all New Zealand early childhood education centres through the New Zealand national curriculum for early childhood education. Playcentre remains a champion of child-led non-structured play as the best form of education in early childhood.
The Playcentre model has been copied by groups in other countries, including the Japan Playcentre Association.
(2) Philosophy
Playcentre believes that parents are the first and best educators of their children and children learn best when they initiate their leaning through play (child-initiated play). Within Playcentre children and adults learn alongside each other, in agreement with the socio-cultural model of learning which posits that a child learns best when surrounded by trusted members of his or her community.
Playcentre is a cooperative. Parents decide how their centre will run and are responsible for the education of their children. Parents also make decisions giving direction to how their association (regional body) and The New Zealand Playcentre Federation (national body) will run.
(3) Practice
* Children may attend from birth to school age, 0-6yr,
* Children attend half day sessions, 1 per day, no more than 5 per week
* Minimum of 1 adult per 5 children during sessions
* Sessions are normally mixed age
* Parents run the sessions
* Parents manage the Playcentre, they are responsible for the the building, administration and education of themselves and the children.
(4 ) Structure
Every Playcentre is part of a regional association, there are currently 33, which provides support and training and is governed by the Playcentres. In turn each association is supported by the national body, The New Zealand Playcentre Federation. The Federation is governed by the associations and provides support to met the goals of the associations.
Playcentres are chartered early childhood education providers with the New Zealand Ministry of Education. Independent research and audits by the Education Review Office confirm the quality of Playcentre's programmes.
(5 ) Education programme
Playcentre Education administers the NZQA approved Playcentre Diploma in Early Childhood and Adult Education. The course provides parents with skills to improve their parenting and to provide high quality early childhood education in a Playcentre setting. The programme also assists members with learning learn how to work in a cooperative as well as being the training ground for Playcentre adult educators. The adult education programme is delivered at no cost to the learner.
(6) Notable Playcentre people
Famous Playcentre alumni include New Zealand's first female Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Jenny Shipley, New Zealand's first female Governor General, Dame Catherine Tizard, the Olympic gold medallists, Caroline Evers-Swindell and Georgina Evers-Swindell, Colin Simon (designer of the Christchurch Commonwealth Games 1974 games - Christchurch, New Zealand symbol and the Playcentre Logo), Valerie Burns (Companion of the Queen's Service Order) and a host of sporting, media, business and political luminaries.
Pre-school Education
Preschool education is the provision of education for children before the commencement of statutory education, usually between the ages of 3 and 5, dependent on the jurisdiction. Preschool is also known as nursery school, or kindergarten.
Preschool work is organized within a framework that professional educators create. The framework includes structural (administration, class size, teacher-child ratio, etc.), process (quality of classroom environments, teacher-child interactions, etc), and alignment (standards, curriculum, assessments) components that are associated with each individual unique child that has both social and academic outcomes.
Contents:
* 1 Developmental areas
* 2 Age and Importance
* 3 History of Preschool in the United States
* 4 Methods of preschool education
* 5 Funding for Preschool Programs
* 6 Special Education in Preschool
* 7 References
[1] Developmental areas
The areas of development which preschool education covers varies from country to country. However the following main themes are represented in the majority of systems.
* Personal, social and emotional development
* Communication, including talking and listening
* Knowledge and understanding of the world
* Creative and aesthetic development
* Physical development
* Mathematical awareness and development
Allowing preschool aged children to discover and explore freely within each of these areas of development is the foundation for developmental learning. While the National Association for the Education of Young Children has made tremendous strides in publicizing and promoting the idea of developmentally appropriate practice, there is still much work to be done. It is widely recognized that although many preschool educators are aware of the guidelines for developmentally appropriate practice, putting this practice to work effectively in the classroom is more challenging. The National Association for the Education of Young Children(NAEYC) published that although 80% of Kindergarten classrooms claim to be developmentally appropriate, only 20% actually are.
[2] Age and Importance
Preschool is generally considered appropriate for children between three and five years of age, between the toddler and school stages. During this stage of development, children learn and assimilate information rapidly, and express interest and fascination in each new discovery. It is well established that the most important years of learning are begun at birth. A child's brain at this age is making connections that will last the rest of their life.[citation needed] The environment of the young child influences the development of cognitive and emotional skills due to the rapid brain growth that occurs in the early years. Studies have shown that high quality preschools have a short and long term effect in improving the outcomes of a child, especially a disadvantaged child.
The Universal Preschool movement is an international effort to make access to preschool available to families in a similar way to compulsory primary education. Various jurisdictions and advocates have differing priorities for access, availability and funding sources. See kindergarten for details of pre-school education in various countries.
[3] History of Preschool in the United States
Head Start, the first preschool program, was created in 1965 by President Johnson. The federal government helped create this half-day program for low-income parents for preschool children. Head Start began as a summer pilot program that included an education component, nutrition and health screenings for children, and support services for families (CPE, 2007). In the 1960’s only ten percent of the nations three and four year olds were enrolled in a classroom setting. Due to a large amount of people interested, and a lack of funding for Head Start, during the 1980’s a handful of states started their own version of a program for students from low-income families. The positive success and effects of preschool meant many state leaders were showing interest in educational reform of these young students (CPE, 2007). By 2005 sixty-nine percent, or over 800,000, four year-old children nationwide participated in some type of state preschool program (CPE, 2007). The yearly increase in enrollment of preschool programs throughout the years is due to an increase of higher maternal employment rates, national anti-poverty initiatives, and research showing the link between early childhood experiences and the brain development of young children. These factors have caused the rate of attendance in preschool programs to grow each year (CPE, 2007).
In most states, there are multiple preschool options for young children. Parents have the choice of sending their child to a federal funded Head Start center, state-funded preschool, government-funded special education programs, and for-profit and not-for-profit providers (Levin & Schartz, 2007). Currently in the United States, Georgia, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and New York are the only states have legislation underway or have universal preschool for all students in the state (CPE, 2007).
[4] Methods of preschool education
Some preschools have adopted specialized methods of teaching, such as Montessori, Waldorf, Head Start, HighReach Learning, High Scope,[6] The Creative Curriculum[7] Reggio Emilia approach, Bank Street, Forest kindergartens, and various other pedagogies which contribute to the foundation of education.
Creative Curriculum now has an interactive website where parents and teachers can work together in evaluating preschool age children. The website is very user friendly and prints off many reports that are helpful in evaluating children and the classroom itself. The web site has a variety of activities that are targeted to each of the fifty goals on the continuum. Teachers have a wealth of resources right at their fingertips!
In the United States most preschool advocates support the National Association for the Education of Young Children's Developmentally Appropriate Practices.
Family childcare can also be nationally accredited by the National Association of Family Childcare if the provider chooses to go through the process. National accreditation is only awarded to those programs who demonstrate the quality standards set forth by the NAFCC.[citation needed]
[5] Funding for Preschool Programs
The benefits and challenges of a public preschool are closely tied to the amount of funding provided. Funding for a public preschool can come in a variety of sources. According to Levin and Schwartz (2007) funding can range from federal, state, local public allocations, private sources, and parental fees (p. 4). The problem of funding a public preschool occurs not only from limited sources but from the cost per child. The average cost across the 48 states is $6,582 (Levin and Schwartz, 2007). There are four categories that determine the costs of public preschools: personnel ratios, personnel qualifications, facilities and transportation, and health and nutrition services. According to Levin and Schwartz (2007) these structural elements depend heavily on the cost and quality of services provided (p. 14). The main personnel factor related to cost is the qualifications each preschool require for a teacher. Another determinate of cost is the length of a preschool day. The longer the session, the more increase in cost. Therefore, the quality of program accounts presumably for a major component of cost (Levin and Schwartz, 2007).
Collaboration has been a solution for funding issues in several districts. Wilma Kaplan, principal, turned to collaborating with the area Head Start and other private preschool to fund a public preschool in her district. “We’re very pleased with the interaction. It’s really added a dimension to our program that’s been very positive” (Reeves, 2000). The National Head Start Bureau has been looking for more opportunities to partner with public schools. Torn Schultz of the National Head Start Bureau states, “We’re turning to partnership as much as possible, either in funds or facilities to make sure children get everything necessary to be ready for school” (Reeves, 2000, p. 6). The goal for funding is to develop a variety of sources that provide for all children to benefit from early learning within a public preschool.
[6] Special Education in Preschool
In the United States, students who may benefit from special education receive services in preschools. Since the inception of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Public Law 101-476 in 1975 and its amendments, PL 102-119 and PL 105-17 in 1997, the educational system has moved away from self-contained classrooms and progressed to inclusion. As a result, there has been a need for special education teachers to practice in various settings in order to assist children with special needs, particularly by working with regular classroom teachers when possible to strengthen the inclusion of children with special needs. As with other stages in the life of a child with special needs, the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) or an Individual Family Service Plan (IFSP) is an important way for special education teachers, regular classroom teachers, administrators and parents to set guidelines for a partnership to help the child succeed in preschool.
(7) References:
1. ^ The foundation stage: education for children aged 3 to 5
2. ^ A Curriculum Framework for Children 3 to 5
3. ^ The Early Years Framework. Scottish Government. 2008. ISBN 978-0-7559-5942-6. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/257007/0076309.pdf#page=9.
4. ^ Schaefer, Stephanie; Cohen, Julie. (2000-12). "Making Investments in Young Children: What the Research on Early Care and Education Tells Us". National Association of Child Advocates. http://www.eric.ed.gov:80/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED448863&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED448863.
5. ^ Hanford, Emily (2009-10). "Early Lessons". American Radio Works. http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/preschool/. Retrieved 2009-11-08.
6. ^ High Scope
7. ^ The Creative Curriculum
Preschool work is organized within a framework that professional educators create. The framework includes structural (administration, class size, teacher-child ratio, etc.), process (quality of classroom environments, teacher-child interactions, etc), and alignment (standards, curriculum, assessments) components that are associated with each individual unique child that has both social and academic outcomes.
Contents:
* 1 Developmental areas
* 2 Age and Importance
* 3 History of Preschool in the United States
* 4 Methods of preschool education
* 5 Funding for Preschool Programs
* 6 Special Education in Preschool
* 7 References
[1] Developmental areas
The areas of development which preschool education covers varies from country to country. However the following main themes are represented in the majority of systems.
* Personal, social and emotional development
* Communication, including talking and listening
* Knowledge and understanding of the world
* Creative and aesthetic development
* Physical development
* Mathematical awareness and development
Allowing preschool aged children to discover and explore freely within each of these areas of development is the foundation for developmental learning. While the National Association for the Education of Young Children has made tremendous strides in publicizing and promoting the idea of developmentally appropriate practice, there is still much work to be done. It is widely recognized that although many preschool educators are aware of the guidelines for developmentally appropriate practice, putting this practice to work effectively in the classroom is more challenging. The National Association for the Education of Young Children(NAEYC) published that although 80% of Kindergarten classrooms claim to be developmentally appropriate, only 20% actually are.
[2] Age and Importance
Preschool is generally considered appropriate for children between three and five years of age, between the toddler and school stages. During this stage of development, children learn and assimilate information rapidly, and express interest and fascination in each new discovery. It is well established that the most important years of learning are begun at birth. A child's brain at this age is making connections that will last the rest of their life.[citation needed] The environment of the young child influences the development of cognitive and emotional skills due to the rapid brain growth that occurs in the early years. Studies have shown that high quality preschools have a short and long term effect in improving the outcomes of a child, especially a disadvantaged child.
The Universal Preschool movement is an international effort to make access to preschool available to families in a similar way to compulsory primary education. Various jurisdictions and advocates have differing priorities for access, availability and funding sources. See kindergarten for details of pre-school education in various countries.
[3] History of Preschool in the United States
Head Start, the first preschool program, was created in 1965 by President Johnson. The federal government helped create this half-day program for low-income parents for preschool children. Head Start began as a summer pilot program that included an education component, nutrition and health screenings for children, and support services for families (CPE, 2007). In the 1960’s only ten percent of the nations three and four year olds were enrolled in a classroom setting. Due to a large amount of people interested, and a lack of funding for Head Start, during the 1980’s a handful of states started their own version of a program for students from low-income families. The positive success and effects of preschool meant many state leaders were showing interest in educational reform of these young students (CPE, 2007). By 2005 sixty-nine percent, or over 800,000, four year-old children nationwide participated in some type of state preschool program (CPE, 2007). The yearly increase in enrollment of preschool programs throughout the years is due to an increase of higher maternal employment rates, national anti-poverty initiatives, and research showing the link between early childhood experiences and the brain development of young children. These factors have caused the rate of attendance in preschool programs to grow each year (CPE, 2007).
In most states, there are multiple preschool options for young children. Parents have the choice of sending their child to a federal funded Head Start center, state-funded preschool, government-funded special education programs, and for-profit and not-for-profit providers (Levin & Schartz, 2007). Currently in the United States, Georgia, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and New York are the only states have legislation underway or have universal preschool for all students in the state (CPE, 2007).
[4] Methods of preschool education
Some preschools have adopted specialized methods of teaching, such as Montessori, Waldorf, Head Start, HighReach Learning, High Scope,[6] The Creative Curriculum[7] Reggio Emilia approach, Bank Street, Forest kindergartens, and various other pedagogies which contribute to the foundation of education.
Creative Curriculum now has an interactive website where parents and teachers can work together in evaluating preschool age children. The website is very user friendly and prints off many reports that are helpful in evaluating children and the classroom itself. The web site has a variety of activities that are targeted to each of the fifty goals on the continuum. Teachers have a wealth of resources right at their fingertips!
In the United States most preschool advocates support the National Association for the Education of Young Children's Developmentally Appropriate Practices.
Family childcare can also be nationally accredited by the National Association of Family Childcare if the provider chooses to go through the process. National accreditation is only awarded to those programs who demonstrate the quality standards set forth by the NAFCC.[citation needed]
[5] Funding for Preschool Programs
The benefits and challenges of a public preschool are closely tied to the amount of funding provided. Funding for a public preschool can come in a variety of sources. According to Levin and Schwartz (2007) funding can range from federal, state, local public allocations, private sources, and parental fees (p. 4). The problem of funding a public preschool occurs not only from limited sources but from the cost per child. The average cost across the 48 states is $6,582 (Levin and Schwartz, 2007). There are four categories that determine the costs of public preschools: personnel ratios, personnel qualifications, facilities and transportation, and health and nutrition services. According to Levin and Schwartz (2007) these structural elements depend heavily on the cost and quality of services provided (p. 14). The main personnel factor related to cost is the qualifications each preschool require for a teacher. Another determinate of cost is the length of a preschool day. The longer the session, the more increase in cost. Therefore, the quality of program accounts presumably for a major component of cost (Levin and Schwartz, 2007).
Collaboration has been a solution for funding issues in several districts. Wilma Kaplan, principal, turned to collaborating with the area Head Start and other private preschool to fund a public preschool in her district. “We’re very pleased with the interaction. It’s really added a dimension to our program that’s been very positive” (Reeves, 2000). The National Head Start Bureau has been looking for more opportunities to partner with public schools. Torn Schultz of the National Head Start Bureau states, “We’re turning to partnership as much as possible, either in funds or facilities to make sure children get everything necessary to be ready for school” (Reeves, 2000, p. 6). The goal for funding is to develop a variety of sources that provide for all children to benefit from early learning within a public preschool.
[6] Special Education in Preschool
In the United States, students who may benefit from special education receive services in preschools. Since the inception of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Public Law 101-476 in 1975 and its amendments, PL 102-119 and PL 105-17 in 1997, the educational system has moved away from self-contained classrooms and progressed to inclusion. As a result, there has been a need for special education teachers to practice in various settings in order to assist children with special needs, particularly by working with regular classroom teachers when possible to strengthen the inclusion of children with special needs. As with other stages in the life of a child with special needs, the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) or an Individual Family Service Plan (IFSP) is an important way for special education teachers, regular classroom teachers, administrators and parents to set guidelines for a partnership to help the child succeed in preschool.
(7) References:
1. ^ The foundation stage: education for children aged 3 to 5
2. ^ A Curriculum Framework for Children 3 to 5
3. ^ The Early Years Framework. Scottish Government. 2008. ISBN 978-0-7559-5942-6. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/257007/0076309.pdf#page=9.
4. ^ Schaefer, Stephanie; Cohen, Julie. (2000-12). "Making Investments in Young Children: What the Research on Early Care and Education Tells Us". National Association of Child Advocates. http://www.eric.ed.gov:80/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED448863&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED448863.
5. ^ Hanford, Emily (2009-10). "Early Lessons". American Radio Works. http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/preschool/. Retrieved 2009-11-08.
6. ^ High Scope
7. ^ The Creative Curriculum
Early Childhood Education
Here's is my throughts about children education,
Early childhood education regards education in early childhood, one of the most vulnerable stages in life. According to the NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children), it spans the human life from birth to age eight.
Contents for discussion:
* 1 Similar terms
* 2 Developmental domains
* 3 Benefits of Early Childhood Education
* 4 See also
* 5 References
* 6 External links
1- Similar terms
Early childhood education often focuses on children learning through play.
The terms preschool education and kindergarten emphasise education around the ages of 3-6 years. The terms "early childhood learning," "early care," and "early education" are comparable with early childhood education. The terms Day care and Childcare do not embrace the educational aspects.
Researchers in the field and early childhood educators both view the parents as an integral part of the early childhood education process. Early childhood education takes many forms depending on the beliefs of the educator or parent.
Much of the first two years of life are spent in the creation of a child's first "sense of self" or the building of a first identity.This is a crucial part of children's makeup—how they first see themselves, how they think they should function, how they expect others to function in relation to them. For this reason, early care must ensure that in addition to employing carefully selected and trained caretakers, program policy must emphasize links with family, home culture, and home language, meaning caregivers must uniquely care for each child using Developmentally Appropriate Practice, Individually Appropriate Practice and Culturally Appropriate Practice. Care should support families rather than be a substitute for them.
If a young child doesn't receive sufficient nurturing, nutrition, parental/caregiver interaction, and stimulus during this crucial period, the child may be left with a developmental deficit that hampers his or her success in preschool, kindergarten, and beyond.
Worst-case scenarios such as those found in Russian and Romanian orphanages demonstrate how the lack of proper social interaction and development of attachment affect the developing child.Children must receive attention and affection from their caregivers to develop in a healthy manner.
2- Developmental domains
Further information: Child Development
There are five different developmental domains of children which all relate to each other. They are easily referred to as the SPICE of life:
* Social - Refers mostly to the ability to form attachments, play with others, co-operation and sharing, and being able to create lasting relationships with others.
* Physical - Development of Fine (small) and Gross (large) Motor Skills.
* Intellectual - The process of making sense of the world around them.
* Creative - The development of special abilities creating talents. Music, Art, Writing, Reading, and Singing are all ways for creative development to take place.
* Emotional - Development of self-awareness, self-confidence, and coping with feelings as well as understanding them.
Psychosocial According to Jean Piaget, there are four major stages of cognitive development:
1. Sensorimotor Stage. This stage occurs between the ages of birth and two years of age.Sensorimotor (infancy): During this stage, which includes six distinct substages, intelligence is demonstrated through motor activity with limited use of symbols, including language; the infant’s knowledge of the world is primarily based on physical interactions and experiences.
2. Preoperational Stage. The second stage occurs between the ages of two to seven years of age.During this stage,intelligence is increasingly demonstrated through the use of symbols; memory and imagination are developed as language use matures; thinking is nonlogical, nonreversible, and egocentric.
3. Concrete Operations Stage. Occurring between ages 7 and about 12 years. During this stage—characterized by conservation of number, length, liquid,mass, weight, area, volume—intelligence is increasingly demonstrated through logical and systematic manipulation of symbols relating to concrete objects; thinking is operational, reversible, and less egocentric.
4. Formal Operations Stage. The final stage of cognitive development (from age 12 and beyond)During this final stage, intelligence is demonstrated through the logical use of symbols related to abstract concepts; thinking is abstract, hypothetical, and early on, quite egocentric; it is commonly held that the majority of people never complete this stage.
* Emotional Development - Concerning children's increasing awareness and control of their feelings and how they react to these feelings in a given situation.
* Social Development - Concerning the children's identity, their relationships with others, and understanding their place within a social environment
3- Benefits of Early Childhood Education
Chicago’s publicly-funded Child-Parent Centers have served almost 100,000 3- and 4-year-olds since 1967. Researchers tracked 989 of those children and 550 similar children not in the program for 14 years. The children who did not participate were 70 percent more likely to be arrested for a violent crime by age 18. This program also cut child abuse and neglect. In Ypsilanti, Michigan, 3- and 4-year-olds from low-income families who were randomly assigned to a group that did not receive preschool who were five times more likely to have become chronic lawbreakers by age 27 than those who were assigned to the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation’s Perry Preschool program.
Early childhood education regards education in early childhood, one of the most vulnerable stages in life. According to the NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children), it spans the human life from birth to age eight.
Contents for discussion:
* 1 Similar terms
* 2 Developmental domains
* 3 Benefits of Early Childhood Education
* 4 See also
* 5 References
* 6 External links
1- Similar terms
Early childhood education often focuses on children learning through play.
The terms preschool education and kindergarten emphasise education around the ages of 3-6 years. The terms "early childhood learning," "early care," and "early education" are comparable with early childhood education. The terms Day care and Childcare do not embrace the educational aspects.
Researchers in the field and early childhood educators both view the parents as an integral part of the early childhood education process. Early childhood education takes many forms depending on the beliefs of the educator or parent.
Much of the first two years of life are spent in the creation of a child's first "sense of self" or the building of a first identity.This is a crucial part of children's makeup—how they first see themselves, how they think they should function, how they expect others to function in relation to them. For this reason, early care must ensure that in addition to employing carefully selected and trained caretakers, program policy must emphasize links with family, home culture, and home language, meaning caregivers must uniquely care for each child using Developmentally Appropriate Practice, Individually Appropriate Practice and Culturally Appropriate Practice. Care should support families rather than be a substitute for them.
If a young child doesn't receive sufficient nurturing, nutrition, parental/caregiver interaction, and stimulus during this crucial period, the child may be left with a developmental deficit that hampers his or her success in preschool, kindergarten, and beyond.
Worst-case scenarios such as those found in Russian and Romanian orphanages demonstrate how the lack of proper social interaction and development of attachment affect the developing child.Children must receive attention and affection from their caregivers to develop in a healthy manner.
2- Developmental domains
Further information: Child Development
There are five different developmental domains of children which all relate to each other. They are easily referred to as the SPICE of life:
* Social - Refers mostly to the ability to form attachments, play with others, co-operation and sharing, and being able to create lasting relationships with others.
* Physical - Development of Fine (small) and Gross (large) Motor Skills.
* Intellectual - The process of making sense of the world around them.
* Creative - The development of special abilities creating talents. Music, Art, Writing, Reading, and Singing are all ways for creative development to take place.
* Emotional - Development of self-awareness, self-confidence, and coping with feelings as well as understanding them.
Psychosocial According to Jean Piaget, there are four major stages of cognitive development:
1. Sensorimotor Stage. This stage occurs between the ages of birth and two years of age.Sensorimotor (infancy): During this stage, which includes six distinct substages, intelligence is demonstrated through motor activity with limited use of symbols, including language; the infant’s knowledge of the world is primarily based on physical interactions and experiences.
2. Preoperational Stage. The second stage occurs between the ages of two to seven years of age.During this stage,intelligence is increasingly demonstrated through the use of symbols; memory and imagination are developed as language use matures; thinking is nonlogical, nonreversible, and egocentric.
3. Concrete Operations Stage. Occurring between ages 7 and about 12 years. During this stage—characterized by conservation of number, length, liquid,mass, weight, area, volume—intelligence is increasingly demonstrated through logical and systematic manipulation of symbols relating to concrete objects; thinking is operational, reversible, and less egocentric.
4. Formal Operations Stage. The final stage of cognitive development (from age 12 and beyond)During this final stage, intelligence is demonstrated through the logical use of symbols related to abstract concepts; thinking is abstract, hypothetical, and early on, quite egocentric; it is commonly held that the majority of people never complete this stage.
* Emotional Development - Concerning children's increasing awareness and control of their feelings and how they react to these feelings in a given situation.
* Social Development - Concerning the children's identity, their relationships with others, and understanding their place within a social environment
3- Benefits of Early Childhood Education
Chicago’s publicly-funded Child-Parent Centers have served almost 100,000 3- and 4-year-olds since 1967. Researchers tracked 989 of those children and 550 similar children not in the program for 14 years. The children who did not participate were 70 percent more likely to be arrested for a violent crime by age 18. This program also cut child abuse and neglect. In Ypsilanti, Michigan, 3- and 4-year-olds from low-income families who were randomly assigned to a group that did not receive preschool who were five times more likely to have become chronic lawbreakers by age 27 than those who were assigned to the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation’s Perry Preschool program.
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