I was delivering professional development in Nevada and I made a statement about what I believe to be very developmentally inappropriate educational practices in the United States.
Don’t get me wrong…I don’t mean everyone…and certainly don’t mean members of the #ECE {R}evolution.
However, there is plenty of evidence that many of the educational policies in the U.S. could use an overhaul.
We have learned much over the past several years, from research on brain development, from various groups of experts, and from other countries.
Based upon what we know about early learning and development, policy makers in the U.S. would be wise to overhaul educational policies and ensure new ones…
- Address the wholeness of children (and the adult professionals who support them)
- Promote sustained periods of self-directed play (including in and with nature)
- Support early development, but don’t push or rush it (podcast on developmental sequences)
And, if you are looking for evidence to support my claim that many educational policies and practices in the U.S. are more “DIP” than “DAP“, a good place to start – is with The Importance of Being Little: What Preschoolers Really Need from Grownups by Erika Christakis.
This book provides tons of research on how we should approach early care and education and where we are getting it wrong in our obsession with accountability, data driven results, and Kindergarten readiness.
Speaking of Kindergarten readiness, if you haven’t before, here’s an article colleagues from around the globe and I published on readiness mistakes (and remedies). It too is a good place to turn to understand where we are getting it wrong worldwide, and what to do about it. Keep reading…more solutions are provided further down in this post.
Dan Siegel’s work around the importance of “serving a healthy mind platter” also illustrates how many of our efforts in the U.S. are “off the mark”. Click here for a Pre-K Teach and Play podcast where I use the healthy mind platter idea and apply it to early education learning centers.
Question: So what can we do…particularly if we don’t have control over the policies being designed and delivered?
Answer: Increase our knowledge of development in at least three ways:
- Understand appropriate scope for young children
- Understand how skills develop concurrently
- Understand the impact of stressors on early development and learning
Then, and perhaps more importantly, change how we design and deliver professional development.
“Ensure educators develop understanding and expertise in child development and in the science of learning. This will require major changes in educator preparation and in ongoing professional support for the social and emotional learning of teachers and all other adults who work with young people.” The National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development
“It would be wise to conceptualize professional development investments to specifically empower site-based instructional leadership and routine job-embedded teacher collaboration…Without simultaneous focus on strengthening classroom practices and the organizational contexts enabling effective implementation of high-quality programming, it is unlikely schools and centers will realize meaningful and sustained improvements in the quality of ECE teaching and learning.” The Ounce of Prevention Fund and the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research
Resources to achieve these solutions:
Appropriate scope:
- My my “go to resources” for knowing what to teach and when to teach [video]
- If I Had A Crystal Ball [blog post]
Concurrent skill development: Check out references from this Pre-K Teach and Play podcast, the research and articles talk about the concurrent nature of early development, particularly as it relates to executive functioning.
Role of stressors: Links to two research-oriented groups who understand the role of toxic stress other types of stressors on development and learning:
Click here for an infographic on strategies to reduce the negative impact of stressors
Transform Professional Development and Learning:
- Take a Deep Dive Master Class on how to support adult learners and get to a real change in practice [link]
- Read my blogs on transforming professional development [link]
- Raise your own emotional intelligence so you can in turn, raise the EQ of those you serve [link]
Have other ideas or solutions? Come on over to FB and share!