Facts In Action

Attention to early care and education has increased recently as more parents are in the workforce and more children are in child care than ever before. In October, the Census Bureau reported that as of June 1998, 59% of women with infants under the age of 1 were working, and families with children in which both parents worked became the majority (51%) of all married-couple families for the first time since the Census Bureau started recording fertility information. In addition, in March, the Urban Institute reported that in 1997, 76% of children under the age of five whose mothers were employed were regularly cared for by someone other than a parent.

Child development research tells us that the years before a child starts school are a time of enormous and rapid development of cognitive, social/emotional, and physical skills. The success of this development largely depends on the quality of the environment in which the child lives and learns. If the statistics above are any indication, now more than ever this environment includes early care and education programs.

What are the components of high-quality early care and education, and what investments are necessary to foster the development of such programs? To help answer these questions, the National Research Council convened the Committee on Early Childhood Pedagogy in 1997 to review behavioral and social science research on child development and learning and to explore the implications of that research on early childhood education practice and policy. In a forthcoming full report, Eager to Learn: Educating Our Preschoolers, the Committee summarizes findings from research in three areas - quality of care, curriculum, and assessment - and provides recommendations for practice, policy, and future research.

Child development and early childhood education research define the quality of care by looking at both structural (i.e. program administration) and process (i.e. curriculum and teaching strategies) components. Addressing both areas, the report suggests high-quality child care programs:

• have high adult-to-child ratios and smaller group sizes;

• are supportive of all developmental domains;

• are responsive to the interpersonal relationships between adults and children; and

• have curriculum aims that are specific and integrated across developmental domains.
  

The report does not endorse any particular curriculum, although the literature suggests the following components should be incorporated into curriculum development:

• a developmentally-appropriate balance between play and structured activities;

• teaching and learning built on children's existing understanding;

• a balance between teacher-initiated exploration and child-initiated exploration; and

• programming that encourages children to integrate skills across developmental domains.

On the subject of assessment, the report notes that while it is an important component of program quality in that it charts the development of individual children and allows teachers to develop more effective strategies for teaching, research on theories and best practices of assessment is not well developed at this time. The Committee cautions that with the increased interest in using individual child assessments towards program evaluation and accountability, more research and training is needed in order to ensure that children's abilities are assessed and programs are represented accurately.

Over recent decades, research has emphasized the importance of supporting the development and provision of high-quality child care. It has shown that high-quality child care programs have positive (and potentially long-lasting) effects on the development of children, particularly those children at risk for later school failure. Eager to Learn recommends that based on these findings, it is essential to ensure children have access to universal high-quality early care and education programs.

In order to foster the development of high-quality programs, the Committee lists 19 recommendations in the areas of: professional development of teachers; development of teaching materials that reflect research-based understanding; development of public policies that support - through standards and appropriate assessment, regulations, and funding - the provision of high-quality preschool experiences; and efforts to make more recent understandings of development in the preschool years common public knowledge. These recommendations include the following:

• Children should have access to teachers with bachelor's degrees related to early childhood.

• All states should develop program standards for early childhood programs and monitor their implementation.

• Each state should develop a single career ladder for early childhood teachers, with differentiated pay levels.

• The federal government should fund high-quality preschool programs for all children at high risk of school failure.

• Early childhood programs should work with parents to help bridge the gap between the home and care environments for young children.

The report also recommends continued research in the following areas: early childhood learning and development; programs, curricula, and assessment; and ways to create universal high quality in early care and education programs.

Source:
Eager to Learn: Educating Our Preschoolers - Executive Summary, B. Bowman, M.S. Donovan, and M.S. Burns (eds.) Committee on Early Childhood Pedagogy, Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, 2000.

For more information:
contact National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution Ave. N.W., Lockbox 285, Washington, D.C. 20055, call (800) 624-6242, or look on-line at www.nap.edu.

Facts in Action, November 2000