Curriculum in early childhood programs, including primary schools, should be viewed in the broadest possible terms. The compartmentalization of activities into school, work, and play that typifies the lives of older children and adults is largely meaningless for young children. Virtually everything that happens in the child's life involves learning, whether explicitly identified as such or not. While it is possible, for example, to design such programs specifically to achieve certain educational outcomes, it is impossible to design any form of child care, regardless of the child's age, that does not involve learning.
Curriculum in the primary school should be viewed in the same way. All planned activities, including classroom work, field trips, organized play, sports, and even routine meals and naps are integral parts of any early childhood curriculum. A developmentally appropriate curriculum is based on knowledge of the stages of child development and an understanding that each child is unique and that each child's experiences should match his or her developing abilities.
In far too many primary schools today, curriculum is defined in much narrower, academic terms. The result is a primary school experience that is developmentally inappropriate for many children. The effects of such inappropriate experiences on later school successes can be dramatic.
A recent study by the District of Columbia Schools of 461 children over a period of seven years concluded that, in both pre-school and the primary grades,
| Overly academic early learning experiences impact negatively on children's ability to successfully transition from the primary grades to upper elementary...children's academic and developmental progress through school is enhanced by more active, child-initiated early learning experiences. Their progress is slowed by the "escalated curriculum," which introduces formal learning experiences too early for most children's developmental status. |
Children in this study who had participated in developmentally appropriate early childhood education programs, whether their first formal learning experiences were in pre-school or in kindergarten, were found to perform consistently better in fourth grade math, reading, language, spelling, and science than those who had experienced academically-oriented or even mixed academic/developmental programs. Boys in particular were found to benefit substantially from kindergartens that placed greater emphasis on socio-emotional development rather than on academics alone.
One of the most difficult obstacles to making primary schools developmentally appropriate is the widespread belief that some practices now known to be inappropriate are "essential" characteristics of good schools.
What do we mean when we say that a curriculum is inappropriate?
Many adults, including both parents and teachers, believe that young children should spend large blocks of time sitting quietly at desks while the teacher "teaches," or working independently and silently on assigned tasks. In such classrooms, different subjects are taught in discrete blocks of time, with primary emphasis on reading and, secondarily, math. The children's activities are teacher-initiated and directed; much of their time is spent in isolation, working on practice exercises and worksheets.
Primary-age children are neither physically or emotionally ready for this academic model. Their attention spans are not long enough to allow them to focus on discrete subject matter for more than a few minutes at a time. Similarly, it is inappropriate to expect them to sit working quietly for extended periods. Their growing bodies require physical action as they continue to develop and refine motor skills and coordination. For children in this age group, sitting for long periods may actually be more tiring than running and jumping.
Young children learn best when they are allowed to actively explore their environment, using materials in a hands-on fashion to learn specific concepts and building on their natural curiosity and desire to make sense of the world around them. Their learning style in the kindergarten and primary years lends itself to an integrated approach to curriculum rather than a subject-specific approach. Inflexible, academic curriculum models do not allow children the freedom they need to use their imaginations and their senses in self-directed, hands-on activities.
Young children benefit most from regular and supportive interaction with teachers and peers. In too many primary classrooms, young children receive information from teachers passively. They are restrained from communicating with their peers, when what they really need is to interact with other children to practice their emerging social skills and develop a common frame of reference. As they move from kindergarten through first, second, and third grades, children become increasingly able to reason and communicate with others. During this period, they can be introduced gradually to more formal academic learning models.
Many adults assume that the alternative to a highly structured, teacher-directed classroom must be chaos. In fact, the opposite is more often true. The visitor to a developmentally appropriate primary classroom is often surprised to see children working together in small groups with minimal teacher supervision. In contrast, teachers in more traditional classrooms tend to spend considerable amounts of time trying to control disruptive behavior that results when all children are expected to behave in the same way at the same time, regardless of their developmental needs.
Widespread concerns about the quality of American education have resulted in an increased emphasis on testing in recent years. Standardized, norm-referenced achievement tests have become a staple of both student and program evaluation at all levels of education. The developmental inappropriateness of many primary schools is a response in part to the increased use of such tests in the earliest grades.
Standardized tests of all types can and do play a valuable role in helping to evaluate overall progress toward desired outcomes – the education goals, for example. Testing also can be useful in evaluating the educational achievement of individual students at higher levels of the educational system.
The use of standardized norm-referenced achievement tests to assess either the individual progress or potential of primary-age and younger children is not appropriate, however. By definition, such tests compare children with each other as if development were uniform. They are constructed so that half of all children who take them must score below the "norm," even though they may actually be within the range of what is considered "normal" from a developmental perspective. In general, the younger the age group, the more dramatic the variations in development within the group and the more likely that differences in test scores reflect differences in age or developmental level rather than in ability.
Unfortunately, few parents, teachers, or administrators fully understand the limitations of standardized tests. As a result, test scores are often used to draw inappropriate conclusions about individual children's strengths and weaknesses and to make decisions about their educational careers. Parents and teachers may erroneously lower their expectations for some children, and the general perception that test results that fall below the norm are equivalent to failure can have a devastating impact on the expectations and self-esteem of the children themselves.
The damage is compounded when results on standardized tests are used to hold primary school teachers accountable for their effectiveness. Test results may come to be viewed as ends in themselves, leading to a curriculum that focuses too narrowly on "teaching to the test." In many cases, this has meant extending curriculum models that may be appropriate for older children downward to ages where they are not appropriate. What used to be taught in second grade is now taught in first grade, what used to be taught in first grade is now taught in kindergarten, and what used to be taught in kindergarten now appears on tests used to determine children's "readiness" for school.
This kind of overemphasis on preparing students to take tests often results in unrealistic expectations about what children should know at any given level. These unrealistic standards hurt at-risk students most, but even advantaged children often find the inappropriate demands difficult to meet.
Kindergarten is still widely viewed as being a transitional year in which children are supposed to be preparing for the first grade. That used to mean familiarizing children with the rules and routines of schooling. But many kindergarten teachers now describe their job as "preparing children for the academic rigors to come." The kind of integrated, child directed learning that is most effective for young children is sacrificed to the institutional goal of producing high test scores. Kindergartens and first grade classrooms may become "more like boot camps than like the child-centered learning environments they should be."
Children who have attended high-quality, developmentally appropriate pre-schools are likely to encounter difficulties if they enter an inappropriate, test-driven, academic kindergarten. Unfortunately, parents often erroneously conclude that the problem lies with the pre-school. This perception results in turn in pressure on pre-schools to adopt inappropriate curriculum models themselves so their children will perform better on tests that have little or no relevance for their true developmental progress.
The inappropriateness of standardized norm-referenced achievement tests for evaluating individual young children does not mean that their progress should not be assessed. But assessment should be a natural and ongoing part of learning, and assessment techniques should meet the same standards for developmental appropriateness as curricula.
In kindergarten and through grade three, each child's progress should be compared primarily to his or her own previous performance and to standards for the development of critical skills. Comparisons to other individual children – especially those based on norm-referenced test scores – should be discouraged. Criterion-referenced scales can be used to compare the performance of individual children with state or national standards. This comparison provides guidance on the child's overall progress without promoting counter-productive competition among young children (or their parents) at different developmental levels. Lack of understanding of the different types of tests, however, can often lead to misinterpretation and misuse of criterion-referenced tests as well, so their use for individual children should be approached cautiously.
The most meaningful approach to assessment of individual young children is through continual observation by teachers and parents of children's progress in all developmental domains, including social, emotional, physical, and cognitive. Performance inventories and portfolios of children's work provide a far more meaningful picture of the young child's progress than any standardized test results. Similarly, narrative reports by teachers outlining children's progress are far more useful at the primary level than numeric or letter grades, since they provide information that can be used by parents to help their children at home.
Continue to the next article.
Return to the Getting Schools Ready for Children Publication Contents Page.