In any serious effort to reform primary education, teachers must play a central role. Unfortunately, many current kindergarten and primary teachers are ill prepared to implement a developmentally appropriate curriculum. It is not unusual to find teachers in these grades who have no specialized training or experience working with young children.
Kindergarten and primary teachers should be formally trained in child development, language acquisition, appropriate instructional and assessment techniques, curriculum development, and ways to involve parents from diverse backgrounds in the education of their children. Newly licensed teachers should be required to obtain certification in early childhood education in order to teach kindergarten through third grade.
More difficult is the problem of retraining current teachers. Retraining will require a long-term plan developed with substantial involvement from the teachers themselves. Existing continuing education requirements could provide a vehicle for such retraining. Primary teachers could be required to take continuing education in early childhood areas where they are deficient in order to maintain their certification. Alternatively, they could be encouraged to do so through incentives such as paid time off for appropriate training and opportunities to advance up the salary scale.
On a day-to-day basis, developmentally appropriate practice in primary classrooms can be stimulated by providing teachers with ongoing feedback and guidance based on extensive observation by experts qualified in both early childhood education and staff development techniques. Visits by teachers to observe developmentally appropriate classrooms and discussions with accomplished teachers can also be effective.
Ensuring that all kindergarten and primary-grade teachers are qualified in early childhood education will not happen overnight. However, the process can be accelerated by giving hiring priority to teachers qualified in early childhood when filling positions in kindergarten through third grade.
Equally important is support and encouragement from administrators. Resistance to developmentally appropriate practice can be expected from some teachers who have spent their careers teaching in ways that were viewed as state-of-the art when they were in college. For teachers to be supportive of change, they will need consistent indications that change will be rewarded rather than penalized.
Administrators who verbally support developmentally appropriate practice but continue to press teachers to obtain high student scores on achievement tests will find that their actions speak louder than their words. Administrators of primary programs should have appropriate training in early childhood education in order to be not only managers but effective advocates for change.
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