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Table of Contents

• "Between a Rock and a Hard Place in the Primary Grades"
• Ready or Not...Preparing Young Children for the {Kindergarten} Classroom
• Ready Schools
• Guidelines for Developmentally Appropriate Practices

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"Between a Rock and a Hard Place in the Primary Grades"

Research literature which focuses on the primary grades highlights the unease which often exists between the culture and expectations of early childhood education (involving children from birth to age five) and the culture and expectations of the elementary school (where the primary grades provide early childhood education for children from ages five to eight). This unease or "mismatch" is a source of challenge, frustration, and tension for primary-grade teachers who are committed to implementing best practices in their classrooms. The "mismatch" often results in teachers’ believing that elementary schools are difficult places in which to provide quality early childhood programs for primary-age students.

In an article entitled "Between A Rock and A Hard Place in the Primary Grades: The Challenge of Providing Developmentally Appropriate Early Childhood Education in an Elementary School Setting," Lisa S. Goldstein, of the University of Texas at Austin, describes the consequences of this conflict between early childhood and elementary school philosophy and objectives. Goldstein spent some 150 hours, over a period of three months, in a multi-age classroom composed of children who, in a traditional setting, might be labeled as kindergartners, first-graders, and second-graders. The teacher was attempting to implement developmentally appropriate primary-grade practices in the context of a supportive environment. Goldstein debriefed with the teacher, after each morning she spent in the classroom, and wrote thorough field notes. Additionally, teacher and researcher had several lengthy conversational interviews, and the two of them corresponded regularly in a dialogue journal.

Goldstein’s observations began as a part of her research for an ethnography, which focused on the nature and role of caring relationships in early childhood education. When she finished the ethnography, she re-analyzed the data she had compiled, with a different question in mind, "revealing a host of details, observations, and nuances that were invisible in my first pass through the materials." What she concluded was that there are three issues which affect the implementation of developmentally appropriate practice in the primary grades:

• personal interpretation,
• partial adoption, and
• inconsistency in implementation.

"All teachers must constantly make choices and juggle competing demands," according to Goldstein, but

personal interpretation becomes troublesome, however, when teachers’ understanding of DAP {developmentally appropriate practice} are cloudy, off base, or just plain wrong. Many teachers claim to be "doing DAP" while engaging in an astounding variety of practices (Wien, 1995). How much leeway do teachers have in interpreting DAP? In what settings and under what circumstances might personal values and understandings take precedence over by-the-book adherence to the principles of developmentally appropriate practice?

Goldstein cites two reasons for the partial adoption of developmentally appropriate practice in the primary grades: the inevitable compromise dictated by state requirements for proficiency and knowledge, and the unclear, precise balance needed between teacher-direction and child-choice. She writes that

Though child interest is an important facet in the guidelines for developmentally appropriate practice and may reign supreme in a DAP preschool setting, child interest may not be the sole yardstick against which curricular decisions can be made in an elementary school setting.

When she discusses the inconsistency in the implementation of developmentally appropriate practice, Goldstein suggests that maybe the demands of the classroom are such that the teacher has no time or opportunity for reflection. Perhaps another explanation might be that teachers misunderstand or misinterpret the central values of DAP, when they are placed "in the role of arbiter of what activities are appropriate for any given child (Jipson, 1992)." She concludes, however, that

Inconsistency is not a problem but a fact of life in the open-ended, complicated teaching profession. ...Struggles with internal contradictions in... practice remind us that providing exemplary early childhood education is an on-going process; even the most experienced and outstanding teachers never reach a state of professional perfection. Inconsistency in implementation of DAP is to be expected; a commitment to reflection, and opportunities for continuing professional development serve as ways to ensure that teachers are working toward new depths of understanding of their own practice and of the notion of developmentally appropriate practice.

Goldstein readily admits that those teaching in the primary grades are left with more questions than answers, and writes that these professionals will continue to feel alienated and frustrated until the conflict between early childhood and elementary school philosophy and objectives, and the issues which are consequences of this conflict, are addressed and resolved.

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"Between A Rock and A Hard Place in the Primary Grades: The Challenge of Providing Developmentally Appropriate Early Childhood Education in an Elementary School Setting," was published in the Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 12, 3-27 (1997). Its author, Lisa S. Goldstein, may be reached at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, 244 SZB, University of Texas-Austin, Austin, Texas 78712.

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Ready or Not...Preparing Young Children for the {Kindergarten} Classroom

Just when you’ve settled into the routine of the school year, it’s time to think ahead to next year. With many preschools and kindergartens now taking applications for next fall, parents may find themselves asking: Will my child be ready? Will he measure up?

There is no one quality or skill that children need to do well in school--a combination of factors contribute to school success. These include physical well-being, social and emotional maturity, language skills, an ability to solve problems and think creatively, and general knowledge about the world. School success also depends upon the "match" between children’s skills and knowledge and the school’s expectations. More children succeed when these expectations reflect knowledge of child development and early learning.

Here are some suggestions of how parents and schools can promote a good match for every child.

Parents can:

1. Take advantage of learning opportunities in every day activities. These will make a big difference in preparing young children for the classroom.
2. Promote good health and physical well-being. Children obviously need nutritious food, enough sleep, safe places to play, and regular medical care. In addition to medical and dental checkups and immunizations, preschoolers need opportunities to exercise and develop physical coordination. Throwing balls, running, jumping, climbing, dancing to music--all of these activities will enhance coordination and help children learn important concepts such as up, down, inside, outside, over, and under.
3. Support your child’s social and emotional development. Children who are kind, helpful, patient, and loving generally do better in school, and feeling good about oneself is an important aspect of developing desirable social skills. Tell your child how glad you are to be his parent. Set a good example for your preschooler by showing what it means to get along with others and to be respectful. Give children chances to learn about sharing and caring, for example, letting them feed hungry birds, or helping them make cookies to welcome a new neighbor.
4. Build your child’s language and general knowledge. There are many things you can do to help your child learn to communicate, and develop an understanding of the world. Don’t underestimate the value of play! Play allows children to explore, be creative, and develop social skills. It also paves the way for academic learning. For example, children learn key concepts important in geometry while stacking blocks, and playing with others helps with negotiation skills. Talk to your children. Everyday activities, such as eating lunch, cleaning up toys, or taking a bath, provide opportunities to talk. Listening and responding to a child is the best way to learn what’s on her mind, to discover what she knows and doesn’t know, and how she thinks and learns. Listening also shows children that their feelings and ideas are valuable. Finally, read together frequently. Fostering your child’s love of books is a gift that will last a lifetime.
5. Not assume a child with a late birth date should be held out of school. Research shows that children receive little, if any, advantage when held out of school because of late birth dates. And, the practice may have a negative impact on other children by encouraging school expectations better suited to older children.

Schools can:

1. Be prepared to respond to a diverse range of abilities within any group of young children. Small group sizes with enough teachers who are skilled in early childhood education make it easier to provide the individualized attention every child deserves.
2. Offer a curriculum and teaching practices that reflect principles of child development and learning and provide many active, meaningful learning opportunities that build upon children’s existing knowledge and abilities.
3. Make sure expectations of children are reasonable and age-appropriate. Even children who have received every advantage prior to school struggle when demands are too great, experiencing stress and having their confidence as learners undermined.
4. Not use tests as the primary measure for entry decisions. Developmental screening to detect a health problem or developmental disability is important to ensure early diagnosis and treatment, but tests should not be used to determine school entry for three reasons: (1) Children are not good test takers, especially with strangers in unfamiliar settings. (2) Young children are growing and learning rapidly; test results may change greatly in six months. (3) Tests too often ignore language and culture variations and may not give a true picture of a child’s skills and knowledge.

Additional Resources

Washington, V., Johnson, V. and McCracken, J.B. 1995. Grassroots Success! Preparing Schools and Families for Each Other. Washington, DC: NAEYC. Order #722 / $8.

NAEYC. 1995. Ready or Not: What Parents Should Know about School Readiness. Washington, DC: NAEYC. Order #554 / 50¢ each or 100 for $10.

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The above article is part of the series Early Years Are Learning Years, produced by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Reproduction of this material is freely granted, provided credit is given to NAEYC. The organization may be reached at 1509 16th Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20036-1426; by telephone at (800) 424-2460; by fax at (202) 328-1846; and by e-mail <http://www.naeyc.org/>.

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Ready Schools
by Rima Shore

To the National Education Goals Panel, ensuring that children start school ready to learn is vitally important. But ensuring that schools are ready for children is important as well. Recognizing that good education means both ready children and ready schools, the Goals Panel convened a special group of advisors and asked them to identify what makes a ready school. A report, Ready Schools, is the result of their efforts. It recommends ten specific approaches found in successful elementary schools and documented by research to be keys to ready schools.

Ready schools are learning organizations that alter practices and programs if they do not benefit children {Recommendation 7}.

Many districts and schools continue to make use of strategies that have not consistently promoted their children’s development or learning, and have failed to show lasting benefits in research studies. It is often difficult to eliminate such practices or policies, but in many cases, schools have been able to fund very effective programs or services by cutting ineffective ones. The following four practices are prime examples:

• Retention and extra-year programs

Well over half of the schools surveyed in the National Transition Study (61 percent) routinely retain kindergarten children. About five percent of kindergartners in those schools are held back--an average of one per classroom. The great majority of elementary schools (73 percent) either retain children in kindergarten or place them in transition classes for an extra year either before or after kindergarten. In these schools, 18 percent of kindergartners are assigned an extra year of schooling. Data show that low-income minority students, especially males, have the highest rate of retention. Language-minority students are more likely than native speakers of English to be held back. Since expenditures for each public school student now average well over $6,000 per year, retention and extra-year programs are extremely expensive strategies.

Critics argue that the funds spent on such programs might better be used to provide early diagnosis and intensive intervention and tutoring. Such early help would be pedagogically sound. In most cases, retention means more of the same kind of teaching and is unlikely to spark achievement. Instead, a different, more focused, more individualized intervention has a better chance of putting a low-achieving student on track for success. Wherever possible, children should not be retained.

• Redshirting

For decades, most first-graders have been 6 years old, but this trend is changing. In 1972, one in eight first-graders was age 7 or older; in 1994, the figure was one in five. This reflects not only the increasing rate of retention and extra-year programs, but also a trend for parents to elect to keep 5-year-olds at home or in preschool for an extra year.

Today, many parents delay kindergarten entry for their children--particularly middle-class and wealthy parents, for whom an extra year of preschool or child care is not a hardship. This practice is known as redshirting. Many parents, especially parents of boys, assume that at age 6, a child will be better prepared for success in kindergarten--more mature socially, cognitively, and physically. On the other hand, low-income and working-class parents, including the vast majority of parents of color, are less likely to delay their children’s kindergarten enrollment. These 5-year-olds may enter kindergarten with the 6-year-olds of more prosperous parents--children from homes that are more closely aligned with the culture of the school, who already have a firmer grasp of the rules of the game. Thus the social and educational gap widens.

Delaying kindergarten entry may have negative as well as positive effects on the children involved, according to a recent study published in Pediatrics. The long-term study of more than nine thousand students showed that children who start school late show higher rates of behavioral problems later in their school careers. These problems were not apparent in the primary grades, but became very evident in the middle and high school years.

• Denying school entry

School districts around the nation have set their own guidelines for age of kindergarten entry--most at age 5. Some make individual decisions about school entry based on assessments of children’s development. Ready schools accept all children on the basis of chronological age. They assume that any group of 5-year-olds will exhibit a wide range of developmental traits; they do not exclude children or delay their entry on the basis of tests or interviews. They may conduct assessments in order to facilitate planning or assess individual strengths and weaknesses, but not to determine school eligibility.

Like redshirting, denying school entry is unfair and unnecessary. Schools, committed to meeting children at the level of their own development and taking into account variations among children and among the diverse competencies of each individual child, do not need to deny children school entry. Ready schools admit and serve all children when they reach the chronological age set by the district for school entry.

• "Pushing down" or "hothousing"

These terms refer to an approach that stresses accelerating academic instruction of young children at younger and younger ages. In particular, "pushing down" refers to pushing down the first-grade curriculum into the kindergarten classroom.

Some researchers suggest that this approach undermines the social and academic development of young children because the presentation of letter and number facts are typically decontextualized and not connected to children’s real lives. Nevertheless, kindergarten education continues to increase academic demands, particularly in schools serving disadvantaged students. In these settings, an accelerated kindergarten program may be seen by parents, administrators, and teachers as a way to prevent future failure. To date, there have been few systematic studies of this approach, and little is known about its long-term effects. However, the prevailing view is that young children learn in the context of relationships, and benefit from curricula and classroom practices rich in experiential learning, play, and social experience.

References

Love, J.M., Logue, M.E., Trudeau, J.V., & Thayer, K. (1992). Transitions to kindergarten in American schools: Final report of the National Transition Study. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

Byrd, R.S., Weitzman, M., & Auinger, P. (1997). Increased behavior problems associated with delayed school entry and delayed school progress. PEDIATRICS 100(4):654-661.

National Institute on the Education of At-Risk Students. (1997). Project description: Effective preschool and kindergarten. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University.

National Association of State Boards of Education. (1988). Right from the start: The Report of the NASBE Task Force on Early Childhood Education. Alexandria, VA: Author.

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The above article is reprinted from Shore, Rima. (1998). Ready Schools (A report of the Goal 1 Ready Schools Resource Group). Washington, DC: National Education Goals Panel (pp. 2, 24-25). The National Education Goals Panel may be contacted at 1255 22nd Street, NW, Suite 502, Washington, DC 20037, 202-724-0015 {voice}, 202-632-0957 {fax}, <NEGP@goalline.org> {e-mail}, and <http://www.negp.gov/>. [NAECS Editor's note (04-26-05): This URL is no longer active.]

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Guidelines for Developmentally Appropriate Practices

The context in which early childhood programs operate today is characterized by ongoing discussion between parents, teachers, and the research community about how best to teach young children and what sort of practice is most likely to contribute to their development and learning. Since the original NAEYC developmentally appropriate practice guidelines were published in 1987, a considerable number of studies have examined the topic.

Recent data show that many teachers who say they believe in developmentally appropriate practice do not have developmentally appropriate classrooms. A recent study of kindergarten teachers found that more than half demonstrated conflicts between their philosophy of early childhood education and their classroom practices. Data also indicate that teachers who receive inservice training on developmentally appropriate practices via workshops, site visits, and journal reflections reported a greater tendency to use these practices in the classroom.

There is no singular formula for developmentally appropriate practice. Rather, teachers use these strategies to make day-to-day decisions based on the individual children, their families, and the social and cultural context.

Following are the five basic guidelines for developmentally appropriate practice:

Create a caring community of learners. Developmentally appropriate practices support the development of relationships between adults and children, among children, among teachers, and between families and teachers.

Teach to enhance development and learning. Early childhood teachers strive to achieve a balance between guiding children’s learning and following their lead.

Construct appropriate curriculum. The content of early childhood curriculum includes the subject matter, social or cultural values, parents’ input, and the age and experience of the children.

Assess children’s learning and development. Assessment of individual children’s development and learning is essential for planning and implementing appropriate curriculum.

Establish mutually beneficial relationships with families. Developmentally appropriate practices evolve from a deep knowledge of individual children and the context within which they develop and learn. The younger the child, the more necessary it is for caregivers and teachers to acquire this knowledge through relationships with children’s families.

Developmentally appropriate practices will continue to receive close scrutiny--which is a plus--because the more we learn about teaching and learning in early childhood environments, the better our children will grow and prosper.

Additional Resources

Bredekamp, S. & Copple, C., eds. 1997. Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs. Rev. ed. Washington, DC: NAEYC. Order #234 / $8.

Bredekamp, S. & Rosegrant, T., eds. 1992. Reaching Potentials: Appropriate Curriculum and Assessment for Young Children, Vol. 1. Washington, DC: NAEYC. Order #225 / $7.

Bredekamp, S. & Rosegrant, T., eds. 1995. Reaching Potentials: Appropriate Curriculum and Assessment for Young Children, Vol. 2. Washington, DC: NAEYC. Order #227 / $8.

Dunn, L. & Kontos, S. 1997. What Have We Learned About Developmentally Appropriate Practice? Young Children, 52(5): 4-13.

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The above article is part of the series Early Years Are Learning Years, produced by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Reproduction of this material is freely granted, provided credit is given to NAEYC. The organization may be reached at 1509 16th Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20036-1426; by telephone at (800) 424-2460; by fax at (202) 328-1846; and by e-mail <http://www.naeyc.org/>.

This page last updated: December 13, 2007