These curricula have been extensively studied and, “lack empirical support for effectiveness.” Therefore, the report concludes, we should not look to whole-child approaches as a way to achieve high quality outcomes for preschoolers. In the United States, there are two widely used and questionably implemented examples of whole-child curricula-the Creative Curriculum and High Scope (used in 72 percent of Head Start classrooms).
It generally makes a commitment to a pedagogical philosophy that is more “playful” in delivery-where children are less likely to sit in rows and where discovery or “active” learning is favored over more passive learning. The whole-child approach endorses a pedagogical philosophy that all aspects of children’s development must be addressed when crafting preschool curricula including academic, social-emotional, and domain-general learning to learn skills. But the rejection of a whole-child approach is premature at best. The point that preschool should be imbued with more content seems spot on. Indeed, Jade Jenkins and Greg Duncan write in the fourth chapter of the consensus report that we must “provide teachers with lesson plans to follow in which playful activities are strategically organized to present children with learning opportunities that are focused, sequential and cumulative.” They then conclude, however-due to a lack of evidence to support widely used whole-child curricula-that we should “move away from the comparatively ineffective whole-child approach.” When these reports are reduced to headlines, the message seems clear-we need to “academicize” preschool curricula to ensure high quality and better outcomes. That is, if children are not intentionally exposed to language, literacy, and math in their preschool environments, they will not learn as much language, literacy, and math! Further, and in complete agreement with these newer studies, research demonstrates that a rich curricular approach to preschool is key to children’s success. Studying the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort, Fuller noted that attendance at high quality preschools resulted in leaps in literacy and math scores by roughly a third of a standard deviation on well normed and highly used tests.
A new study by Bruce Fuller and his team further endorses this view. A recent consensus report from Brookings and the Duke University Center for Child and Family Policy suggests that the leading experts in the field are aligned about the importance of high quality preschool and the benefits it offers young children. One road to getting it right is to look for areas of consensus in the science of learning.
0 kommentar(er)
