Using "Science" to Teach Other People's Children: Critique of Developmentally Appropriate Practice Guidelines for 21st-Century Early Childhood Education

• In Event: 66.057 - Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: 66.057-5 - Questioning the "Knowledge to Action" Conduit: Child Development as the Foundation of Early Childhood Education

Abstract

This paper introduces the session, beginning with the origins of DAP guidelines in the early 20th century alliance between early charity and infant schools and the field of child study, soon to become part of the larger field of developmental psychology. U.S. enthusiasm for the potentials of measurement and the establishment of behavioral and developmental norms are aligned with early developmental ‘milestones’ that, in turn, helped to identify children who were typically developing as well as those who were deemed “developmentally delayed.” As early childhood teachers increasingly sought public support for their efforts on behalf of young children, so, too, did their desire for a more professional rather than philanthropic identity. This goal was of mutual benefit as child development scholars sought to establish their work as a necessary means of providing ‘appropriate’ care and educational services for children deemed ‘at risk’ and in need of early interventions. The discourses of compensatory education amid deficit perspectives on minority children and families will be described as a means of continuity and limitation on the potentials of a single form of knowledge as the foundation of an enterprise as complex and dynamic as early childhood education.

Author

• Rebecca S. New, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill