66.057-5 - Questioning the "Knowledge to Action" Conduit: Child Development as the Foundation of Early Childhood Education

• In Event: 66.057 - Roundtable Session 27

Session Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

This symposium critically examines child development as “the knowledge base” of early childhood education, manifest in NAEYC’s Guidelines for Developmentally Appropriate Practice (1987, 1997, 2009, 2013). DAP’s powerful role in U.S. early childhood education is evident in push-backs to ontemporary accountability reforms that echo early resistance to “push-down” curriculum emphasizing academics at the expense of play and a ‘child-centered’ early childhood classroom. A reassuring hallmark throughout its 30-year-history, DAP Guidelines remain vulnerable to heightened expectations for children’s early learning amid contentious debates about what it means to provide “quality” early education. And yet the very concept of “developmental appropriateness” remains suspect. Symposia participants highlight ethnocentric, hegemonic and epistemological limitations of child development as the singular touchstone for early childhood education

Sub Unit

• SIG-Critical Perspectives on Early Childhood Education

Chairs

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

• Joseph J. Tobin, University of Georgia

Papers

• Using "Science" to Teach Other People's Children: Critique of Developmentally Appropriate Practice Guidelines for 21st-Century Early Childhood Education - Rebecca S. New, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Deconstructing Narratives About Children's Play: Addressing Equity Through Complexity - Julie M. Nicholson, WestEd Center for Child and Family Studies

• Developmentally Appropriate Practice and New Technologies: An Anachronistic Coupling of Old Theories and 21st-Century Artifacts - Nicola J. Yelland, Flinders University, Australia

• Discourses of Readiness, Normality/Abnormality, and At-Risk Within Developmentally Appropriate Practice Guidelines - Marianne N. Bloch, University of Wisconsin - Madison