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Chapter - 6 : Principles and Approaches of Early Childhood Education
Principles and approaches to teaching young learners relate teaching to learning.
Teaching facilitates learning by promoting, nurturing a culture of learning &
building connections between knowledge. Teaching should facilitate the
construction of meaning, promote understanding, and connect theory and practice.
Learning is commonly defined as a process that brings together cognitive, emotional,
environmental influences. It leads to experiences for acquiring, enhancing, or
making changes in one's knowledge, skills, values, and world views (Illeris, 2000;
Ormorod, 1995). Learning as a process focuses on what happens when the learning
takes place. Explanations of what happens constitute learning theories. A learning
theory is an attempt to describe how people and animals learn, thereby helping us to
understand the inherently complex process of learning. Learning theories have two
chief values according to Hill (2002). One is in providing us with vocabulary and a
conceptual framework for interpreting the examples of learning that we observe. The
other is in suggesting where to look for solutions to practical problems. The theories
do not give us solutions, but they do direct our attention to those variables that are
crucial in finding solutions.
Maria Montessori
We begin with the Montessori approach to teaching:
Maria Montessori (picture to the left) was, in many ways,
ahead of her time. Born in the town of Chiaravalle, in the
province of Ancona, Italy, in 1870, she became the first female
physician in Italy after her graduation from medical school in
1896. In her medical practice, her clinical observations led her
to analyze how children learn, and she concluded that they build themselves from
what they find in their environment. What ultimately became the Montessori
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method of education developed there, based upon Montessori's scientific
observations of these children's almost effortless ability to absorb knowledge from
their surroundings, as well as their tireless interest in manipulating materials. Every
piece of equipment, every exercise, every method Montessori developed was based
on what she observed children to do "naturally," by themselves, unassisted by
adults.
Children teach themselves. This simple but profound truth inspired Montessori's
lifelong pursuit of educational reform, methodology, psychology, teaching, and
teacher training—all based on her dedication to furthering the self-creating process
of the child.
Maria Montessori died in Noordwijk, Holland, in 1952, but her work lives on
through the Association Montessori International (AMI), the organization she
founded in Amsterdam, Netherlands, in 1929 to carry on her work.
PRINCIPLES OF MONTESSORI METHOD
The Montessori Method is based on several principles. Montessori believed that
learning is a “natural, self-directed process” that follows several fundamental laws
of human nature. According to Montessori principles, a child will naturally become
in harmony with his or her environment during the learning process as long as the
environment is properly prepared and maintained. The role of the adult in the
child’s learning process is to simply prepare the environment and to make sure this
environment remains intact. Montessori’s principles state that the adult who is
preparing the environment needs to be committed to several things: observation,
individual liberty, and sufficient preparation. Montessori believes that as long as the
adults involved in the learning process follow these guidelines the children will
engage themselves in their own learning process.
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The teaching methods used in the
Montessori classroom (picture to the left)
are very specific. The Montessori teacher
must be sure to include work tasks and
activities that involve all of the individual
intelligences. These intelligences include
musical, kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal,
intrapersonal, intuitive, linguistic, and
logical. Children are given the opportunity
to explore different activities that address these different areas of knowledge.
A Montessori class usually consists of 30 to 35 students and one to two
teachers. Children are grouped in three-year spans, which allow the children to
remain with the same teacher for three to six years. The classroom is usually divided
into center stations. The center stations are grouped by category such as daily living
materials (washing station, cleaning supplies, etc.), sensorial materials (sand, sound
cylinders, etc.), academic materials (books, pencils, etc.), and cultural/artistic
materials (paints, crayons, markers, etc.). The materials found in each station are
carefully organized and usually remain in the same location throughout the entire
school year.
The materials used in the classroom are also an important aspect of the Montessori
school system. The materials used are specific to the Montessori school and each
serve a very specific purpose. When new material is introduced into the classroom
the teacher carefully demonstrates to the children exactly how the material should
be used. After this demonstration the children are expected to only use the material
the way it is supposed to be used. If the teacher sees the child using the material in a
different way he or she will demonstrate the proper use of the material once
again. An example of such a material is the dried pea work task. The child is given
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a bowl of dried peas along with a spoon and an empty bowl. The teacher
demonstrates to the child how to spoon the dried peas into the empty bowl. The
child is then left to complete this task on his or her own. If the teacher were to see
the child using the peas for any other play or work he or she would demonstrate the
task again.
Montessori claims that their school system, unlike traditional school systems,
provides children with the opportunity to grow into independent and self-sufficient
individuals with a deeply rooted love for learning.
How her Basic Principles came about:
Montessori kept a list on what children like:
• Children like to repeat exercises; once they discover certain activities they
want to repeat them constantly in order to master them (sensitive period).
• Children like to choose on their own.
• Children have the need to check on themselves.
• It is a challenge to them to come up with the right solution.
• Children like it when human movements are analyzed. How do you do a
specific movement? Is it a beautiful movement?
• Children enjoy silence exercises.
• Children favor good manners in their social behavior.
• Children like an ordered environment in which everything has a fixed
place. This gives them a sense of security and safety.
• Children feel a need to take care of their own body, for instance, washing,
blowing their nose.
• Children in the ages from three to six are geared toward their senses; through
their senses they learn to explore and order their environment.
• Children write before they start reading (no books yet).
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Friedrich Froebel
Play is a natural instinct of the children. It has been effectively
used for teaching. Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel (picture
to the left) was the father of the Kindergarten system,
"Children's Garden" a system which encourages fun and play
based learning. Froebel characterized play as the "work" of childhood and described
it as "the purest, the most spiritual, product of man at this stage."
Froebel sought to encourage the creation of educational environment that involved
practical work and the direct use of materials. Through engaging with the world,
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understanding unfolds. Hence the significance of play. It is both a creative activity
and through it children become aware of their place in the world. He went on to
develop special materials (such as shaped wooden bricks and balls - gifts), a series of
recommended activities (occupations) movement activities, and linking set of
theories. His original concern was the teaching of young children through
educational games in the family. In the later years of his life this became linked with
a demand for the provision of special centers for the care and development of
children outside the home.
We have seen the development of kindergartens, and the emergence of a Froebel
movement. For informal educators, Friedrich Froebel's continuing relevance has lain
in his concern for learning through activity, his interest in social learning and his
emphasis on the 'unification 'of life.
Froebel labeled his approach to education as "self-activity". This idea allows the child
to be led by his or her own interests and to freely explore them. The teacher's role,
therefore, was to be a guide rather than lecturer.
Froebel's kindergarten was designed to meet each child's need for:
• physical activity
• the development of sensory awareness and physical dexterity
• creative expression
• exploration of ideas and concepts
• the pleasure of singing
• the experience of living among others
• satisfaction of the soul
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The Kindergarten Curriculum
Froebel’s Gifts
Froebel developed a series of gifts and occupations for use in kindergartens.
Representing what Froebel identified as fundamental forms, the gifts had both their
actual physical appearance and also a hidden symbolic meaning. They were
to stimulate the child to bring the fundamental concept that they represented to
mental consciousness. Froebel's gifts were the following items.
• Six soft, colored balls
• A wooden sphere, cube, and cylinder
• A large cube divided into eight smaller cubes
• A large cube divided into eight oblong blocks
• A large cube divided into twenty-one whole, six half, and twelve quarter
cubes
• A large cube divided into eighteen whole oblongs: three divided lengthwise
three divided breadth wise
• Quadrangular and triangular tablets for arranging figures
• Sticks for outlining figures· Whole and half wire rings for outlining figures
• Various materials for drawing, perforating, embroidering, paper
cutting, weaving or braiding, paper folding, modeling, and interlacing
The occupations were items such as paper, pencils, wood, sand, clay, straw &sticks
for use in constructive activities. Kindergarten activities included games, songs, and
stories. The activities are designed to assist in sensory, physical development and
socialization. By playing, children socialize, imitate adult social and economic
activities as they are gradually led into the larger world of group life. The
kindergarten provided a milieu that encouraged children to interact with other
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children under the guidance of a loving teacher, and this is followed in KG schools
all over the world even today.
Jean Piaget
Swiss biologist and psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-
1980) is renowned for constructing a highly
influential model of child development and
learning. Piaget discovered that children think
and reason differently at different periods in their
lives. He believed that everyone passed through an
invariant sequence of four qualitatively distinct
stages.
Invariant means that a person cannot skip stages or reorder them. Although every
normal child passes through the stages in exactly the same order, there is some
variability in the ages at which children attain each stage.
Piaget identified four major stages: sensory-motor, preoperational, concrete
operational and formal operational. Piaget believed all children pass through these
Chapters to advance to the next level of cognitive development.
• Sensorimotor stage: from birth to age 2. Children experience the world
through movement and senses (use five senses to explore the world). During the
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sensorimotor stage children are extremely egocentric, meaning they cannot perceive
the world from others' viewpoints. The sensori-motor stage is divided into six sub-
stages: "(1) simple reflex (2) first habits and primary circular reactions (3) secondary
circular reactions (4) coordination of secondary circular reactions (5) tertiary circular
reactions, novelty, and curiosity and (6) internalization of schemes."
• Simple reflexes are from birth to 1 month old. At this time infants use reflexes
such as rooting and sucking.
• First habits and primary circular reactions are from 1 month to 4 months old.
During this time infants learn to coordinate sensation and two types of
scheme (habit and circular reactions). A primary circular reaction is when the
infant tries to reproduce an event that happened by accident (ex: sucking
thumb).
• The third stage, secondary circular reactions, occurs when the infant is 4 to 8
months old. At this time they become aware of things beyond their own body;
they are more objects oriented. At this time they might accidentally shake a
rattle and continue to do it for sake of satisfaction.
• Coordination of secondary circular reactions is from 8 months to 12 months
old. During this stage they can do things intentionally. They can now combine
and recombine schemes and try to reach a goal (ex: use a stick to reach
something). They also understand object permanence during this stage. That
is, they understand that objects continue to exist even when they can't see
them.
• The fifth stage occurs from 12 months old to 18 months old. During this stage
infants explore new possibilities of objects. They try different things to get
different results.
• The preoperational stage usually occurs during the period between
toddlerhood (18-24months) and early childhood (7 years). During this stage
children begin to use language, memory and imagination also develops. In
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the preoperational stage, children engage in make believe. They can
understand and express relationships between the past and the future. More
complex concepts, such as cause and effect relationships which they have not
learned. Intelligence is egocentric, intuitive ¬ logical.
• The concrete operational stage typically develops between the ages of 7-11
years. Intellectual development in this stage is demonstrated through the use
of logical and systematic manipulation of symbols, which are related to
concrete objects. Thinking becomes less egocentric with increased awareness
of external events, and involves concrete references.
• The period from adolescence through adulthood is the formal
operational stage. Adolescents and adults use symbols related to abstract
concepts. Adolescents can think about multiple variables in systematic ways,
can formulate hypotheses, and think about abstract relationships and
concepts.
Piaget's Key Ideas (SUMMARY)
Adaptation What it says: adapting to the world through assimilation and
accommodation
Assimilation
The process by which a person takes material into their mind
from the environment, which may mean changing the
evidence of their senses to make it fit.
Accommodation
The difference made to one's mind or concepts by the process
of assimilation.
Note that assimilation and accommodation go together as
you can't have one without the other.
Classification
The ability to group objects together on the basis of common
features.
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Class Inclusion
The understanding of more advanced than simple
classification, that some classes or sets of objects are also sub-
sets of a larger class. (E.g. there is a class of objects called
dogs. There is also a class called animals. But all dogs are also
animals, so the class of animals include that of dogs)
Conservation The realization that objects or sets of objects stay the same
even when they are changed about or made to look different.
Decantation The ability to move away from one system of classification to
another, one that is appropriate.
Egocentrism
The belief that you are the center of the universe and
everything revolves around you: the corresponding inability
to see the world as someone else does and adapt to it. Not
moral "selfishness", just an early stage of psychological
development.
Operation
The process of working something out in your head. Young
children (in the sensory motor and pre-operational stages)
have to act, and try things out in the real world, to work
things out (like count on fingers). Older children and adults
can do more in their heads.
Schema(or
scheme)
The representation in the mind of a set of perceptions, ideas,
and/or actions, which go together.
Stage A period in a child's development in which he or she is
capable of understanding some things but not others
Stages of Cognitive Development
Stage Characterized by
Sensori-
motor
Differentiates self from objects
Recognizes self as agent of action and begins to act
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(Birth-2 yrs) intentionally: e.g. pulls a string to set mobile in motion or
shakes a rattle to make a noise
Pre-
operational
(2-7 years)
Achieves object permanence: realizes that things continue to
exist even when no longer present to the sense (pace Bishop
Berkeley)
Learns to use language and to represent objects by images and
words Thinking is still egocentric, has difficulty taking the
viewpoint of others.
Classifies objects by a single feature e.g. groups together all the
red blocks regardless of shape or all the square blocks
regardless of colour
Concrete
operational
(7-11 years)
Can think logically about objects and events.
Achieves conservation of number (age 6), mass (age 7), and
weight (age 9).
Classifies objects according to several features and can order
them in series along a single dimension such as size.
Formal
operational
(11 years and
up)
Can think logically about abstract propositions and test
hypotheses systematically.
Becomes concerned with the hypothetical, the future, and
ideological problems.
THE REGGIO EMILIA APPROACH
The Reggio Emilia approach is a form
of alternative education which focuses on
teaching children through a strong sense
of community. It is usually applied to
young students in pre-school and primary
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school grades. This philosophy proposes interactive methods of teaching, which
often involve the parents, educators and environment in a variety of ways.
Loris Malaguzzi (1920-1994) founded the 'Reggio Emilia' approach at a city in
northern Italy called Reggio Emilia. The 'Reggio' approach
was developed for municipal child-care and education
programs serving children below six. The approach requires
children to be seen as competent, resourceful, curious,
imaginative and inventive, possess a desire to interact and
communicate with others.
The 'Reggio' vision of the child as a competent learner has produced a strong child-
directed curriculum model. The curriculum has purposive progression but not scope
and sequence. Teachers follow the children's interests and do not provide focused
instruction in reading and writing. Reggio approach has a strong belief that children
learn through interaction with others, including parents, staff and peers in a friendly
learning environment.
The Reggio Emilia approach was conceived, encompass and implement the
theoretical contributions of thinkers including Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner.
Collaboration among children, teachers, parents, and the community is highly
valued and the centers are open to all families regardless of income and supported
by the town.
This approach originated in the Italian city of Reggio Emilia after World War II. At
that time, some of the schools in the city rejected the traditional approach of teaching
children through strict discipline and guidelines. It adopted a more flexible method.
Gradually, this new way gained popularity around the world because it encourages
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child development through exploration of interests and building relationships with
others.
One of the key elements of the Reggio Emilia approach is the school environment.
Small and colorless classrooms are thought to be unproductive and limiting to a
child’s imagination. This philosophy suggests lessons be held in much bigger rooms
with plenty of light, space and real plants. The idea behind the principle is to
stimulate a student’s sense of exploration from an early stage. Some schools
following the Reggio Emilia approach try to limit the barriers between classrooms to
encourage interaction between students.
Parents and friends are very important to this alternative form of education. The
children’s development is often seen as the responsibility of the entire community.
Parents are strongly encouraged to assist their children, not only with homework,
but also by being involved in the child's school activities. The Reggio Emilia
approach places a great value on parental input, and most school boards hold open
meetings on issues like school curriculum and policy.
A major innovation brought about by this type of philosophy is the role of educators.
Learning material is typically designed to enhance the teachers’ own education, to
allow them to learn along with their students. Many of these teaching methods
include learning from physical experience, such as touching, hearing or seeing.
Examinations, such as achievement tests, are often limited and a greater focus is put
on helping the children to comprehend the practical ways they can use what they are
learning.
Another important aspect of the Reggio Emilia approach is that it gives children
some control over the way they learn things. Parents and teachers are often
instructed to find ways to incorporate individual student interests into a child's
learning process. Children are also motivated to express themselves through various
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means, such as writing, drawing and play-acting. These works are often shared, and
even revised, by their peers, to encourage collective participation.
This model was conceived after World War II when the women of Reggio wanted to
build a school, literally from the rubble of the devastated town. The curriculum is
based on close observation and documentation of the children’s ideas by the
teacher who co-constructs knowledge with the children. Their ideology expanded
and deepened and special roles are given to the atelierista (helps children express
ideas) and the pedagogista (the teacher and connector of teachers). Parents continue
to be engaged as partners in their child’s learning. The environment is used as a
valuable source of learning both to inspire, reflect, and to promote the work of the
children, which is done in small groups.
Here are some key features of Reggio Emilia's early childhood program:
The role of the environment-as-teacher
• Within the Reggio Emilia schools, the educators are very concerned about
what their school environment teach children. Hence, a great attention is
given to the look and feel of the classroom. It is often referring to the
environment as the "third teacher".
• The aesthetic beauty within the schools is seen as an important part of
respecting the child and their learning environment.
• A classroom atmosphere of playfulness and joy pervades.
• Teachers organize environment rich in possibilities and provocations that
invite the children to undertake extended exploration and problem solving,
often in small groups, where cooperation and disputation mingle pleasurably.
• Documentation of children's work, plants, and collections that children have
made from former outings are displayed both at the children's and adult eye
level.
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• Common space available to all children in the school includes dramatic play
areas and work tables for children from different classrooms to come
together.
Children's multiple symbolic languages
• Using the arts as a symbolic language through which to express their
understandings in their project work
• Consistent with Dr. Howard Gardner's notion of schooling for multiple
intelligences, the Reggio approach calls for the integration of the graphic arts
as tools for cognitive, linguistic, and social development.
• Presentation of concepts and hypotheses in multiple forms such as print, art,
construction, drama, music, puppetry, and shadow play. These are viewed as
essential to children's understanding of experience.
Documentation as assessment and advocacy (Rather unique in Reggio approach)
• Documenting and displaying the children's project work, which is necessary
for children to express, revisit, construct and reconstruct their feelings, ideas
and understandings.
• Similar to the portfolio approach, documentation of children's work in
progress is viewed as an important tool in the learning process for children,
teachers, and parents.
• Pictures of children engaged in experiences, their words as they discuss what
they are doing, feeling and thinking and the children's interpretation of
experience through the visual media are displayed as a graphic presentation
of the dynamics of learning.
• Teachers act as recorders (documenters) for the children, helping them trace
and revisit their words and actions and thereby making the learning visible.
Long-term projects
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• Supporting and enriching children's learning through in-depth, short-term
(one week) and long-term (throughout the school year) project work, in which
responding, recording, playing, exploring, hypothesis building and testing,
and provoking occurs.
• Projects are child-centered, following their interest, returning again and again
to add new insights.
• Throughout a project, teachers help children make decisions about the
direction of study, the ways in which the group will research the topic, the
representational medium that will demonstrate and showcase the topic.
The teacher as researchers
• The teacher's role within the Reggio Emilia approach is complex. Working as
co-teachers, the role of the teacher is first and foremost to be that of a learner
alongside the children. The teacher is a teacher-researcher, a resource and
guide as she/he lends expertise to children.
• Within such a teacher-researcher role, educators carefully listen, observe, and
document children's work and the growth of community in their classroom
and are to provoke and stimulate thinking
• Teachers are committed to reflection about their own teaching and learning.
• Classroom teachers working in pairs and collaboration, sharing information
and mentoring between personnel.
Home-school relationships
• Children, teachers, parents, community are interactive. They work together.
Building a community of inquiry between adults and children.
• For communication and interaction can deepen children's inquiry and theory
building about the world around them
• Programs in Reggio are family centered. Loris's vision of an "education based
on relationships" focuses on each child in relation to others and seeks to
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activate and support children's reciprocal relationships with other children,
family, teachers, society, and the environment.
Reggio approach is not a formal model with defined methods (such as Waldorf and
Montessori), teacher certification standards and accreditation processes. But rather,
the educators in Reggio Emilia speak of their evolving "experience" and see
themselves as a provocation and reference point, a way of engaging in dialogue
starting from a strong and rich vision of the child. In all of these settings,
documentation was explored as a means of promoting parent and teacher
understanding of children's learning and development.
The Reggio Emilia approach on early childhood education, it did not play down on
the other approaches such as Waldorf and Montessori. Each approach has its own
strengths and weaknesses as well as areas of difference.
The Pre-primary Schools of Reggio Emilia
In contrast, the educators in the preprimary schools of Reggio Emilia are very
concerned about what their school environments teach children, often referring to
the environment as the "third educator" in conjunction with the two classroom
teachers (Gandini, 1998, p. 177). The environment reflects the schools' grounding in
John Dewey's educational philosophy and Vygotsky's social constructivist learning
theory (Malaguzzi, 1998). It embodies Reggio educators' belief that children are
resourceful, curious, competent, imaginative, and have a desire to interact with and
communicate with others (Rinaldi, 1998, p. 114). They believe that children can best
create meaning and make sense of their world through living in complex, rich
environments which support "complex, varied, sustained, and changing
relationships between people, the world of experience, ideas and the many ways of
expressing ideas" (Cadwell, p. 93) rather than from simplified lessons or learning
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environments. They also believe that children have a right to environments which
support the development of their many languages (Reggio Children, 1996).
There is great concern for what the environment is teaching. The design of the
schools represents the structure of the community. The schools reflect a diversity of
ages and architectural styles yet each school is designed around a piazza which
corresponds the central piazzas of the city. These are not solely vehicles for moving
through to get someplace else but serve as gathering places for children from all the
classes and comfortable meeting spaces for parents and teachers. Entering the Diana
School, a visitor looks down the piazza where floor to ceiling windows and plants
blur the boundaries between outside and in, supporting the concepts of
transparency and osmosis. Lights and shadows reflect and flicker across the floor.
The piazza offers many possibilities: a store, stocked with real vegetables a
kaleidoscope large enough to hold several children; and fanciful dress-up clothes all
invite investigation, lingering, conversation and collaboration.
Reggio educators include aspects of a home into the school: vases of flowers, real
dishes, tablecloths, and plants. There is attention to design and placement of objects
to provide a visual and meaningful context. The objects within the space are not
simplified, cartoon like images that are assumed to appeal to children, but are
"beautiful" objects in their own right. For example, dried flowers hang from the
ceiling beams and attractive jars of beans and seeds are displayed on shelves in the
dining area of Arcobaleno Infant-Toddler Center. On the 1997 study tour to Reggio, I
was struck by the beautiful wooden table with a large bowl of flowers and wooden
sideboard in one of the rooms in La Villetta School. I imagined being in a fine Italian
dining room! Manufactured and natural materials available for art projects are
carefully displayed in transparent containers, or objects are set on or before mirrors
to provide multiple views and capture children's attention. The strong role of the
arts in Italian culture is clearly evident in the place of the atelier (art studio), mini
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ateliers adjacent to each classroom and the role the atelierista (artist-teacher) plays in
supporting children and teachers in their work.
The walls hold the history of the life within the school in
the form of documentation panels of children's words and
photos which synthesize past projects and chronicle
current ones. Children's work and words are highly visible
within the space. Communicating clearly to the children, their parents & the
community. Having respect and value for children's abilities, potential, creating
another form of transparency and osmosis between the school and surrounding
community.
According to John Dewey Education is life itself
John Dewey (1859-1952) believed that learning being active and schooling was long
and restrictive. His idea was that children came to school to do things and live in a
community which gave them real, guided experiences which fostered their capacity
to contribute to society. For example, Dewey believed that students should be
involved in real-life tasks and challenges.
• Math could be learnt via learning proportions in cooking or figuring out how
long it would take to get from one place to another by mule
• History could be learnt by experiencing how people lived, geography, what
the climate was like, and how plants and animals grew, were important
subjects
Dewey had a gift for suggesting activities that captured the center of what his classes
were studying.
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Dewey's education philosophy helped forward the "progressive education"
movement, and spawned the development of "experiential education" programs and
experiments.
THE THEMATIC APPROACH (INTEGRATED CURRICULUM)
Thematic teaching is about students actively constructing their own knowledge.
Theorists Piaget and Vygotsky were strong proponents of this constructivist
approach. Piaget (1926) believed that knowledge is built in a slow, continuous
construction of skills and understanding that each child brings to each situation as
he or she matures. He also emphasized the cognitive growth that takes place when
students cooperate and interact with one another. Vygotsky (1997, 175) suggested
that social interaction and collaboration were powerful sources of transformation in
the child's thinking: "In education it is far more important to teach the child how to
think than to communicate various bits of knowledge to him."
Therefore, thematic teaching can be defined as the process of integrating and linking
multiple elements of a curriculum in an ongoing exploration of many different
aspects of a topic or subject. It involves a constant interaction between teacher and
students and their classroom environment. Among the important elements that
foster success in any thematic project are initiation of the theme, the teacher's role,
group exploration, integration of the theme with the curriculum and learning
centers, and building and maintaining spirit and enthusiasm.
Various Web sites also can aid in the initiation of a theme. For younger students,
visit the Web site of Jan Brett, author of Gingerbread Baby (1999) as well as many
other children's books (www.janbrett.com). Older students can research their
interest in particular aspects of a theme via the library and the Internet.
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Thematic Teaching and Curriculum Integration are established with the
following goals in mind:
INSTRUCTION is planned to accommodate individual interests, abilities, and
rates of learning while fostering a climate of teamwork and mutual support.
Students are grouped into heterogeneous, mixed-age classes that are taught by a
two-teacher team. Students stay with these teachers for two years. They work in
groups of all sizes and composition, engaged in activity-based, learning projects.
They have many opportunities to make decisions about their own learning and to
develop responsibility. Students’ progress at their own best rate and move on
when they are ready. There is no ceiling on the level of work they can do.
CURRICULUM is interdisciplinary/integrated, organized around themes, with
many hands-on activities and in-depth study of content. All levels focus on the
skills of communicating well in oral and written forms and using mathematical
concepts to solve problems. A strong citizenship program emphasizes
perseverance, responsibility, and other life skills. Assessment of learning is based
on individual growth and performance.
PARENT INVOLVEMENT is encouraged and recognized as essential for
creating a nurturing, family-like, school environment. Many parents work in the
classroom and throughout the school.
Thus, thematic teaching is about bringing together various aspects of the
curriculum into meaningful association to focus upon broad areas of study. It
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views learning and teaching in a holistic way and reflects the real world, which is
interactive. In general, integrated curriculum or interdisciplinary curriculum
include:
• A combination of subjects
• An emphasis on projects
• Sources that go beyond textbooks
• Relationships among concepts
• Thematic units as organizing principles
• Flexible schedules
• Flexible student groupings.