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Friedrich Wilhelm Frobel
Froebel laid the current foundation for early childhoos education. He is known as the father of kindergarten for his creation of the concept. He found that children have unique needs and capabilities that need to be paid attention to. -
John Dewey
John Dewey believed that education should be based on learning through doing. He is considered the father of pragmatism, which is doing things reasonably and logically. -
Maria Montessori
Maria Montessori hasa had many great contributions to the development of early childhood education. Her educational methods focus on the natural curiosities of children. Her methods allow children to explore their own individuality and independence. -
Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget focused his studies on child development. His research concluded four stages of cognitive development in children, stretching from birth to old age. These four stages explain what level a child thinks on and the trastitions to the next stages. His stages became the basis for many other reasearch projects about ealry childhood education. -
Lev Vygotsky
Vygotsky created a theory that supports child development through play. He created methods and techniques for teachers to use in order to present students with an environment that promotes educational play. "A child's greatest achievements are possible in play, achievements that tomorrow will become her basic level of real action." -
Erik Erikson
Erik Erikson focused on finding individuality and indpendence apart from parents. His main focus was to create a promoting learning environment for this action. Preschoolers enter the initiative stage when they start showing first signs of undependence. Erikson explains that they should continue moving forward with less intervention and more supervision at this stage. -
Howard Gardner
Howard Gardner is the mind behind the theory of multiple intelligences. These intelligences are seperated based on the part of the brain used. By knowing, studying, and omplementing these multiple intelligences, teachers can fully understand how any human mind works based on an individual's strengths and weaknesses. Teachers can then use the observations to make changes in teaching methods and techniques used for each student.
