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Rousseau
(1712-1778) Jean Jacques Rousseau believed that children learn through curiosity. In his work "Emilie" he suggests that a child should learn naturally with little to no adult intervention or instruction and should be individual and developmentally appropriate to the specific child. -
Pestalozzi
(1746-1827) Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi also agreed that children learn naturally, but he felt that another dimension needed to be added because it was not realistic to believe that a child would be able to learn to read on their own. He felt that children also needed informative instruction and develop skills through the use of manipulative experiences using the five senses. He created principles and created lessons using these manipulative objects he named "gifts" -
Froebel
(1782-1852) Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel saw children as seeds and the teacher as the gardener. He coined the term "kindergarten" meaning children garden for this reason. He also believed in natural learning and instruction and thus created the systematic curriculum which included objects and materials. He felt that children also learn through play, and saw the teacher as a facilitator (gardener) that tended to the child (seeds) in a planned environment. -
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Reading Readiness
Standardized Tests were developed to indicate if cultivated skills we developed in order to become ready to read. These skills include: Auditory Discrimination: ability to identify familiar sounds, similar sounds, rhyming words, and sounds of letters Visual Discrimination: color recognition, shape & letter identification Visual Motor Skills: left-to-right eye progression, cutting on a line with scissors, and coloring within the lines Large Motor Skills: skipping,hopping,or walking on a line -
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Research Era
During this time many changes were made in Early Childhood Literacy using different methodologies such as: Experimental Studies,Correlational Research,Interviews,Observations,Video Tapes and Case Studies to explore cognitive development using diverse cultural and socioeconomic settings. Instead of laboratories, studies took place in homes and schools.
This helped with understanding becoming literate, how children learn, and initial teaching of reading and writing. -
Montessori
(1965) Maria Montessori believed in the behaviorist theory and that in order for a child to master a skill it must start early with systematic training that is orderly and supplies children with materials to meet a specific objective and explore their own learning. Children are expected to self correct while imitating after the teacher models. These materials us the five senses and encourage independence, but are stored in the order of difficulty in separate containers. -
Dewey
(1966) John Dewey felt that "children learn through social interactions and interests." He felt that education was meant to learn skills to use in life and not as a skill to be taught. He believed in child centered education that had an interdisciplinary curriculum. He felt that children learn best through play that is centered around real life settings. Examples of child interest include: apples, cars, dinosaurs etc. -
Emergent Literacy
Marie Clay created the perspective of Emergent Literacy and how this is a skill that is acquired before coming to school. The perspective says that children learn literacy through models which help formulate their perspective on reading, speaking, and writing. Children learn skills through acquisition and modeling at an early age and all areas influence each other. -
Piaget
Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development emphasizes learning through interactions with the environment he believed intellectual capabilities are at every stage of development. He felt learning should focus less on math and science and more on natural problem solving using assimilation and accommodation. He felt that children should learn through 5 curriculum center areas : language development, classifying, seriating, representing different modalities, and spatial relations. -
Vygotsky
Lev S. Vygotsky had the theory of Schema Acquisition. He felt children learn through acquired concepts and scaffolding. He felt these new concepts are better learned through interaction with others that provide continuing feedback to thoughts throughout the process. He spoke on proximal development being in zones which represent the different areas that include if a child is able to do some, but not all parts of a task. -
No Child Left Behind Act
Passed by Congress in 2001 and signed into law by George W. Bush in 2002 was given grants by the federal government to close the observed gap between the spoken and read language between Kindergarten through 3rd grade of differing socioeconomic groups. Proof that assessments were valid and in use were needed to receive these grants. The programs purpose was to make every child proficient in reading by the time they finished 3rd grade. -
Common Core Standards
In September 2009, South Carolina became the 48th state to join the Common Core standards. These standards are established goals to prepare students from K-12th grade to be ready for the workforce or college. The intent was to have clear standards that are consistent among each classroom. The way these standards are taught may vary. -
References
Klein, A. (2020, December 7). No child left behind: An overview. Education Week. Retrieved September 3, 2022, from https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/no-child-left-behind-an-overview/2015/04 Morrow, L. M. (2020). Chapter 2. In Literacy development in the early years: Helping children read and write (pp. 5–9). essay, Pearson Education, Inc.