Child Care
Main Features
- Provides comprehensive health, social, and education services.
- Program quality determined by each program.
- Each program has its own curriculum
Teacher's Role
- Provides care and education for the whole child.
- Provides a safe and secure environment.
- Collaborates with and involve families.
High/Scope
Main Features
- Theory is based on Piaget, constructivism, Dewey, and Vygotsky.
- Plan-do-review is the teaching-learning cycle.
- Emergent curriculum is not planned in advance.
- Children help determine curriculum.
- Key experiences guide the curriculum in promoting children's active learning.
Teacher's Role
- Plans activities based on children's interests.
- Facilitates learning through encouragement.*
- Engages in positive adult-child interaction strategies.*
Montessori
Main Features
- Theoretical basis is the philosophy and beliefs of Maria Montessori.
- Prepared environment supports, invites, and enables learning.
- Children educate themselves- self-directed learning.
- Has a set of curriculum regarding what children should learn. Montessorians try to stay as close to Montessori's ideas as possible.
- Children are grouped in multiage environments.
- Children learn by manipulating materials and working with others.
- Learning takes place through the senses.
Teacher's Role
- Follows the child's interests and needs.
- Prepares an environment that is educationally interesting and safe.*
- Directs unobtrusively as children individually or in small groups engage in self-directed activity.*
- Observes, analyzes, and provides materials and activities appropriate for the child's sensitive periods of learning.*
- Maintains regular communications with the parent.
Reggio Emilia
Main Features
- Theory is based on Piaget, constructivism, Vygotsky, and Dewey.
- Emergent curriculum is not planned in advance.
- Curriculum is based on children's interests and experiences.
- Curriculum is project oriented.
- Hundred Languages of Children represents the symbolic representation of children's work and learning.
- Learning is active.
- Atelierista- a special teacher is trained in the arts.
- Atelier- an art/design studio is used by children and teachers.
Teacher's Role
- Works collaboratively with other teachers.
- Organizes environments rich in possibilities and provocations.*
- Acts as recorder for the children, helping them trace and revisit their words and actions.*
Waldorf
Main Features
- Theoretical basis is the philosophy and beliefs of Rudolf Steiner.
- The whole child- head, heart, and hands- is educated.
- The arts are integrated into all curriculum areas.
- Study of myths, lores, and fairy tales promotes the imagination and multiculturalism.
- Main-lesson teacher stays with the same class from childhood to adolescence.
- Learning is by doing-making and doing.
- Learning is noncompetitive.
- The developmental phases of each child are followed.
Teacher's role
- Acts as a role model exhibiting the values of the Waldorf school.
- Provides an intimate classroom atmosphere full of themes about caring for the community and for the natural and living world.*
- Encourages children's natural sense of wonder, belief in goodness, and love of beauty.*
- Creates a love of learning in each child.
Head Start
Main Features
- Federally sponsored and funded early childhood program.
- Programs must comply with federal performance standards and standards of learning.
- Comprehensive approach to educating the whole child.
- Comprehensive services approach including health and nutrition.
- Comprehensive program designed to strengthen families.
- Involves families and the community in delivery of program.
Teacher's Role
- Teach to and provide for all children's developmental areas- social, emotional physical, and cognitive.
- Provide programs for children that support their socioeconomic, cultural, and individual needs in developmentally appropriate ways.
- Involve families and the community in all parts of the program.
*Information from C. Edwards, "Three Approaches from Europe: Waldorf, Montessori, and Reggio Emilia," Early Childhood Research & Practice 4, 1, 2002, http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v4n1/edwards.html.
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Excerpt from Fundamentals of Early Childhood Education, by G. R. Morrison, 2008 edition, p. 90-91.
© ______ 2008, Merrill, an imprint of Pearson Education Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The reproduction, duplication, or distribution of this material by any means including but not limited to email and blogs is strictly prohibited without the explicit permission of the publisher.
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