Comparing Early Childhood Programs

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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.