Friedrich Froebel
Source: http://www.froebelweb.org/gifts/
Friedrich Froebel (17821852) is generally credited with proposing the seminal idea that young children need a systematic program and materials specifically designed for their unique learning style. Froebel likened children to seeds to be cultivated in a “garden of children,” or kindergarten. He believed a teacher’s role was to observe and nurture the learning process, in part by encouraging them to play. He also believed that children’s play should be structured for their own protection and maximum benefit.
Froebel’s curriculum for young children centered on concrete materials he called “gifts” as well as activities, including songs and educational games, he described as “occupations.” Gifts were objects such as wooden blocks and colorful balls of yarn designed to teach children concepts about color, shape, size, counting, measuring, comparing, and contrasting. The purpose of occupationswhich involved the child’s manipulation of items like clay, paper, and beadswas to develop the fine motor and visual discrimination skills needed for reading and writing. Froebel encouraged the use of the play circle, a curriculum feature that looks familiar in any preschool classroom today, as a time to sing songs that would help to reinforce concepts and develop memory.
Maria Montessori
Many of Maria Montessori’s (18701952) ideas are embedded in virtually every early childhood program, and her influence on our thinking about curriculum has been profound (Goffin, 2001; Morrison, 2011). Montessori was the first woman in Italy to earn a medical degree, and she was a tireless child advocate. She insisted that through proper early education, underprivileged and cognitively impaired children could be successful. She worked first with children who were described at that time as “mentally retarded” (a term we would not use today) and subsequently with poor children in the tenements of Rome, establishing preschools, each of which was called a Casa dei Bambini (Children’s House). In essence, Dr. Montessori proposed the idea of children at risk and the notion that society had a moral responsibility to devote resources to early intervention.
Dr. Montessori embraced and expanded Froebel’s kindergarten concept. She felt that children were natural learners and should drive much of their own learning. She asserted that children should be grouped in multiage (2½ to 5 years) classes to allow flexibility and opportunities for peer mentoring. Montessori developed an extensive set of “didactic” materials and lessons designed to be attractive to children and used by teachers to teach specific concepts and skills. She adapted furniture to child size as a gesture of respect for the unique needs of early learners (Montessori, 2008).
Montessori believed that the environment in which children learn should be meticulously prepared and organized to offer materials and activities in a carefully orchestrated sequence. She trained teachers to observe children carefully and recognize sensitive periods, the most appropriate moments at which to introduce new lessons. Montessori’s ideas about early education promoted the development of independence, responsibility, curiosity, and aesthetic sensitivity (Montessori, 2011). We will discuss her method in more detail in Chapter 2.
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John Dewey
At about the same time Montessori was conceptualizing early education in Italy, John Dewey’s (18591952) work completely redirected the course of American education with a movement known as progressivism. Dewey, known first as a philosopher, believed in pragmatism, or faith in the value of experience (practice) to inform ideas (theory). He promoted a practical approach to education, the idea that “education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living” (Dewey, 1897).
Like Montessori, Dewey believed that the curriculum should be child-centered and school should be a place where children practice life through active, hands-on activities. Dewey also believed, like Froebel, that children learn through teacher-facilitated play. He viewed classrooms and schools as incubators for democracywhere we should learn social responsibility and citizenship (Dewey, 1916). To promote later success in society, progressive schools emphasized collaborative learning and problem solving.
Dewey also thought deeply about the role of the teacher, and his concept of the teacher as a facilitator represented a big departure from the commonly accepted notion of the teacher at the front of the room delivering information to children. He stated that “the teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences” (Dewey, 1897).
Dewey’s idea that schools should be places where “education is life” gave rise to thinking about curriculum in a new way. Thomas Heard Kilpatrick, one of Dewey’s students, published The Project Method in 1918, describing a scientific approach using long-term project work as a means of integrating learning across all areas of the curriculum and engaging children in topics of their own choosing. Dewey’s ideas about education as a process, teachers as collaborative partners, and curriculum as a practical and meaningful activity had an enormous impact on educators of his timean impact that is still felt today (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, & Taubman, 2008).
Jean Piaget
A contemporary of both Montessori and Dewey, Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (18961980) proposed a theory of cognitive development that initiated a constructivist view of curriculum. Piaget’s experiments with young children (some of them conducted at a modified Montessori school in Geneva, Switzerland) revealed them, during their play, to be active participants in the development of mental concepts through trial and error, repeated interactions with materials, and adaptation to the environment. His work confirmed early learning as distinct from other developmental periods, implying, therefore, that materials and activities for young children should reflect the idiosyncratic way in which they think and process stimuli (Branscombe et al., 2003; Chaille, 2008).
Piaget proposed that cognitive development occurs in four distinct stages, three of which occur either wholly or partially during early childhood (Piaget, 1977). In the sensorimotor stage, infants and toddlers process experience and begin to coordinate movement through sensory exploration (Branscombe, Castle, Dorsey, Surbeck, & Taylor, 2003). Preoperational thinking of preschoolers emerges spontaneously, as they are internally motivated to make sense of their environment by testing ideas and theories in play and exploration with materials (Chaille, 2008).
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Critical Thinking Question
- Identify an experience you have had with a young child that provided you with insight about how they think and learn differently than older children or adults.
At about age 7, children figure out that they can solve problems logically by using objects to perform “operations” (like addition and subtraction). They also begin to understand that operations are reversible (e.g., 2 + 3 = 5 is the same as 5 2 = 3) (Branscombe et al., 2003). Formal operations, or the ability to think logically and perform operations entirely in the abstract without the support of objects, begins to emerge at about age 11.
Piaget’s ideas and experiments have been challenged and reinterpreted in ways that continue to expand our understanding of a constructivist view of curriculum (Branscombe et al., 2003; Cannela, Swadener, & Chi, 2008). Most early childhood teachers recognize that children are “concrete thinkers” who require large blocks of time to explore materials and processes. However, “Constructivism is not a method, a curriculum model, or a series of appropriate practices. . . . Rather, constructivism is the theory that underlies the choices and decisions you make about how you set up the classroom, choose the curriculum, and respond to the children’s work and ideas” (Chaille, 2008, p. 5).
Lev Vygotsky
While Piaget’s work continues to have an immeasurable influence on early childhood researchers, teachers, and theorists, Lev Vygotsky (18961934) expanded constructivist theory in ways that also make particular sense to early childhood educators. Vygotsky proposed that cognitive growth was not just the result of individual interactions with materials, as described by Piaget, but a socially constructed process requiring interaction with others (Bodrova & Leong, 2008). He described the zone of proximal development (ZPD) as a window of time when childrenwith thoughtful and intentional teacher coaching known as scaffoldingare most likely to be able to advance what they can do independently (Vygotsky, 1962). The ZPD is not unlike what Montessori described as a “sensitive period.”
Vygotsky’s work is most evident in early childhood curriculum today in the prominence of sociodramatic play and emphasis on language; these are considered mental tools that enable the child to convert experiences into internalized understandings, a key process in cognitive development (Bodrova & Leong, 2008). For example, when a group of children decide to set up a pizza parlor, they determine who will be the cook, servers, and customers. They might use paper to make hats and aprons and roll out modeling dough for pizza shells, pepperoni, and other toppings. They develop self-regulation as they apply mental and physical self-control and social rules to act out the scenario, all the time using language to negotiate, communicate, and offer ideas to keep the play going. As children begin to use objects symbolically, plan and take on roles in play, and use language to share experiences, higher-order thinking (executive functioning) develops.
Uri Bronfenbrenner
Uri Bronfenbrenner (19172005) proposed thinking about the growth of relationships as a multilayered, interactive ecological system of five expanding spheres of influence (Figure 1.2):
- The microsystem, which includes the environment with which children have the most direct and concrete experience, such as their family, neighborhood, schools and churches.
- The mesosystem, which consists of relationships among the elements of the microsystem, such as parent-teacher conferences or a school-sponsored back-to-school picnic.
- The exosystem, which influences children indirectly through policies and decisions of which children are largely unaware, such as the implementation of learning standards.
- The macrosystem, or the larger societal environment, which affects our daily lives. For example, living in a high-crime neighborhood would influence the resident children in a variety of ways.
Bronfenbrenner’s theory is important, as early childhood educators develop curriculum to be responsive to diversity and culture. The microsystems experienced by the young children in your group or class may be quite different in terms of language, ethnicity, foods, and family traditions. Including materials that reflect this diversitysuch as African American, Asian, Hispanic, and Caucasian baby dolls and play food from different culturesprovides a connection between the school or care and home environments.