Creative Curriculum
Early in her career, Diane Trister-Dodge, a graduate of the Bank Street College and the author of Creative Curriculum, became interested in the impact of the environment on interactions and learning. The first edition of Creative Curriculum grew out of her efforts to translate the time-tested principles of traditional preschool into guidelines and specific suggestions for effectively arranging environments to promote play, interactions, and learning. Trister-Dodge founded Teaching Strategies, Inc., in her basement in 1988; today Creative Curriculum (5th ed.) is widely known and used across the United States. Like High Scope, the curriculum developers provide alignment information for both states and the national Head Start standards.
Basic Principles
The Creative Curriculum is now a complete system of resources that address the four areas of (1) curriculum, (2) assessment, (3) professional development, and (4) making connections with families. It is based on five research-based principles that draw heavily from the theories of Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky, and Bronfenbrenner as well as recent research supportive of those foundational theorists:
- Positive interactions and relationships with adults provide a critical foundation for successful learning.
- Social/emotional competence is a significant factor in school success.
- Constructive, purposeful play supports essential learning.
- The physical environment affects the type and quality of learning interactions.
- Teacherfamily partnerships promote development and learning (Teaching Strategies, p. 2).
Table 2.5 displays the thirty-eight Creative Curriculum learning objectives for children that address all ten areas of learning.