Mathematical and Scientific Development in Early Childhood A Workshop Summary (2005) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
4 Learning Environments and Curriculum
4 Learning Environments and Curriculum
Pages 21-26
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 21... ...
Barbara Bowman raised the question in the context of the classroom videotape shown by Lucia French, in which several of the children were distracted from the planned activity and doing other things, while others were attending closely and responding to the teacher's cues. Bowman's query was about identifying the boundary between the essential components of cognition and the expectations that grow out of particular cultural contexts.
|
From page 22... ...
Karen Worth noted that whether inquiry is a purely intellectual notion or a partly cultural one, it is clearly recognized as an integral aspect of science, as evidenced in the science standards and elsewhere, and its intrinsic value is not in question. However, Bowman argued that not all children in the United States are experiencing the mainstream cultural context and that these differences can have effects that are observable at very young ages.
|
From page 23... ...
The children most likely to be found in the least beneficial settings are those who already face such disadvantages as low family income and low levels of parental education. While efforts are being made in a number of states to improve both the training and ongoing development of preschool educators and the professional benefits available to them, the current state of affairs nevertheless raises questions about what can reasonably be expected of the corps of teachers who are currently teaching the majority of young children.
|
From page 24... ...
A curriculum should explicitly direct that the children be guided in exploring the life cycles of different plant and animal species and helped to link these observations to broad biological concepts that have been specified. She argued, further, that there should be, if not a finite list of scientific topics that must be covered in the preschool years, a clearly defined set of concepts from which preschool curricula should draw.
|
From page 25... ...
Second, there is a tendency, which probably exists in virtually all scholarly fields, for researchers to pinpoint targets that are so narrow that the results have little apparent application. Kathleen Metz cited as an example the large body of research on the errors children make in doing subtraction.
|
From page 26... ...
Reflecting on the day's discussion, participants agreed that a clear challenge is to determine how the available research fits together and to identify findings that are sufficiently robust to be trustworthy guides for action, as well as developed at a level of detail that makes them meaningful at a practical level. A number of research questions and goals were identified throughout the day as having particular merit in the context of what many participants regarded as urgent problems with the current state of preschool education, and the report closes with these.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.