A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Early Childhood Learning

Priority: Improving learning and development in early childhood so that all children can enter kindergarten prepared to learn and succeed in elementary and secondary schools.

The storefront on State Street is decorated for the season: snowflakes cut from doilies and snowmen covered with wads of cotton. Through the snowflakes passersby catch glimpses of the small children inside as they wander about the room, picking up toys, trying on a fire chief hat, or watching a turtle rest under a plastic umbrella. This is the Beanstalk Child Care Center, and dozens of parents rely on its staff to care for their preschoolers for up to 50 hours each week. But are these children getting the care and education they need? Are they learning all that they should? Many of the parents say that they're going on faith, and that in any case they can't afford most of the other programs in town. And after all, they say, young children just play wherever they are....

But in fact, very young children are biologically primed for learning.¹ Parents and early childhood educators have always been awed by the astonishing rapidity with which children in the preschool years grasp new skills and concepts. This potential for rapid learning argues for careful attention to the young child's earliest learning experiences. However, there is mounting evidence from numerous lines of inquiry within several disciplines that formal education that begins only at age five--the traditional age of entry into public schools--is too late and has limited payoff for children's learning.²

Qualitative Research and Early Care Education Research in early childhood education has tended to focus on the kinds of questions that can be answered with numbers and graphs: how many children have been served? for how long? for how much? and with what effect? By documenting broad trends these studies help to inform policy and guide practice. By riveting attention on results, they are helping to shape and gain acceptance for new and better definitions of quality in early care and education. But more and more researchers are concluding that quantitative studies should not stand alone, and that "qualitative" research, such as case studies, can add substance and subtlety to the field's knowledge base, enriching our understanding of early learning and of the kinds of settings and interventions that promote healthy development. Qualitative educational research seeks to understand events, behaviors, and relationships and the effect they have on the ordinary conduct of people's day-to-day lives. Qualitative research on early childhood education looks at children's experience as it is lived, attempting to see the world from the child's point of view. For example, it can analyze classroom "discourse," the rules of conversation that shape interactions between caregivers and children It seeks to understand the systems of meaning that prevail in classrooms, playgrounds, family day care, and other community settings. Qualitative studies of early childhood education have closely examined such commonplace events as a teacher reading a storybook to a group of children, or a toddler throwing a tantrum at a day care center. They have looked at the experiences of the adults in children's lives, studying for example the relationships between mothers and family day care providers. The premise of such studies is that children learn in the context of relationships; the goal is to understand the specific kinds of ties and interactions that promote or inhibit learning for specific groups of children in specific settings. Qualitative studies can yield what anthropologist Clifford Geertz has called "thick descriptions" of classrooms, child care centers, family care settings, and communities. They can be fascinating to read, and are often more meaningful to practitioners than statistical studies that compare data gathered from many programs. But are they asking the right questions? What yardsticks can we use to measure or judge their findings? Qualitative studies don't lend themselves easily to traditional ways of measuring the validity, generalizability, or replicability of research. Some efforts have been made to adapt traditional norms of research and standards of evidence to fit qualitative work, but considerable work remains to be done in this area. Qualitative research has received short shrift in many fields of education, but perhaps especially in early childhood, due to the mistaken belief that the younger children are, the less we need to know about how, what, and why they learn. This is changing, however, as researchers recognize that many crucial questions have yet to be answered--or asked. As one article recently noted: "As researchers, we have measured people, but we have not listened well to them."

Over the last three decades, many studies have shown that a high quality preschool experience boosts later achievement and social adjustment, reduces the likelihood of retention or placement in special education, and increases the chances of graduation from high school.³ Research over time shows that the negative effects of poverty can be reduced by participation in high quality early programs.⁴

Additional, dramatic evidence of the vital importance of early education recently has come from the field of neuroscience. Thanks in part to the development of sophisticated brain scan technology, neuroscientists are providing new insight into the opportunities and risks of the early years. For example, we now know that experience has a direct influence on the connective pathways that are established in the brain during the early years. We also know that if some pathways are not formed during the first few years of life, learning new things later in life can be more difficult.⁵ In this way, the quality of children's early experiences not only affects their comfort and sense of security, it actually affects their brain development and their later ability to learn and reason.

In light of these new insights, the benefits of high quality early care and education become even more compelling. The key word is quality and therein lies the problem. Approximately 13 million young children attend early care or family care homes.⁶ Despite the importance of the preschool years,⁷ recent research shows that of every 10 center-based programs, 7 provide mediocre care, and one is so inadequate that it jeopardizes the children's health and safety.⁸ Another recent quality study focused on family child care homes, and found that half of unregulated homes are of substandard quality.⁹

While all young children need high quality early care, an especially important area for research is early childhood special education. Today, preschoolers represent the fastest growing segment of the special education population, based on a greater commitment to early intervention.¹⁰ In 1992, more than half a million children from birth to age five were receiving special education services.^ll Programs these children receive vary greatly. Recent years have witnessed efforts to bring coherence to the field by infusing a family-centered approach into virtually every aspect of early childhood special education, and promoting a more integrated approach to early intervention. More attention is also being paid to professional certification for early childhood special educators.^l2 Further research is needed to gauge the efficacy of these approaches, and to identify other strategies for meeting the needs and building on the strengths of an increasingly diverse population.

We need to pull practitioners at all levels of education into the process of research because practice improves through reflective activity in which people analyze and think through what they are doing.

Don Phillips
Superintendent
Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District
California

On the basis of these and other findings, the Assistant Secretary and the National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board have included improving early childhood learning and development on the nation's educational research agenda. They have done so, mindful of the fact that if the nation misses the opportunities that present themselves in children's early years, later investments cannot yield the results Americans want for their older children. In other words, research that overlooks the learning and teaching that occur before the age of five cannot provide an adequate roadmap for education reform. We know that by the end of third grade, when most children are eight, they tend to be locked into achievement trajectories that determine their future academic success.^l3 It simply makes no sense to ignore 5 of those precious 8 years.

To build on what we know, we need to address such questions as:

How do children develop and learn?

How can we build on recent findings about how children think and communicate? How can we use insights into young children's relationships with the adults in their lives to strengthen learning? How can we translate new findings about the young child's use of symbolic tools to strengthen literacy?

What are the most effective methods for teaching young children?

How can we infuse more challenging, engaging content into early childhood experiences? What are the best uses of technologies to teach young children? What can we learn from successful initiatives in other countries? How can we best serve young children whose primary language is not English?

How can we create stimulating learning environments for all children?

What constitutes quality in early care and education? How can quality care be equitable for all of our youngest learners? How can we define quality to apply to children and their families? How can we attract and keep well-qualified teachers and support staff in pre-schools and day care? How can we create a coherent system of policies that supports improved early childhood programs?

How can families and communities do a better job of supporting young children's learning?

What kinds of collaboration between families and communities can best support children's learning and development? What parenting strategies appear to be most effective?

What are the most effective and efficient uses of community resources and social services for early childhood learning and development?

How can we better integrate services for young children with disabilities? How can community organizations assist with the transitions that children make between different settings within a day and over the course of years?
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[Chapter 2: An Agenda for the Nation]

[Student Learning]