Theoretical Thursday: My Philosophy Statement

I've meant to write this for a while and as I am back on the job market, I wanted to have a comprehensive written document that describes my personal philosophy of Early Childhood Education. So here it is:

When I look at young children I see inordinate amounts of potential. I enjoy watching children think and believe that they are capable of forming complex ideas, testing out those ideas, and reflecting on them. It is our responsibility as educators and parents to nurture children’s learning in all domains; or “teaching to the whole child” using the current vernacular for Developmentally Appropriate Practice. As a contemporary educator, using developmentally appropriate practices promoted by the NAEYC such as hands-on, meaningful activities, play-based learning, positive guidance, providing routines that give children the opportunity to make choices, recognizing individual differences, promoting each child’s diverse background, and basing early educational experiences within a model of relationship-based care should be second nature, as they are commonalities between most of the existing approaches and frameworks for Early Childhood Education. 

Early Childhood Education has several goals that can be summarized simply; to promote optimal development of the whole child, cognitively, socially, and physically, and to instill a love for learning that will serve the child through the elementary years and beyond. These early experiences are important.
While there are many approaches to choose from, an eclectic approach focusing on the creation of thematic units has the most promise for exceeding the goals of Early Childhood Education by not only promoting optimal general development and instilling a love for learning, but also growing the knowledge base of children so that they can have even greater knowledge gains later on and recognize that multiple domains and skills are important for learning concepts, regardless of the theme. A multitude of evidence from research on cognitive development indicates that children (and adults) learn more about a particular topic when they have more existing knowledge to build on (Siegler, 2004). Carver (2001) believes that there are five meta-principles from cognitive psychology which influence learning such content knowledge; building on prior knowledge, making thinking explicit, emphasizing links, providing practice opportunities, and expecting individual variability. These meta-principles reflect principles from sociocultural, constructivist, and multiple intelligences theory. When teachers use thematic units, constructivist practices embedded within, such as providing authentic materials to promote active engagement, allow for individual variability, allow children to build on their own prior knowledge, as well as providing practice opportunities. Furthermore, when children are working in such hands-on ways, the teachers have created opportunities to facilitate children’s questioning, testing, exploring, and reflecting. Teachers can scaffold children toward making connections to prior experiences, set up the environment to pique curiosity, and engage children in active reflection about the experience, thus making thinking explicit. While teachers are ultimately responsible for planning a balance of child-initiated authentic experiences and teacher-directed activities, it is important for the themes themselves to stem from the children’s interests (even if a teacher piques that interest) and inquiries in the classroom. When they do, the children are engaged in their learning and also feel like they are empowered in making contributions (based on their existing knowledge) as well as having some control over what they are learning. I consider thematic units to be semi-emergent since the children’s interest drives the themes, but teachers guide the progression of the theme along with the children. I believe that children must feel connected to the theme and want to learn about it, but that teachers should play a role in gently guiding their exploration toward a logical progression of concepts that build on each other.

I like using thematic units because they create an excellent framework for engaging children in multidisciplinary activities that allow for collaborative, extended, projects from day to day that not only engage learning in a number of different ways, but also contribute to an organized body of knowledge.

Thematic units are rooted in the Project Approach, where children’s experiences progress through a structured system where, over time, they assess what they know and plan their project, and lastly, determine how to share what they learned. Teachers utilizing thematic units also use ample concept webbing, and might use the know-want-how-what charting to determine the course of the theme, adding their own elements to round out the theme as well. Using themes leads to children building a knowledge base as well as asking more questions, thus furthering the theme investigation. In this way, children truly develop a love of learning from an engaging thematic unit. When teaching using thematic units, teachers can also use the plan-do-review method popularized by the High/Scope method to promote the children’s autonomy and purposefulness in choosing, implementing, and reflecting on the activities, thus making their thinking explicit.
When themes are based on children’s world, they also lend themselves perfectly to open discourse about all children’s experiences, mediating a sense of openness and acceptance for all children and their families, who are often engaged and involved with the interesting themes.

In sum, I believe that thematic units create the perfect framework for children to learn important skills within a play-based model while increasing their knowledge of the world around them, and develop curiosity and love for learning.