The Influence of Developmentally Appropriately Practices on Academic Essay

The Influence of Developmentally Appropriately Practices on Academic Success in Preschool - Essay Example This affirms some of the cherished beliefs among professionals with regard to good curriculum practices while challenging others. In addition to gaining new knowledge, early childhood programs have experienced several important changes in recent years. The number of programs continue to increase not only in response to the growing demand for out-of-home child care, but also due to recognition of the critical importance of educational experiences during the early years (Willer et al., 1991; NCES, 1993). For example, in the late 1980s, the Head Start embarked on the largest expansion in its history. This expansion extended into the 1990s with a wide variety of new services for families with infants and toddlers. The National Education Goals Panel established their first goal that by the year 2000 all children will have access to high-quality and developmentally appropriate preschool programs (NEGP, 1991). The welfare reform portended a greatly increased demand for childcare services fo r even the youngest children from families with very low income. Some characteristics of early childhood programs have also changed in recent years. Increasingly, programs serve children and families from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. It requires that all programs demonstrate how to understand and be responsive to cultural and linguistic diversity because culture and language are critical components of children’s development. Practices cannot be developmentally appropriate unless they are responsive to cultural and linguistic diversity. The context in which early childhood programs operate today is also characterized by ongoing debates about how best to teach children. They also discuss the kind of practices that is most likely to contribute to their development and learning. Perhaps, the most important contribution of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) position statement on developmentally appropriate practices was that it cre ated an opportunity for increased conversation within and outside the early childhood education field (Bredekamp, 1987). In revising this position statement, NAEYC’s goal is not only to improve the quality of current early childhood education practices, but also to continue encouraging the kind of questioning and debate among early childhood professionals necessary for the continuous growth of professional knowledge in the field. A related goal is to express NAEYC’s position more clearly, so that effort will not be wasted in unproductive debates about apparent rather than real differences of opinion. Since the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) first published the Developmentally Appropriate Practices (DAP) guidelines in 1987 (Bredekamp, 1987), later revised by Bredekamp and Copple (1997), the day-to-day experiences of millions of children have been affected. Over a million copies of the guidelines have been sold, and many teachers and ear ly childhood professionals have implemented DAP in their classrooms to some extent. While there is no