Moving from either/or to both/and thinking in early childhood practice

Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth through Age 8

Some critical reactions to NAEYC's (1987) position statement on developmentally appropriate practice reflect a recurring tendency in the American discourse on education: the polarizing into either/or choices of many questions that are more fruitfully seen as both/ands. For example, heated debates have broken out about whether children in the early grades should receive whole-language or phonics instruction, when, in fact, the two approaches are quite compatible and most effective in combination.

It is true that there are practices that are clearly inappropriate for early childhood professionals -- use of physical punishment or disparaging verbal comments about children, discriminating against children or their families, and many other examples that could be cited (see Parts 3, 4, and 5 for examples relevant to different age groups). However, most questions about practice require more complex responses. It is not that children need food or water; they need both.

To illustrate the many ways that early childhood practice draws on both/and thinking and to convey some of the complexity and interrelationship among the principles that guide our practice, we offer the following statements as examples:

• Children construct their own understanding of concepts, and they benefit from instruction by more competent peers and adults.
• Children benefit from opportunities to see connections across disciplines through integration of curriculum and from opportunities to engage in in-depth study within a content area.
• Children benefit from predictable structure and orderly routine in the learning environment and from the teacher's flexibility and spontaneity in responding to their emerging ideas, needs, and interests.
• Children benefit from opportunities to make meaningful choices about what they will do and learn and from having a clear understanding of the boundaries within which choices are permissible.
• Children benefit from situations that challenge them to work at the edge of their developing capacities and from ample opportunities to practice newly acquired skills and to acquire the disposition to persist.
• Children benefit from opportunities to collaborate with their peers and acquire a sense of being part of a community and from being treated as individuals with their own strengths, interests, and needs.
• Children need to develop a positive sense of their own self-identity and respect for other people whose perspectives and experiences may be different from their own.
• Children have enormous capacities to learn and almost boundless curiosity about the world, and they have recognized, age-related limits on their cognitive and linguistic capacities.
• Children benefit from engaging in self-initiated, spontaneous play and from teacher-planned and -structured activities, projects, and experiences.

The above list is not exhaustive. Many more examples could be cited to convey the interrelationships among the principles of child development and learning or among the guidelines for early childhood practice.