Early Childhood Education

     

         Early childhood education is a branch of education theory which relates to the teaching of young children up until the age of about eight. Infant/toddler education, a subset of early childhood education, denotes the education of children from birth to age two. It emerged as a field of study during the Enlightenment, particularly in European countries with high literacy rates. It continued to grow through the nineteenth century as universal primary education became a norm in the Western world. In recent years, early childhood education has become a prevalent public policy issue, as municipal, state, and federal lawmakers consider funding for preschool and pre-K. It is described as an important period in child's development. It refers to the allround development of a child's personality. ECE is also a professional designation earned through a post secondary education program. For example, in Ontario, Canada, the designations ECE and RECE may only be used by registered members of the College of Early Childhood Educators, which is made up of accredited child care professionals who are held accountable to the College's standards of practice.

          The history of early childhood care and education refers to the development of care and education of children between zero and eight years old throughout history. ECCE has a global scope, and caring for and educating young children has always been an integral part of human societies. Arrangements for fulfilling these societal roles have evolved over time and remain varied across cultures, often reflecting family and community structures as well as the social and economic roles of women and men.

                         

         Children remember and repeat actions they observe.While the first two years of a child's life are spent in the creation of a child's first "sense of self", most children are able to differentiate between themselves and others by their second year. This differentiation is crucial to the child's ability to determine how they should function in relation to other people.The tools they learn to use during these beginning years will provide lifelong benefits to their success. Developmentally, having structure and freedom, children are able to reach their full potential.

          The Developmental Interaction Approach is based on the theories of Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, John Dewey and Lucy Sprague Mitchell. The approach focuses on learning through discovery. Jean Jacques Rousseau recommended that teachers should exploit individual children's interests in order to make sure each child obtains the information most essential to his personal and individual development. The five developmental domains of childhood development include.

          The way in which a child interacts with others Children develop an understanding of their responsibilities and rights as members of families and communities, as well as an ability to relate to and work with others.
Emotional: the way in which a child creates emotional connections and develops self-confidence. Emotional connections develop when children relate to other people and share feelings.

         In the past decade, there has been a national push for state and federal policy to address the early years as a key component of public education. At the federal level, the Obama administration made the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge a key tenet of their education reform initiative, awarding $500 million to states with comprehensive early childhood education plans. In addition, a largely Democratic contingent sponsored the Strong Start for America’s Children Act in 2013, which provides free early childhood education for low-income families. Specifically, the Act would generate the impetus and support for states to expand ECE; provide funding through formula grants and Title II Learning Quality Partnerships, III Child Care and IV Maternal, Infant and Home Visiting funds; and hold participating states accountable for Head Start early learning standards.

         Head Start grants are awarded directly to public or private non-profit organizations, including community-based and faith-based organizations, or for-profit agencies within a community that wish to compete for funds. The same categories of organizations are eligible to apply for Early Head Start, except that applicants need not be from the community they will be serving.

         Many states have created new early childhood education agencies. Massachusetts was the first state to create a consolidated department focused on early childhood learning and care. Just in the past fiscal year, state funding for public In Minnesota, the state government created an Early Learning scholarship program, where families with young children meeting free and reduced price lunch requirements for kindergarten can receive scholarships to attend ECE programs. In California, Senator Darrell Steinberg led a coalition to pass the Kindergarten Readiness Act, which creates a state early childhood system supporting children from birth to age five and provides access to ECE for all 4-year-olds in the state. It also created an Early Childhood Office charged with creating an ECE curriculum that would be aligned with the K-12 continuum.

         Early childhood care and education as a holistic and multisectoral service
Unlike other areas of education, early childhood care and education places strong emphasis on developing the whole child – attending to his or her social, emotional, cognitive and physical needs – in order to establish a solid and broad foundation for lifelong learning and well-being. ‘Care’ includes health, nutrition and hygiene in a warm, secure and nurturing environment; and ‘education’ includes stimulation, socialization, guidance, participation, learning and developmental activities. ECCE begins at birth and can be organized in a variety of non-formal, formal and informal modalities, such as parenting education, health-based mother and child intervention, care institutions, child-to-child programmes, home-based or centre-based childcare, kindergartens and pre-schools. Different terms to describe ECCE are used by different countries, institutions and stakeholders, such as early childhood development, early childhood education and care, early childhood care and development, with Early Childhood Care and Education as the UNESCO nomenclature.

         Economic benefits of early childhood care and education.Decades of research provide unequivocal evidence that public investment in early childhood care and education can produce economic returns equal to roughly 10 times its costs. The sources of these gains are (1) child care that enables mothers to work and (2) education and other supports for child development that increase subsequent school success, labour force productivity, prosocial behaviour, and health. The benefits from enhanced child development are the largest part of the economic return, but both are important considerations in policy and programme design.The economic consequences include reductions in public and private expenditures associated with school failure, crime, and health problems as well as increases in earnings.

       Curricula in early childhood care and education is the driving force behind any ECCE programme. It is ‘an integral part of the engine that, together with the energy and motivation of staff, provides the momentum that makes programmes live’. It follows therefore that the quality of a programme is greatly influenced by the quality of its curriculum. In early childhood, these may be programmes for children or parents, including health and nutrition interventions and prenatal programmes, as well as centre-based programmes for children.