My Personal Philosophy of Early Childhod Education

Early childhood care and education is more than just babysitting. It’s more than occupying a child while his or her parents are at work. To me, it’s giving a child the chance to express themselves and to explore the world around them in a group setting. In this paper, I will discuss my personal views related to ECCE, my image of children, teachers and families, as well as introducing two theorists who have inspired my thinking. I will also briefly discuss two issues that I feel are affecting ECCE at this current time.

As previously mentioned, I believe that Early Childhood Care and Education has a purpose beyond babysitting and entertainment. Children who get the chance to participate in preschool, group daycare, etc.. get chances that many others might not – in the simple process of peer interaction. An only child at home with his parents will not get the same experiences as a child at home with three siblings. The former child will not get as many chances to learn through interaction with children his own age, as will the latter. Another opportunity that children who engage in ECCE programs get is the chance to use some materials that they might not be able to use at home. An example of this is simple. Not every family can afford to have puzzles, but most childcare centers have these in their room. I believe that the underlying purposes behind Early Childhood Education are these things: Giving children opportunities that they might not have available to them otherwise, in order to support the development of the child.

When I first entered the Early Childhood Care and Education Program, my image of children was drastically different from what it is now. I once saw children as people who needed adult guidance and help to do every day things, and to learn. I now see children as capable human beings. Capable of deciding what they want to learn, capable of asking for help when they realize that they need it. I think that this single image of a child as capable influences the whole of my practice. It influences how I see teachers, how I see the environment, the curriculum and everything I will do or say as an adult in relationships with children.

An example of how my image of the child affects my practice is how I view guidance. Because I see children as competent, capable humans, it wouldn’t make sense for me to tell children what to do in times of conflict. Instead, I like to point out factors that are important for solving conflict, and then in the end, give the child a choice as to what to do. For example, if the rule for going outside is that a child must have a coat on, and a child doesn’t want a coat on, she must be given two choices: Put your coat on and go outside, or don’t put it on, and stay inside. I think its important that a child's ability to choose is valued, and respected. If a child wants to go outside, eventually, I believe, she will want to put on her coat and go. Another example of guidance is when one child has done something to upset another, such as taking a toy away. I think it’s important, instead of forcing a child to apologize, to point out facts. “Look at your friend, she is very sad.” The next step would be to try and work out why we think she’s sad, and then the child will be able to solve the problem.

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934), a Russian Psychologist, suggested that children construct knowledge from their experiences of the world and people around them. I agree with this idea – I think that children learn, not through adults spouting facts at them, but through their own personal experiences with other children, adults, materials and the environment at large. In her article “What Young Children Should Be Learning” , Lilian Katz said “Young children therefore are most likely to be strengthening their natural dispositions to learn when they are interacting with adults, peers, materials, and their surroundings in ways that help them make better and deeper sense of their own experience and environment.” (Katz, 1992) So, is it effective to have children seated in rows, and citing the letters of the alphabet, when the sounds coming out of their mouths might not mean anything to them at all? Not according to Katz or Vygotsky.

That being said, teachers have a very important role in Early Childhood Education. I believe that a teachers responsibility is to create an environment in which learning can occur, an environment of trust and nurturing. When interacting with children, a teacher should be helping them to develop ideas through questions, and by giving them time and space to explore their ideas, and the freedom in which to develop their theories and process thoughts. So I don’t see teachers in this field as people who state fact after fact, expecting children to remember them and recite them, rather as co-constructors, co-learners, and co-explorers.

I believe that there is another teacher in an classroom, one that isn’t noticed all the time, but is equally important in the education of young children. I am referring to the environment, as this other teacher. In her book “Authentic Childhood”, Susan Fraser says “The spaces that teachers create for children seem to hold enduring memories for them that have a powerful influence on what they will value later in life. It’s important, therefore, that teachers think carefully about their own values and how they affect the decisions they make about the arrangement of space, equipment and materials in the classroom. Teachers are often unaware of the messages the environment is communicating to the children.” (Fraser P. 102) So what kind of teacher will my classroom environment be? I believe it’s important for an environment to support the children in their learning, and respect children as capable. An example of an environment that sees children as capable, is an environment where children have access to things they need. Where materials are child-sized, so that children can do things for themselves. An environment that supports children’s learning, I think, should be flexible. I believe it should be able to change just as much as the children who interact within it do. Materials should be free within the classroom, furniture should be able to move about, the pictures and documentation on the walls should also be flexible, in that they can be changed to suit the learning in the room.
As well as being a teacher, I believe in transparency in an environment. This goes beyond light and windows, but extends to the idea of being able to see what the children are exploring, without observing them. I believe a person should be able to walk into a room, and get a sense of where the children’s explorations are taking them, and what concepts they’re working through. This might look like the arrangement of the classroom, or pictures and art on the walls. If children are exploring the idea of camping, it would make sense to me that the materials in the classroom would reflect that.

Another important aspect of the environment is the idea of time: and this is why my preschool will not be theme based, moving from idea to idea every week. I believe that if children want to spend a month focusing on trees, then they should be allowed that time.

The idea of time leads to my thinking around curriculum. An emergent curriculum is one that builds upon the interests of children, and is not, by any means, an easy route to go down. It means constant observation, listening for even the tiniest clues, and being able to bring ideas together to form a curriculum based on your findings with the children. The idea of having a theme-based center might seem easier, all your lessons are planned out before the school year begins. But my feelings around themes are concerning the interests of the children. What if they are simply not interested in the theme you’ve chosen? I don’t believe that you can make a child learn something that he or she has no interest in. And then all of a sudden, there are projects that all the children have to do, activities they have to participate in, and all related to a subject they might not have a desire to know about.

I feel that there is another important aspect of ECCE that some people don’t recognize, and that is family. It’s important for us, as Educators, to remember that families have the biggest role in the lives of children, more than anyone else in that child's life. I believe that parents (or guardians) should be personally involved in the education of their child. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they need to be actively involved in every aspect of the school, but that they are aware of what their children are doing in school, that they show a genuine interest in it, and that they engage daily with their children about what happens at school. I think it’s important for a child to realize that his/her parents are involved in other areas of his/her life, outside of the home. In order for that to happen, a school must appreciate families for all they do, and make an authentic effort to involve them in whichever way they can. If that means sending home monthly newsletters, or having parent drop-ins, or even just having pictures up in the classroom of families, and honouring their work with their children. Having a space in which families feel welcome is very important to me.

My ideas surrounding families come directly from the work of Bronfenbrenner, who suggested that each person interacts on a daily basis with several different systems – and all of these systems have bi-directional relationships. For example, when a child comes to preschool, he cannot simply leave his home life at the door, it is a part of who he is, and therefore should be included in the school, which is also important to him. These systems also affect emotions. If a child has had a bad morning at home, due to his Mom having a bad night at work last night, then he’s not going to necessarily be able to forget it the moment he walks into the preschool. His feelings about the bad morning he had might just carry through the rest of the day. I think it’s important, as educators, to be able to recognize when a child is being affected by his/her other environments, and it’s also important to include all the other environments in the classroom. For example, doing things in the classroom that children might do at home. Awareness that the school is part of a community, and going out and interacting with it. Recognizing that the community is part of a global community, and having an understanding of that within the class as well.

Another theorist who inspires my thinking is Vygotsky. As I mentioned previously, he really supports the idea that children learn through social interaction. He suggests that development occurs best in a social setting, the kind we can provide at an ECCE center. He suggests that children construct knowledge, which I agree with entirely. Vygotsky’s ideas are what feed my thoughts around curriculum and environment. I don’t like the idea of children memorizing fact. What good does it do for them? I think that for children to really learn something, they have to have a chance to interact with it, with their peers and in a supportive environment. To touch it, to feel it, to taste and smell it, to hear it. To be able to share ideas with others around them, and from that, build knowledge about it from experiences they’ve had and shared.

There are several issues that are affecting ECCE at this time in Canada, I think two of them stem directly from a problem that is known worldwide. Poverty. It is my firm belief that every child has the right to Early Childhood Education, and it’s the right of the parents to be able to offer that to their children. However, with child care costs so high, the number of families who simply cannot afford it is alarming. Single mothers who can barely afford to live on their salary are sometimes forced to leave their children at home alone, because they can’t pay for childcare on top of what they’re already paying for rent and food. Because of the high cost of living today, it seems almost impossible to rise above the poverty line. If you have to pay for child care in order to work, it makes it seem even more hopeless. I believe that the government should have funding available to provide low income communities with high quality childcare centers, at little or no cost. Not babysitters, mind you. Early Childhood Educators. All children have a right to learn and the right to an environment that supports learning.

There are people who are below the poverty line, however, who can somehow afford childcare. For those people, their poverty is still an issue. Can the parents provide nutritious food for their children? Do they have the proper clothes to sent their child to school with? Can they even make it to school, or is taking the bus far too expensive nowadays? These are some questions that I really can’t answer at this time, nor do I have the solution. I feel if we, as educators, work together towards having universal childcare, then some of these issues might be solved.

I have covered a lot of information in this paper, some of it you might agree with and some you might not. I believe that a philosophy such as this really depends on how you view children. If you see children as needing your help with every aspect of their day, then your view of teachers, environment, curriculum, and even families will be drastically different than mine, as I see children as capable. My philosophy is centered around children. It’s centered around how they think, how they grow, how they develop in every sense of the world. It’s centered around how they feel, and what I feel they need.