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 to make sure each child obtains the information most essential to his personal and individual development. The five developmental domains of childhood development include: • Physical: the way in which a child develops biological and physical functions, including eyesight and motor skills • Social: 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. • Language: the way in which a child communicates, including how they present their feelings and emotions, both to other people and to themselves. At 3 months, children employ different cries for different needs. At 6 months they can recognize and imitate the basic sounds of spoken language. In the first 3 years, children need to be exposed to communication with others in order to pick up language. "Normal" language development is measured by the rate of vocabulary acquisition. • Cognitive skills: the way in which a child organizes information. Cognitive skills include problem solving, creativity, imagination and memory. They embody the way in which children make sense of the world. Piaget believed that children exhibit prominent differences in their thought patterns as they move through the stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor period, the pre-operational period, and the operational period. To meet those developmental domains, a child has a set of needs that must be met for learning. Maslow's hierarchy of needs showcases the different levels of needs that must be met the chart to the right showcases these needs.
Froebel's play theory Friedrich Froebel was a German Educator that believed in the idea of children learning through play. Specifically, he said, "play is the highest expression of human development in childhood, for it alone is the free expression of what is in the child's soul." Froebel believed that teachers should act as a facilitators and supporters for the students's play, rather than an authoritative, disciplinary figure. He created educational open-ended toys that he called "gifts" and "occupations" that were designed to encourage self expression and initiation.
Reggio Emilia approach Reggio Emilia is an educational philosophy that originated in the town of
Reggio Emilia in northern Italy, shortly after
World War II. It was developed under the leadership of educator Loris Malaguzzi, who believed that children are capable, curious, and full of potential. Central to the Reggio Emilia philosophy is the idea that children learn best through self-directed, experiential learning in relationship-driven environments. Young children are encouraged to explore their environment and to express themselves not limited to written, spoken, or signed forms, but can also be symbolic, metaphorical, imaginative, logical, and relational. Teachers in Reggio Emilia are viewed as co-learners and collaborators, guiding rather than instructing, and documentation of children's thinking and learning is a key practice to make learning visible.
Maria Montessori's approach Maria Montessori was an Italian physician who, based on her observations of young children in classrooms, developed a method of education that focused on independence. In
Montessori education, a typical classroom is made up of students of different ages, and the
curriculum is based on the students'
developmental stages, which Montessori called the
four planes of development. Montessori's Four Planes of Development: • The first plane (birth to age 6): During this stage, children soak up information about the world around them quickly, which is why Montessori refers to it as the "absorbent mind". Physical independence, such as completing tasks independently, is a main focus of the child at this time and children's individual personalities begin to form and develop. • The second plane (Ages 6–12): During this stage, children also focus on independence, but intellectual rather than physical. Children in this plane also begin to develop abstract and moral thinking. • The third plane (Ages 12–18): During this stage, adolescents shift to focus on emotional independence and on the self. Moral values, critical thinking, and self-identity are explored and strengthened. • The fourth plane (Ages 18–24): During this last stage, focus shifts to financial independence. Young adults in this plane begin to solidify their personal beliefs, identity, and role in the world. Vygotsky's theory emerged in the 1930s, and is still discussed today as a means of improving and reforming educational practices. Vygotsky also developed the theory of the
zone of proximal development. This theory ties in with children building off prior knowledge and gaining new knowledge related to skills they already have. It further describes how new knowledge or skills are taken in if they are not fully learned, but are starting to emerge. A teacher or older friend lends support to a child learning a skill, be it building a block castle, tying a shoe, or writing one's name. As the child becomes more capable of the steps of the activity, the adult or older child withdraws supports gradually, until the child is competent completing the process on his/her own. This is done within that activity's zone—the distance between where the child is, and where he potentially will be. In each zone of proximal development, they build on skills and grow by learning more skills in their proximal development range. They build on the skills by being guided by teachers and parents. They must build from where they are in their zone of proximal development. Vygotsky argued that since cognition occurs within a social context, our social experiences shape our ways of thinking about and interpreting the world. People such as parents, grandparents, and teachers play the roles of what Vygotsky described as knowledgeable and competent adults. Although Vygotsky predated social constructivists, he is commonly classified as one. Social constructivists believe that an individual's cognitive system is a resditional learning time. Vygotsky advocated that teachers facilitate rather than direct student learning. Teachers should provide a learning environment where students can explore and develop their learning without direct instruction. His approach calls for teachers to incorporate students' needs and interests. It is important to do this because students' levels of interest and abilities will vary and there needs to be differentiation. However, teachers can enhance understandings and learning for students. Vygotsky states that by sharing meanings that are relevant to the children's environment, adults promote cognitive development as well. Their teachings can influence thought processes and perspectives of students when they are in new and similar environments. Since Vygotsky promotes more facilitation in children's learning, he suggests that knowledgeable people (and adults in particular), can also enhance knowledges through cooperative meaning-making with students in their learning, this can be done through the zone of proximal development by guiding children's learning or thinking skills . Vygotsky's approach encourages guided participation and student exploration with support. Teachers can help students achieve their cognitive development levels through consistent and regular interactions of collaborative knowledge-making learning processes.
Piaget's constructivist theory Jean Piaget's
constructivist theory gained influence in the 1970s and '80s. Although Piaget himself was primarily interested in a descriptive psychology of
cognitive development, he also laid the groundwork for a constructivist theory of learning. Piaget believed that learning comes from within: children construct their own knowledge of the world through experience and subsequent reflection. He said that "if logic itself is created rather than being inborn, it follows that the first task of education is to form reasoning." Within Piaget's framework, teachers should guide children in acquiring their own knowledge rather than simply transferring knowledge. According to Piaget's theory, when young children encounter new information, they attempt to accommodate and assimilate it into their existing understanding of the world. Accommodation involves adapting mental
schemas and representations to make them consistent with reality. Assimilation involves fitting new information into their pre-existing schemas. Through these two processes, young children learn by equilibrating their mental representations with reality. They also learn from mistakes. A Piagetian approach emphasizes experiential education; in school, experiences become more hands-on and concrete as students explore through trial and error. Thus, crucial components of early childhood education include exploration, manipulating objects, and experiencing new environments. Subsequent reflection on these experiences is equally important. Piaget's concept of reflective abstraction was particularly influential in mathematical education. Through reflective abstraction, children construct more advanced cognitive structures out of the simpler ones they already possess. This allows children to develop mathematical constructs that cannot be learned through equilibration – making sense of experiences through assimilation and accommodation – alone. According to Piagetian theory, language and symbolic representation is preceded by the development of corresponding mental representations. Research shows that the level of reflective abstraction achieved by young children was found to limit the degree to which they could represent physical quantities with written numerals. Piaget held that children can invent their own procedures for the four arithmetical operations, without being taught any conventional rules. Piaget's theory implies that computers can be a great educational tool for young children when used to support the design and construction of their projects. McCarrick and Li found that computer play is consistent with this theory. However, Plowman and Stephen found that the effectiveness of computers is limited in the preschool environment; their results indicate that computers are only effective when directed by the teacher. This suggests, according to the constructivist theory, that the role of preschool teachers is critical in successfully adopting computers as they existed in 2003.
Kolb's experiential learning theory David Kolb's experiential learning theory, which was influenced by John Dewey,
Kurt Lewin and Jean Piaget, argues that children need to experience things to learn: "The process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combinations of grasping and transforming experience." The experimental learning theory is distinctive in that children are seen and taught as individuals. As a child explores and observes, teachers ask the child probing questions. The child can then adapt prior knowledge to learning new information. Kolb breaks down this learning cycle into four stages: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. Children observe new situations, think about the situation, make meaning of the situation, then test that meaning in the world around them.
Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory Similar to Kolb's experiential learning theory, which emphasizes a child's relationship with the world around them,
Urie Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory considers the ways in which systems at various levels impact an individual's development. The five levels, in his view, are: • The
individual: these influences (genetics, age, etc.) take place within the individual to influence their development. • The
microsystem: a specific setting that impacts the individual in a habitual way (family, classrooms, peers, etc.). • The
mesosystem: this describes how microsystems relate to one another. For example, school demands so much time and attention it reduces the influence available by one's peer group. • The
exosystem: this system comprises settings which do not involve an individual but still exert an impact on their development. A child's parent getting a new supervisor at work that does a poor job and increases this parent's life stress would occur in the exosystem, as the child may never enter this location, but still be significantly affected by the changes to their parent's mood, behavior, and/or availability. • The
Macrosystem: this level captures the values and structures that shape all the systems and relationships in previous levels. This describes not only governmental policies, but also the broader attitudes that a society uses to judge what is deemed desirable or acceptable. One of the chief reasons Bronfenbrenner conceptualizes development in this way is not merely to highlight the role of one's context, but to illustrate the multiple determinants of one's developmental trajectory while also capturing their individual agency. This approach blends disciplines of biology, psychology, sociology, and anthropology to more fully capture the complexity of development. One of the main contributions that Bronfenbrenner's work had on the American childcare system was through his co-founding of the federal
Head Start program. ==Practical implications of early childhood education==