The Iowa Prekindergarten/Kindergarten Task Force prepared this report in response to the following charges: to develop recommendations for strengthening existing kindergarten programs and to design a plan for implementing appropriate prekindergarten programs. Among the report's recommendations are that: (1) the Iowa Department of Education…

The four major components of developmentally appropriate practice (curriculum, adult-child interaction, relationships between home and program, developmental evaluation) are used as the framework for analyzing differences and similarities of recommended practices in early childhood education and early childhood special education. (Author/DB)

In the course of an ethnographic case study of a rural, Appalachian Head Start program, the researcher became increasingly aware of the bias she brought to the project in favor of the universal applicability of developmentally appropriate practice. The study was an extension of Sally Lubeck's "Sandbox Society" (1985), and focused on…

An effort was made to expand parents' comprehension of developmentally appropriate programs through increased understanding of teacher observation in the early childhood classroom and teacher anecdotal reporting in family conferences. Corollary aims were to increase knowledge of children's learning styles to enable better school choices, and to…

This training guide is designed to enhance the skills of Head Start education staff in applying knowledge of how children grow and develop to planning, implementing, and evaluating activities and experiences in the center, at home, and during group socialization sessions. Each of the guide's modules details module outcomes, key concepts, and…

This digest discusses the findings of empirical studies on teacher-directed and child-initiated preschool programs. Three long-term preschool curriculum comparison studies--the High/Scope Preschool Curriculum Comparison, the Louisville Head Start Study, and the University of Illinois Study--were started in the 1970s. These studies indicated that…

Those who advocate for developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) do so based on the conviction that these classroom practices enhance children's development and facilitate learning. This ERIC Digest examines recent research on DAP and social-emotional and cognitive development, and describes what we have learned about DAP in early childhood…