This essay entails a critical review of the origins, discourses and contemporary manifestations of NAEYC's enduring commitment to 'developmentally appropriate practice' (DAP); and proposes a reconceptualisation of DAP as an open question and incentive for place-based collaborative inquiry. Brief discussion of ECE's early history highlights…

Spatial ability is a form of intelligence where a person demonstrates the capacity to mentally generate, transform, and rotate a visual image and thus understand and recall spatial relationships between real and imagined objects. The aim of this paper is three-fold: (1) to review related empirical studies on spatial abilities for young children…

Parental deployment and frequent relocations exert significant stress on children from military families. This stress can be extremely disruptive to young children's social, cognitive and behavioural development. It can result in negative social, emotional, and physical responses. There are a broad range of programs, resources, and services…

The amount of intentional, instructional, purposeful play has decreased in primary grades, and didactic, test-driven instruction has increased. Emerging neuroscientific evidence is beginning to highlight the significant effects the toxic stress from poverty has on developing brains. Almost half of American children can be considered to come from…

Debates on how best to educate young children have been raging over the last 100 years--more often fuelled by ideological preferences rather than empirical evidence. To some extent this is hardly surprising given the difficulty of examining pupil progress in a systematic and comparative way. However, the introduction of a new child-centred…

The aim of this article is to introduce an effective, evidence-informed, and developmentally appropriate framework of practice for Environmental Education (EE) in the early years, with the ultimate goal being to achieve environmental sustainability. Initially, the author will briefly examine the current state of EE in the early years,…

Children's books must primarily be appropriate for children so that they could be a significant stimulus in children's lives. In other words, it is essential that the concepts child reality, literary criteria and artist sensitivity be reflected in books in order to create children's books. From birth to age 6, the fact that children's books are…

This brief presents a promising approach to supporting young children's early math skills development. The approach synthesizes the influence of parents, the home environment, and children's health care providers, and is being implemented by Reach Out and Read. Reach Out and Read is a program in which health care providers give young children new…

Through the multiple languages of the arts, many ideas about sustainability can be explored with young children. This paper discusses the ethical issues involved in the implementation of a research study that uses artist Chris Jordan's confronting images about sustainability. Jordan's images typically depict tens of thousands of objects such as…

Today's children need learning opportunities from cradle to career that build the knowledge and skills necessary to thrive in our interconnected and constantly changing world. This means putting 21st century skills, including creativity, innovation, critical thinking, and problem solving, at the center of learning, both in and out of school. As…

The brief explains how exposing young children to early math concepts supports their development of reasoning and problem solving skills and later success in and out of school. It describes the unique ways each of five family engagement programs funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation developed, tested, and integrated early math learning into…

This brief presents a promising approach to supporting the development of early math skills in young children. The approach synthesizes the influence of parents, the home environment, and children's health care providers, and is being implemented in Washington State by Reach Out and Read. Reach Out and Read is a program in which health care…

Selective sustained attention (SSA) is crucial for higher order cognition. Factors promoting SSA are described as exogenous or endogenous. However, there is little research specifying how these factors interact during development, due largely to the paucity of developmentally appropriate paradigms. We report findings from a novel paradigm designed…

Although developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) has strong merits, there are considerations pertaining to its development and implementation which must be raised. In order for educators to include diverse voices of young children, the time has come for a new conversation to unfold introducing developmentally universal practice (DUP). With this…

This article examines critical issues related to teacher decision-making in early childhood music classrooms. Through the story of one teacher's experience, we take a closer look at specific criteria to guide decision-making, and strategies to deepen awareness of young children's needs in the music classroom and guide instructional…