Early Childhood Education

Throughout history there seems to be a trend that early childhood education was supplementary. Even today we still experience these similar issues. However there are a lot of other issues that come into play in early childhood education. Some issues that prevent children from learning are the child’s culture, learning disabilities, temperament, behavioral problems, and achievement gaps. We cannot control these issues from happening but we can adapt and cater to each child for some of these issues especially observing a child’s temperament. There are nine temperament traits that we should look for according to article 17 of the Annual Editions textbook. This is beneficial so that we can, “tailor our approach to each child’s cluster of temperament traits. As you tune into temperament, you are likely to become more successful in helping all children adjust to situations and persons in was that promote their social ease and competence.” (Annual Editions #17) Besides observing temperament, achievement gaps can come into play. “The achievement gap between poor and middle-class black and white children is widely recognized as our most important educational challenge.” (Achievement Gap handout) There are different types of gaps such as the reading gap, the conversation gap, the role model gap, and the health and housing gaps. “Young children of educated parents are read to more consistently and are encouraged to read more to themselves when they are older.” (Achievement Gap handout) When a child enters preschool or kindergarten, there is an achievement gap already with the reading level of middle and lower class children. This issue unfortunately affects the lower class children dramatically and this is only one of the different issues on the topic of achievement gaps. There are a few individuals that impacted early childhood education significantly and two of them are Maria Montessori and Jean Piaget. Maria Montessori still impacts early childhood education today and