Developmental education for young children: Concept, practice and implementation

Bert van Oers*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Book / ReportBook (Editorship) Academic

Abstract

Developmental Education is an approach to education in school that aims at promoting children's cultural development and their abilities to participate autonomously and well-informed in the cultural practices of their community. From the point of view of Cultural-historical Activity theory (CHAT), a play-based curriculum has been developed over the past decades for primary school, which presents activity contexts for pupils in the classroom that create learning and teaching opportunities for helping pupils with appropriating cultural knowledge, skills, and moral understandings in meaningful ways. The approach is implemented in numerous Dutch primary schools classrooms with the explicit intention to support the learning of both pupils and teachers. The book focuses especially on education of young children (4 - 8 years old) in primary school and presents the underpinning concepts of this approach, and chapters on examples of good practices in a variety of subject matter areas, such as literacy (vocabulary acquisition, reading, writing), mathematics, and arts. Successful implementation of Developmental Education in the classroom strongly depends on dynamic assessment and continuous observations of young pupils' development. Strategies for implementation of both the teaching practices and assessment strategies are discussed in detail in the book.

Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationDordrecht/New York
PublisherSpringer
Number of pages302
ISBN (Electronic)9789400746176
ISBN (Print)9789400746169
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2012

Publication series

NameInternational perspectives on early childhood education and development
No.7

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