Archive

• Season's Greetings — December 30, 2011
• Class Size — November 11, 2011
• Functional School Consolidation — October 28, 2011
• Effective Professional Development — October 14, 2011
• Kindergarten Readiness — September 30, 2011
• Social Media — September 16, 2011
• Magnet Schools — August 26, 2011
• Teacher Induction Programs — August 12, 2011
• Social-Emotional Learning — July 29, 2011
• College Faculty and Student Success — July 15, 2011
• School Turnaround Models — July 1, 2011
• Language Testing and ELLs — June 10, 2011
• Math Teacher Educational Background — May 27, 2011
• Urban Inclusion Models — May 13, 2011

The Reference Desk, using available evidence and research, provides quick-turnaround responses to questions submitted by education stakeholders around the Northeast and Islands Region. Every Friday, REL-NEI highlights one or two questions submitted to its Reference Desk.

Appropriate Curricula for Preschoolers

The Reference Desk has received a number of questions about the youngest of students—preschoolers. Questions have ranged from nutritional needs to instructional approaches and beyond. The Maine Department of Education, in particular, has submitted a number of questions about preschool. To assist the Maine DOE, Reference Desk researchers have search for research that can assist in the development of standards for public preschool that will help Maine create a “diverse delivery system” that can be implemented throughout the state. This week’s question deals with preschool curriculum.

Question

What does the research say is appropriate curricula for pre-kindergarten children? Specifically, what attributes of a curriculum are most important for developmentally appropriate practice?

Research Synopsis

Reference Desk researchers found limited research in this area, but did identify a few policy briefs that provide recommendations for curriculum construction and implementation in lower grades. For example, policy briefs about preschool curriculum reviewed by the Reference Desk emphasized sensitivity to age, cultural background and economic status, family involvement, communication and support, and prior evidence of effectiveness. To augment these findings, Reference Desk Researchers also included a practice guide in the list of resources below.

Publicly Available Resources

1. Preschool Policy Brief: Preschool Curriculum Decision-Making: Dimensions to Consider. Frede, E. and Ackerman, D. J.; National Institute for Early Education Research; March 2007; 16 pages.
   

   This report provides “a framework for decision-makers to use in evaluating which curriculum might be most appropriate for their specific preschool education program.”
   Recommendations include:

   • Curricular decisions should take into account children’s ages, behavior or learning needs, linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and economic status, as well as teachers’ prior training and experience and need for ongoing professional development.
   • Assessment systems should be specifically designed to measure whether learning objectives are being reached, engage children in meaningful tasks within a realistic context, and document changes over time.
   • For parent involvement, curricula should help build program-family partnerships and establish ongoing meaningful communication with families.
2. Effects of Preschool Curriculum Programs on School Readiness:  Report from the Preschool Curriculum Evaluation Research Initiative. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Research; July 2008; 442 pages.
   This report is the result of a 2002 Institute of Education Sciences “initiative to conduct rigorous efficacy evaluations of available preschool curricula. ... The goal of the initiative was to identify the impact of each preschool curriculum on five student-level outcomes (reading, phonological awareness, language, mathematics, and behavior) and six classroom-level outcomes (classroom quality, teacher-child interaction, and four types of instruction). This final report presents findings for the impact of each curriculum on student-level and classroom-level outcomes” (abstract). The findings are too numerous to list here, but pages XLI-XLIX contain a summary of major findings.

3. Developmentally Appropriate Curriculum: Best Practices in Early Childhood Education, 4/E. Kostelnik, M. J., Soderman, A. K., and Whiren, A. P.; Merrill Publishing; 2007; 504 pages.
   This practice guide presents standards, recommendations, and information on “all aspects of classroom life, including the roles of children and adults, the physical and social environments, and teaching and learning within multiple domains for children age three to eight.”

4. What Works Clearinghouse: Early Childhood Education. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences.
   The Early Childhood Education section of the What Works Clearinghouse provides “a range of publications that evaluate research on early childhood education interventions and instructional strategies designed for use with 3- to 5-year-old children. These products and strategies aim to develop competencies associated with school readiness, including language, literacy, math, and cognition.”

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