This week, we explored the Global Children's Initiative's website, which is part of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. The goal of the initiative is to educate and inform policy makers about the science behind development, to support the science and research that drives the work we do in early childhood, and define a leadership role in global development of systems and policies for early childhood. They are focusing on three arenas: child development, child mental health, and children in crisis and conflict. Some of the activities the initiative has begun to engage in are improving preschool quality in Chile through effective interventions, measuring outcomes linked to malaria control in Zambia, and establishing child and family-based strategies to address mental health issues related to the HIV/AIDS crisis in Rwanda.
In addition, I reviewed a podcast from the World Forum Radio featuring George Forman. He has worked intensively in the area of how children think and has authored several books on Piaget. He states that it is important to think about the development of children's thought processes in terms of how things in their environment change and the ways they notice and adapt to those changes. Instead of teaching children concepts in one state only, such as "What color or shape is this?", we should allow children to explore and investigate the changing state of concepts, such as how colors change. In his experience with the Reggio Emilia model, he was impressed by the idea that even fantasy play could help children reflect on their thinking and that symbolization allows their thinking to become visible. I so appreciate this way of thinking when it comes to early learning. In our recent studies about the state of our programs in the U.S. and how we are moving toward a universal, standards-based approach, I fear that we will lose sight of the importance of play and exploration in our field. Children learn through playing and no matter how strict the standards or how much time we devote to direct instruction, nothing will replace the role of play and the valuable lesson it alone can teach.
References
http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/activities/global_initiative/
http://worldforumfoundation.org/wf/wp/current-work/world-forum-radio
The podcast sounds very interesting and insightful. I think it is wonderful how he discovered play-based approaches foster imagination and creativity.
ReplyDeleteIt was so interesting for me as well to learn about the work of health economist Günther Fink in Zambia and how in 2010, a new and culturally appropriate assessment tool was created, thanks to the work of Fink and his team, to assess 2,000 Zambian children for healthy development in order to generate hard figures that could hopefully be used for comparisons nationwide, in sub-Saharan Africa, and eventually to broader global comparisons (Lawton, 2011).
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed listening to the podcast by George Forman and hearing about his pedagogy regarding children's learning. I too have been positively impacted by the perspectives and work of educators in Reggio Emilia, Italy.
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