In your six- to eight-page paper,
Summarize the key points of the interview you conducted in Week 4.
Include an analysis of information you collected and how it impacted your understanding of the professional field of early childhood education.
Identify at least one key issue or trend in early childhood programs. (Refer to the Week 1 journal.)
Explain how it impacts the education of young children.
Analyze the learning approach that best matches your personal educational belief. (Refer to the Week 3 assignment.)
Explain how that approach contributes to quality programming for young children.
Describe the theory that best matches your personal educational belief. (Refer to the Week 3 assignment.)
Describe how that theory contributes to quality programming for young children.
Discuss how your knowledge of the developmental domains of early childhood influences your ability to adhere to developmentally appropriate practice (Refer to Week 4 for ideas.)
Devise a plan for including families into their child’s education.
Defend how your plan will benefit children, families, and yourself as an educator.
Explain your plans, at this point, for your future in early childhood education. Include the additional qualifications and competencies you will need to acquire in order to qualify for a career in the field of early childhood education.
Current Issues and Trends Journal
Watch the video Social, Emotional, and Physical Development
(Links to an external site.)
.
Review the Learning Approaches, Theory, and Practice
Download Learning Approaches, Theory, and Practice
template that you will use to complete this assignment.
Becoming a professional in the field of early childhood education requires you to become familiar with the various developmental theories, as well as research that studies the effectiveness of different learning approaches. In the learning over the last two weeks, you may have ideas about which theories and approaches you would like to use in your work with children. Using the steps below, sort through these theories and approaches to shape who you are as a teacher and what you believe about how children learn best. This assignment will also help you prepare for your final paper.
Step 1: Using the theories (Piaget, Vygotsky, Gardner, Skinner, Bandura, Freud, Erikson, and Kohlberg) and approaches (Creative Curriculum, direct instruction, High Scope, Montessori, Reggio Emilia, and Project approach) that were discussed in Weeks 2 and 3, fill in the table below by ranking each according to how you connected with them. “Most connected” at the top and “least connected” at the bottom. Delete the example row provided.
Theorists/Theories – Most connected to least connected
Learning Approaches – Most connected to least connected
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Step 2: Using the Learning Approaches, Theory, and Practice template,
Summarize the underlying principles or ideas for each of your top two theories and your top two approaches.
Explain why your top two theories and your top two approaches are important to understand and how each will benefit your work with children.
Discuss how your top two theories and your top two approaches will help you to be an effective teacher.
Summarize the similarities you see between your top theory and approach.
Step 3: Assignment Submission
Your completed Learning Approaches, Theory, and Practice Template
Must be six to eight slides (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA Style as outlined in the Writing Center’s How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation
(Links to an external site.)
.
Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice
(Links to an external site.)
resource for additional guidance.
Must include a title slide formatted in APA Style.
Must use at least one scholarly resource in addition to the course text.
The Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources
(Links to an external site.)
table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
Must document any information used from sources in APA Style as outlined in the Writing Center’s APA: Citing Within Your Paper
(Links to an external site.)
guide.
Must include a separate reference slide that is formatted according to APA Style as outlined in the Writing Center. See the APA: Formatting Your References List
(Links to an external site.)
resource in the Writing Center for specifications.
Carefully review the Grading Rubric
(Links to an external site.)
for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your assignment.
