SOCIAL EMOTIONAL 1

ADVOCACY

SOCIALEMOTIONALDEVELOPMENT

BY

MARIAIVEZAJ

ProfessorTiffanyOfeimu

ECE1515

11/30/16
 SOCIAL EMOTIONAL 2

Socio-Emotional Development in Early Childhood Education

Introduction

The National Association for the Education of Young Children has outlined ten standards

that any early childhood program is required to meet as a way of helping families to make

decisions pertaining to which preschool, kindergarten, or childcare center their children should

join. These standards guide the NAEYC accreditation system for early child hood programs and

it requires programs to meet all the standards to earn accreditation. More specifically, NAEYC 2

dictates that an education program should implement a curriculum that promotes learning and

social, emotional, physical, cognitive, and language development. The benefit of a well-written

or planned curriculum is that it acts as a guide for administrators and teachers and it helps them

to collaborate and use different approaches and activities to maximize a childs learning and

development. The curriculum should outline activities linked to goals for the learning content,

material to be used in the learning process and daily schedules and routines (Chandler, Lynette,

et al, p 52-63). However, NAEYC does not narrow down to which specific curriculums that a

program must adopt. The education program has the responsibility of designing a unique

curriculum or adopts a commercial available curriculum that meets all the ten NAEYC standards.

Advocacy Challenge in Early Childhood Education: Inequalities in Early Childhood

Education Systems

The NAEYC expects that childhood care providers provide multicultural and diverse

experiences in learning and development of children. However, these children have been raised

in families and communities and their parents choose to take them to early childhood centers and

childcare homes that are similar to the childs background. Parents have a tendency to choose
 SOCIAL EMOTIONAL 3

early education programs that match their personal views of discipline and education. They

prefer their children to learn in an environment where education providers share the same

language or religion.

Most early education public institutions are a reflection of homogenous communities in

language, ethnicity, and socio economic status. Challenges arise when traditional early childhood

education systems are expected to offer the children with learning and development experiences

outside their race as well as teach them to be respectful and accepting of racial, religious, and

economic differences. The early childhood education system is also faced with inappropriate

approaches that have created bias, inequality and past injustices (Brink, Sonja, pp 1-5). As much

as the socio political constructs are beyond the control of young children, children are unable to

cope in the unfair education system, which consequently increases the rates of dropouts and

juvenile delinquency.

There are many important stakeholders in the early childhood education namely teachers,

policy makers, parents and the children. Early childhood teachers are often under-paid, under

resourced and most people do not give them the recognition they deserve. Early childhood

educators develop schedules and enforce routines that foster learning, allow time for

unstructured outside play and rest. Preschool teachers ensures that the childs environment is safe

using encouraging words that boosts confidence and ensure that equipment and toys used to learn

do not pose a threat to the children. A preschool teacher also provides age appropriate discipline

and supervision, plans, and implements play experiences and lessons, observe and communicate

behavior to parents, and address any cultural or special needs (Haskins, Ron, pp 1-3). For

example, if a child belongs to a culture that does not allow him to celebrate a holiday, the teacher
 SOCIAL EMOTIONAL 4

must respect the childs background and make an alternative play or learning activity for the

child.

Parents have an important role to play in early childhood education. Parents should be

more involved in their childrens learning because it helps to extend teaching beyond the

confines of the classroom. Parent engagement creates a more positive experience for children,

which translates to excellent performance. Parent involvement in early childhood educations

helps a parent to gain a sense of childs competency and weaknesses (Brink, Sonja, pp 6-8). The

parent is then able to extend the structured and play experiences of child to real world activities

that occur at home with the aim of improving a childs ability and confidence.

Policy makers are very significant stakeholders in early childhood education because they

have the power to influence how other stakeholders interact. Therefore, before a policy maker

develops an education program or curriculum, he must take into considerations the

transformations in the society and families with young children. There has been an increase in

the amount of effort and time put in by parents at work, which has resulted in children getting

into the childcare system from a very tender age. Despite the strong economy, economic

hardships prevail as well as other factors such as social and financial disparities, which affect the

choice of early education programs and schools. Policy makers have the responsibility of putting

into consideration transformations in the society when developing policies aimed at improving

parent engagement, developing holistic curriculums and increasing resources to fund learning

and development activities.

 SOCIAL EMOTIONAL 5

Literature Review

Americas commitment to core family values of primacy and privacy has contributed to

the problem of inequity of opportunity and outcome. Normally, inequity is linked to a childs

socio-economic status, home language, or race. These factors contribute to restriction of access

to ECD services, quality of services, quality and competency of the educators, the nature and

application of regulations, amount and distribution of resources, standards that guide

instructions, and quality and thoroughness of expectations. These inequalities also begin before

the school starting age. Studies by child psychologists reveal that a childs home environment

influences a childs development and her readiness for school, which creates disparities that

persist throughout their school lives.

Socio economical status of a family is a major cause of disparities in ECD. Children in

families that receive welfare have half the vocabulary that their peers from rich families. The

difference in the vocabulary growth among the three year olds is accounted for the quantity and

quality of vocabulary used by their parents (Haskins, Ron, pp 3-5). Most associations between

poor academic performance and low economic status are explained by the poor quality of home

learning environments. Low socio economic status affects achievement and ability measures but

not behavioral, physical and mental health measures. Once the children enter school, those from

poor families display substantial gaps in academic and cognitive competencies compared to their

advantaged peers. Socio economic status of families account for more variations in cognitive

skills compared to other factors such as ethnicity, access to childcare, home reading and

television habits.
 SOCIAL EMOTIONAL 6

Social economic factors are largely intertwined with ethnicity where Hispanic and

African American children perform lower than their Caucasian counterparts are. The average

math achievement is 21% and 19% lower for African American and Hispanic than white

children. Most of the achievement gap was observed between children of color and whites began

at entry level into kindergarten (Haskins, Ron, pp 5-8). The data is an indication that children

from low-income families fall behind in their performance at school from a very early age.

American early childhood education is funded from state contributions, federal programs,

corporate sponsorships, and parental fees. Federal support for early care an education emanates

from other organizations such as Child Care and Development Fund, Temporary Assistance to

Needy Families, and No Child Left Behind initiative. The latter supports education for special

needs students at each level of education. In theory, federal funding is driven and dispersed

according to the greatest need. However, there are major discrepancies when it comes to how

much money is allocated to early childhood education. For example, Head Start Bureau allocate

$9,016 per child to Washington while Oklahoma got $5,809. Variations in state is attributed to

the fact that the grant is a fraction of the state median income which varies from state to state.

Therefore, poor families in poor states are less likely to receive childcare subsidies unlike poor

families living in wealthy states. A lot of discretion has been left to states when it comes to

controlling federal funds, which has created major discrepancies for TANF, NCLB, and special

education funds allocated to ECD.

Discrepancies in funding increase when it comes to comparison of state prekindergarten

investments. Texas spends $478 million, New York spends $246 million while states such as

South Dakota and Utah do not have state funded kindergarten plans (Coltrane, Scott, and
 SOCIAL EMOTIONAL 7

Behnke, pp 419-425). Differences in states investments extend to the durability of their

investments because most of these funds are vulnerable to funding cuts. Funding cuts indicate

that there is no consistency in how states increase or decrease childhood investments or

guarantee for early childhood programs. These inconsistencies cause problems for policy makers

and implementers because limited funds force them to turn full time teaching to half time jobs at

minimum wage. A reduction in funding has increased child teacher ratio, forced elimination of

school trips, limitation of the arts curriculum as well as purchase of fewer learning materials and

resources. Fluctuations in planning and implementation and inequitable investments in early

children education have compromised the quality that the children receive.

The equity challenge has prevailed in early childhood education because of problematic

infrastructure that supports ECD. Policy makers are more willing to support direct services to

children with more gains because they are visible to the public. However, policy makers remain

reluctant to support the ECD infrastructure. They give more attention to funding and less to

matters of governance, regulation, and accountability, which leaves ECD programs with limited

support. ECDE lacks local or state boards to support and govern programs, lacks consistency in

teacher certificate requirements, lacks a comprehensive accountability system, and even a quasi-

mechanism that facilitates consistent and durable funding to ECD schools (pp 427). Lack of

attention to the ECD infrastructure jeopardizes the equality and quality of the education

programs.

ECD programs exist in a market economy as well as a public subsidized non-system.

However, there is need to create long-term visions to maximize the efficiency of public and

parental resources as the ECD expand. Governance entities from different regions should
 SOCIAL EMOTIONAL 8

develop approaches such as establishment of a state level board of ECE that corresponds to the

state education board. States should establish private and public partnerships to handle education

program coordination. These governance entities vary considerably across states and they vary in

their funding, scope, durability which results in different approaches to ECE.

Regulation is a process where a nation assures its citizens a minimum standard of quality

in childcare centers. Enforcement of childcare regulations is important because they are directly

linked guidelines to program quality, which is linked to child outcomes (pp 429-432). States

refuses to make the regulations stricter in cases where they exist. In fact, some states have

exemptions provisions for early childhood education systems and special education settings.

Other states allow exemption of programs from licensure if they operate half day, which

excludes most ECDE programs. States differ in how they enforce and monitor regulations where

most states enforce regulations intermittently because of shortage of staff. Most of the

monitoring staff have limited training on their role. Regulation affects quality of ECDE programs

because the irregular coverage, inconsistent monitoring, and enforcement create equity and

quality differences across states.

Policy makers want to be certain that their investments pay off in terms of childrens

readiness and learning outcomes given the fact that so much ECDE funding comes from the

states. Therefore, accountability has become a new requirement for ECDE through early learning

standards. However, early learning standards vary from state to state where some states place

emphasis on language and cognition while others focus on holistic sectors such as physical and

socio-emotional development. Differences of the state standards reflect the different expectation

for children, which creates a challenge to promoting equity. An accountability system should also
 SOCIAL EMOTIONAL 9

collect relevant data and use it in the decision making process (pp 435-37). If used efficiently, the

accountability system promotes more outcomes that are positive for preschool children and

differences in state assessments and expectations only exacerbate inequities depending on the

childrens state of residence.

Plan of Action

Multicultural education goes beyond a curriculum or a lesson plan. It goes beyond

children and teachers in the classroom wearing costumes or enacting cultural experiences. Policy

makers should recognize that multicultural education helps to reduce the impact of racial and

socio emotional differences in the learning outcomes. A multicultural education in ECDE is a

continuous approach to working with teachers, parents and children that helps children to learn

about their background and those of children who are different from them. Multicultural

education allows children to view the education center as a representation of their families and

communities. The most important factor in diversity learning is constant exposure to experiences

and activities that destroys stereotypes, helps the children to enjoy differences, build tolerance

and acceptance, and create many methods to complete a task or solve a problem.

Policy makers should allow educators to design education activities that includes the

community and allows the children to be involved in the community (Murray, PP 89-103). This

helps to identify and develop their identities in a diverse and tolerant community.

i. Walks outside school environment

Policy makers and curriculum designers have a limitation in funding and are likely to

revert to learning experiences that require limited resources. For example, teachers should be
 SOCIAL EMOTIONAL 10

allowed to include walks in the community as part of the curriculum where children collect

natural objects, observe traffic signs and names of buildings, and create art work inspired by the

community. The school should equip the teacher with a camera that can be instrumental in taking

photos, which are later to be developed to create articles and pictures in the parents newsletter

and class books.

ii. Career day

The school should organize an annual career day where the parents speak about their

professions to the children. Alternatively, the policy makers fund the school to facilitate a

visit to the parents places of work. Such programs expand a childs view of the community

while at the same time create a sense of belonging and pride when they talk about their

parents professions. When children visit their parents places of work, they develop a

community map of work locations. Students can later make presentations on what they aspire

to become in the future which creates a sense of purpose in their learning process.

iii. Visits to unique community resources and organizing field trips

The teacher should plan and receive resources from policy makers and school

administration to familiarize the students with community resources such as parks, farms,

zoos and museums to expand the childrens world at their different developmental levels. The

school should plan at least one field visit that complements a curriculum unit every month.

For example, if a curriculum is titled caring for the environment, the teacher and school

administrators should organize a field trip to a park where the children learn about the

different species of plants and animals. Field trips create concrete and meaningful

experiences, knowledge, and skills in young learners. After the field trips, there should be
 SOCIAL EMOTIONAL 11

open discussions about what the children learned as well as visual tests where they match

pictures to an animal or plant to test their understanding on a particular curriculum unit.

iv. Collective Responsibility

The school administration and preschool teachers should develop collective responsibility

plans once per term where the children participate in activities such as picking trash and

planting flowers. To reward all the students, they should host events that provide collective

achievements the student have done as a whole. This does not single a child out or reward

or praise, but collectively recognize the class.

Conclusion

Given the uncertainty in policy making and funding, it is important that the school

administration and policy makers develop early childhood education programs that are

inexpensive (Brink, Sonja, pp 8-11). However, these programs should not compromise the

quality of education but instead improve learning experiences of the young learners as well as

make them feel good about themselves and help them embrace their differences. Learning

experiences should challenge stereotypical thinking and they should be implemented within the

curriculum and not just when it is convenient.

 SOCIAL EMOTIONAL 12

References

Brink, Sonja. "Employing a multifocal view of ECD curriculum development at a rural

settlement community in South Africa: Themes from a'design by implementation'early

childhood education programme." South African Journal of Childhood Education 6.1

(2016): 1-11.

Chandler, Lynette K., et al. "The alignment of CEC/DEC and NAEYC personnel preparation

standards." Topics in Early Childhood Special Education 32.1 (2012): 52-63.

Coltrane, Scott, and Andrew Behnke. "Fatherhood and family policies." Handbook of father

involvement: Multidisciplinary perspectives 2 (2013): 419-437.

Haskins, Ron. "American policy on early childhood education & development: Many programs,

great hopes, modest impacts." Behavioral Science & Policy 2.1 (2016): 1-8.

Murray, Jaclyn. "Learning to live together: an exploration and analysis of managing cultural

diversity in centre-based early childhood development programmes." Intercultural

Education 23.2 (2012): 89-103.