Description

1.7 Assignment- Defining Your Personal Early Childhood Philosopy

Outcome 3: Develop goals for the children and an ECE program which reflects your philosophy

Outcome 4: Apply your personal philosophy statement for early childhood education to your program planning.

Part A – Early Childhood Philosophy Statement

So far in this module, you have reflected on your early childhood philosophy. At this time, you are required to write a 3-4 page paper on your early childhood philosophy.

Part A Instructions:

Use the following questions to help you think about your beliefs regarding teaching young children. It is not necessary to respond to all of these questions in your written philosophy, but you will want to take some time to think with some depth about each one. You may also decide to comment on additional issues as well.

• Why do you want to become an early childhood education teacher?
• What type of teaching position do you hope to obtain, and why?
• What are your strongest characteristics or talents as a potential early childhood educator?
• What are the factors that influence your decision to pursue this career?
• How do you view young children? What is the child’s role in his/her education? What do you believe about how young children learn?
• How do you view the role of the teacher? How will your views influence your teaching?
• What kind of environment do you hope to create in your future classroom? How does this relate to your basic beliefs about young children and learning?
• What do you hope young children will become? What do you want them to achieve, accomplish, learn, feel, etc.?
• What kind of feedback will you offer your students as they work? What kind of assessment will you use to be sure that students have met objectives?
• Looking back at the history of early childhood education, who or what approaches have the greatest impression on you, and why?
• How are you different now from the time that you wrote the autobiography paper at the beginning of the term?

In your philosophy, be sure to consider how you are a “professional early childhood teacher” (Katz, 1984).

Submitting your Assignment:  Proceed to the next page to submit Part A to the assignment drop box and to view the detailed grading rubricLinks to an external site. for this part of the assignment which can also be found in the Read Me First section of the course. 

Part B

Your personal philosophy should directly affect your program planning. Carefully consider, “What do I believe about children and how they learn?” The answer to this question will guide your planning process and affect the environment that you make available to children.

This part of your assignment will have two parts:

1. Review the early childhood philosophy statement that you wrote for Part A of this assignment. As you work your way through the content in the course, consider any changes you would like to make in your philosophy statement as a result of your learning in this course? If you do not see any places where you wish to make changes, then consider any shifts in emphasis that you feel would be important in your work with preschool children. For example, perhaps you didn’t see independence as that important in your philosophy statement but now you can see that this is very important for preschool children.
2. Based on your philosophy, formulate goals for a group of preschool children (3-5 year-olds – but choose a specific age). Include two general goals for children in each developmental area: social, physical, emotional, creative, cognitive, language. Provide specific, concrete goals which clearly outline the skills and abilities, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours the children will gain.

For this part of the assignment you need to keep in mind the Characteristics of a Developmentally Appropriate Program mentioned earlier in this module. Evidence of these seven characteristics should be included in your goals.