The Role of Early Child Care & Education.
Table of Contents
Introduction 2
The Role of Early Child Care and Education 3
The Role of Early Child Care and Education 3
The Role of Parents/Caregivers in Early Child Care and Education 4
Role of the Teachers 5
Role of the Professionals (health care providers) 5
Prevention and Intervention for special needs in early childhood 6
What is early childhood intervention (ECI)? 6
Why early childhood intervention (ECI)? 7
What is early childhood prevention? 7
How to undertake prevention and intervention? 7
Activities for early childhood care and education 8
Multiple Choice Questions 9
Fill in the blanks 10
TRUE or FALSE Questions 11
Conclusion 12
References 13
Introduction
Inclusive education is to teach our children how to live and work together, not only tolerating but valuing differences in culture, ethnicity, language, background and, yes, even dramatically different cognitive, social-emotional, and sensory-physical abilities, we almost always teach the opposite – systematic forms of segregation, oppression and elitism. (Loreman, Deppeler and Harvey, 2006).Children with special educational needs all have learning difficulties or disabilities that make it harder for them to learn or access education than most children of the same age. These children may need extra or different help from that given to other children to the same age (DfES 2006a: n.p. as cited in Westwood, 2007. p. 1).The inclusion isn’t only at schooling years of a child but it is also the early childhood stages before the age of six in Bhutanese context.
This write up is mainly of early childhood care and education (ECCE) and early childhood development (ECD) and their role. It also comprises of prevention and intervention for special needs in early childhood that can bring about development of a special needs students as of the other non-disabled child. Inclusive early childhood care & development strategies are another component of our assignment. The activities and questions like multiple-choice questions, fill in the blanks and true/ false encompass this write up.
Early childhood care and education refers to a wide range of programs, all aimed at the physical, cognitive and social development of children before they enter primary school-theoretically from birth to about age 7 or 8.. Early childhood development (ECD) also refers to the combination of physical, mental, and social development in the early years of life. (Mishra, R.C.2011).
Prevention and intervention for special needs in early childhood and Inclusive Early Childhood Care & Development strategies could be the key measures for early childhood care, education and development.
It is vital for educators and curriculum designer to consider and implement inclusively valuing all the differences.
The Role of Early Child Care and Education
The terms such as early childhood, child development, and child care, and early education contributes to early childhood development (Mishra, 2011, p. 93). Early childhood encompasses the period from conception until the age of 6 or 7(p. 93). Child development a multifaceted, integral, and continual process of change as children become able to handle ever-more complex thinking levels of moving, thinking, feeling, and relating to others(p. 93-94). Childcare consists of the actions taken by caregivers in the home or a nondomestic setting to ensure children’s survival and to promote their growth and development (p. 94). Early education, or early learning, is the process of acquiring knowledge, skills, habits, and values through experience, experimentation, reflection, observation, and/ or study and instruction during early childhood (p. 94).
According to Mishra (2011), the early years of childhood are critical for formation of intelligence, personality, and social behavior, and that a child who develops well during these years will have greater opportunities in life, be more productive, and, very likely to have a better citizen(p.95). Therefore, the care and education for early childhood stages are vital for their development. For the better care and education for early childhood the various agencies, personalities, professionals plays vital role for development.
For the young, care and education should be inseparable. For the very first, children’s care should be attentive to capacity to learning and development, while their early education focus on social skills and development. There are different roles and responsibilities for early childcare and education. The role includes the parents, teachers and professionals in early childhood care and education.
The Role of Early Child Care and Education
The general role of early childhood care and education includes to:
Ø Enable children to be "more ready" for primary school education.
Ø Identify of special needs like visually impaired, dump, duped, etc.
Ø Able to begin education at an appropriate starting age.
Ø Pay attention to the individualized needs and progress of the child.
Ø Improve group socialization,
Ø Inculcate of healthy habits,
Ø Stimulate of creative learning processes,
Ø Monitor communication development and to ensure that all children normal from birth as it’s integral of all aspects of development.
Ø Avail Treatment of communication disorders as early as possible.
Ø Develop a system that identifies, from an early stage, the potential and needs of all students.
Ø Identify of needs and improvement of health and nutrition.
The Role of Parents/Caregivers in Early Child Care and Education
Parents are a child’s first and most important teachers. They play most important role in life raising their children through several means for early childhood development (Mishra, 2011)
According to Mishra (2011), parents also have important role in helping professionals make decisions about assessment and treatment goals for the child. They also play crucial role in the identification and assessment process. Informing and involvement of the parent provides opportunity for them to be active participants in the care for their child.
A parent or caregiver can have a vast impact on a child’s development by the amount of time that is spent talking with and reading to a child.
Every caregiver can, in appropriate cultural ways, help infants and toddlers grow in linguistic skills, play skills, social skills, emotional skills, motor skills via play, etc.
Their roles in special needs child would include:
1. Receive the information on typical language development in infants and early childhood.
2. Indentify possible communication disorders.
3. Frame steps to take if possible communication disorders persist.
4. To be an active partner with health care providers.
5. Be informed advocates.
Role of the Teachers
The general role of teachers in the early child includes:
1. Provide a safe psychological climate and environment
2. Be fair and consistent in dealing with lapses from good behavior
3. Know each child individually by name
4. Show a knowledge of children’s background
5. Be aware of individual learning needs
6. Accept children’s initiatives in work or activities
7. Get down physically to the children’s level
8. Provide a range of exciting sensory experience in the classroom
9. Encourage warm classroom relationships between pupils
Mishra (2011) cites the roles (p. 47-52) as follows:
1. Create the outdoor passion environment that enables to ask open-ended questions to prompt, coach and support a child’s exploration.
2. Support and encourage children’s interests, use their questions to guide them in understanding the world, which they live.
3. Spend time observing the play patterns of the children.
4. Provide art and manipulative- Room for art projects, manipulative materials, puzzles, games, animal figures for easy learning.
5. Provide sensory table for sensory experience like sand, water, bottle, mud, etc, as they would love to play kitchen chores.
6. Avail reading materials and areas- Choose books that support curriculum, themes, children’s interests, and topics about nature like weather, insects, animals and plants.
Role of the Professionals (health care providers)
The general roles are:
1. Receive the information on typical language development in infants and early childhood.
2. Indentify possible communication disorders.
3. Frame steps to be take if possible communication disorders persist.
4. To give accurate information to parents and families about disorders like hearing, visual, communication, speech, cognition, etc.
5. Recognize the possible impact of disorders for development of a child.
Prevention and Intervention for special needs in early childhood
The early childhood prevention and intervention can have a lasting effect on intellectual capacity, personality and social behavior. Early prevention and intervention means services that work with children and their families identifying and addressing needs at an early stage to prevent the difficulties that they can experience from arising. It aims to ensure that children and young people receive the right support at the right time, so that problems are addressed well before things reach ‘crisis point’.
The early childhood intervention (ECI) has the provision of programes run by multidisciplinary teams of professionals for early detection, assessment and treatment of impairment. This could prevent, reduce or eliminate disabling effects (U.N. 1993, Rule 2 §1). Early childhood care and education programmes for children aged up to six years ought to be developed and/or reoriented to promote physical, intellectual and social development and school readiness. These programmes have a major economic value for the individual, the family and the society in preventing the aggravation of disabling conditions (UNESCO, 1994, §5).
What is early childhood intervention (ECI)?
Guralnick (2001) as cited in European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education (research, 2005) defines ECI as a system designed to support family patterns of interaction that best promote child development. For Guralnick, the focus is placed upon parent-child transactions, family-orchestrated child experiences and on the help provided to parents in order to maximize their child’s health and safety. ECI is a composite of services/provision for very young children and their families, provided at their request at a certain time in a child’s life, covering any action undertaken when a child needs special support to:
• ensure and enhance her/his personal development,
• strengthen the family’s own competences, and
• promote the social inclusion of the family and the child.
These actions are to be provided in the child’s natural setting, preferably at a local level, with a family-oriented and multidimensional teamwork approach.
Why early childhood intervention (ECI)?
For Shonkoff & Meisels (2000), the main objectives are to: promote child health and well-being; enhance emerging competences; minimize developmental delays; remediate existing or emerging disabilities; prevent functional deterioration; promote adaptive parenting and overall family functioning. According to Blackman (2003) considers that “the goal of early [childhood] intervention is to prevent or minimize the physical, cognitive, emotional, and resource limitations of young children with biological or environmental risk factors”.
What is early childhood prevention?
Early prevention includes measures preventing disorders or circumstances that might lead to disability (WHO, 1980). According to Mrazek and Haggerty (1994) it refers to “interventions that occur before the initial onset of a disorder”. According to Agency research it also to reduce the number of existing cases of an identified problem by acting after the onset of the problem, but before it is fully developed and to reduce the complications associated with an identified problem or condition, to limit or to reduce the effects of a disorder or disability by acting when these are already present.
How to undertake prevention and intervention?
As cited in Agency research (2005) they need to either ensure systematic monitoring and follow-up of the child (mainly in the case of biological risk factors) or to take active care of the family (mainly concerning social risk factors). The difficult role that prevention services need to perform has to be emphasized: their task is to succeed in prevention of further difficulties (which is not easy) and to be aware of risks related to the ‘wait and see’ attitudes.
Activities for early childhood care and education
1. The teacher must provide the typical learning opportunities like free conversation with the class members, talking freely with the peers, visiting the staffroom time and again, learning in co-operative group work in the classroom, eating lunch together with peers, parents and teachers, etc. These activities would help early learners to develop the social skills which can later help them to be active learners.
2. Make students involve direct experience like looking after pets, helping their neighbors, give responsibility for a classroom chore, involve in the play, and indirect experience like narrating a stories and making them to read stories like “ The Wild Things”, a pathetic and loving stories which can help children to cope with their emotions. Via such activities children can learn to understand the feelings of losing the pets, can have confident in peer group and t play anger as mother or father.
3. In order to develop the reading and writing skills, families or care givers can:
· Listen and talk with their children a lot about values with humor.
· Read out loud the interesting and evoking articles to their children every day.
· Keep reading and writing materials where children can reach them on their own so that they can avail at anytime.
· Involve you and children how they use reading and writing to learn, have fun, and get jobs done.
These activities can be designed and applied at our home or at play field for throughout the life of children.
4. For the visually impaired children the care givers/parents and teachers can:
· Narrate very educational valued stories, and nursery rhymes.
· Teach the contents of the subjects through musical forms.
· Make children to sing good lyric songs or them to sing their favorite songs.
· Teacher should be able to passionate listener and understandable to the children’s speech, psychic, behavior and their emotions.
Such activities for inclusive children can help to develop normally as they grow adult.
5. Hearing disabilities children may also be taught by:
· Perform different kinds of relevant acts/play in front the students confidently.
· Screening a number of good animation video clips or movies to the hearing disabilities children.
· Teacher should be able to organize very interesting role play or drama among the students by keeping noble theme.
These activities are usually viable and applicable for those with hearing problem in the class so that their learning development is never become disorders.
Multiple Choice Questions
The following questions are assigned with four options. Choose the most appropriate one and write the answers separately.
A. According to (Mishra, R.C.2011), Early childhood development (ECD) also refers to:
1. The combination of physical, mental, and social development in the early years of life.
2. The combination of physical, mental, and social development in the adult years of life.
3. The combination of physical, mental, and socio-emotional development in the early years of life.