Instructor’s Resource Manual
for
Child, Family, and Community
Family-Centered Early Care and Education
Sixth Edition
Janet Gonzalez-Mena
Napa Valley College, Emerita
Prepared by
Ruby Willey-Rendon
West Texas A&M University
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Copyright © 2013, 2009, 2006, 2002, 1998 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. This publication is protected by Copyright, and permission should be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. To obtain permission(s) to use material from this work, please submit a written request to Pearson Education, Inc., Permissions Department, One Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458, or you may fax your request to 201-236-3290.
Instructors of classes using Gonzalez-Mena’s Child, Family, and Community: Family-Centered Early Care and Education, may reproduce material from the instructor's resource manual for classroom use.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN-10: 0132902648
ISBN-13: 9780132902649
www.pearsonhighered.com
xviii
Table of Contents
Introduction
Using Early Childhood Principles with Adult Learners iv
Authentic Assessment of College Students vii
Creating a Syllabus or Contract ix
Some Useful Activities xi
Chapter-by-Chapter Ideas and Suggestions
Chapter 1: The Child in Context of Family and Community 1
Chapter 2: Societal Influences on Children and Families 4
Chapter 3: Attachment, Trust, and Parenting 6
Chapter 4: Supporting Families with Autonomy-Seeking Youngsters 9
Chapter 5: Sharing Views of Initiative with Families 12
Chapter 6: Working with Families of School-Age Children 14
Chapter 7: Understanding Families’ Goals, Values, and Culture 18
Chapter 8: Working with Families on Guidance Issues 21
Chapter 9: Working with Families on Addressing Feelings and Problem Solving 23
Chapter 10: Working with Families to Support Self-Esteem 27
Chapter 11: Working with Families Around Gender Issues 29
Chapter 12: Stress and Success in Family Life 31
Chapter 13: Schools and Early Care and Education Programs as
Community Resources 35
Chapter 14: Other Community Resources 38
Chapter 15: Social Policy Issues 41
Appendices
Appendix A: Ideas for Projects 44
Appendix B: Magazines, Newsletters, and Journals 48
Appendix C: California Competencies 52
xviii
INTRODUCTION
I am writing this manual based on my experience of teaching a class by the same name on and off for thirty years. The text grew out of my need to have specific information on socialization of young children to share with my college students, who were mainly early childhood preservice and in-service teachers, parents, and general education students. This manual represents my ideas on how to use the material in the text.
The manual starts with some general suggestions to the instructor including information on
• Characteristics and teaching approaches appropriate to adult learners
• Authentic Assessment of adult learners
• Creating a syllabus or contract
• Useful activities for the beginning of the term and closing activities
• General teaching/learning strategies
Those are followed by ideas and suggestions for each chapter, which includes
• A summary
• In-class activities
• Outside-of-class activities
• Ideas for portfolio artifacts related to the chapter
• Suggestions for using the personal-reflection items related to the chapter
Appendix A contains ideas for student projects
Appendix B is a list of relevant magazines, newsletters, journals and videos
Appendix C is the set of minimum competencies for the course, Child, Family, and Community,
required by the State of California as one of the core courses for Assistant Teacher or Associate teacher under the Child Development Permit.
USING EARLY CHILDHOOD PRINCIPLES WITH ADULT LEARNERS
I taught children before I taught adults and when I changed jobs, I decided to try in my new adult classroom the principles I followed in my work with young children. They worked! This guide is built around those principles, such as active involvement, the use of multiple modalities, learning from experience, provocation, empowering students by giving them choices, and taking a holistic approach to teaching/learning.
Active Involvement
Although young children need a number of hands-on experiences with concrete materials, active involvement for adults makes use of fewer concrete objects and more use of intra- and interpersonal opportunities to talk, listen, think, read, write and draw. Active physical involvement is also included for adults in this manual in such ways as role-plays and moving around for discussions in pairs or small groups. Guided imagery is an example of active involvement. Even though the body is still, the mind is experiencing in ways that make it seem as if the body is actively involved.
Multiple Modalities
Although lectures may be part of the delivery system of the material, this manual offers activities for students beyond listening and taking notes. As you read through it, notice the different ways that students are asked to use their bodies and senses (if not in real life, in imagination) along with observing, listening, talking, reading, writing, and drawing. Having a variety of learning activities helps address the various learning styles of students in the class.
Learning from Experience
Another early childhood principle is that students learn from their own experience. This is one way that students construct knowledge and incorporate new concepts. They also need help to sort out and make sense of those experiences, which can be done with their peers during small group discussions and also by the teacher if the class isn’t too large or the course load too big. Many of the exercises and activities in this manual ask students to share their personal experiences with others. These activities provide an important way of constructing knowledge, but they also give practice in self-reflection, an important skill for anyone working or living with young children. What we do today is often greatly influenced by what happened to us in our childhood. For that reason many of the suggested activities and discussion questions ask the students to go back to their own childhoods. Also, a “personal reflection” section is included for each chapter.
Provocation
One way to stimulate learning is to provoke the students with a variety of intriguing problems or engaging tasks. A single assignment won’t engage every student. When students are questioned, either by the teacher or by another student, they may feel challenged to go deeper. Leaving them questioning, concerned, or facing an issue that is left hanging, may well lead to research or soul searching on the part of the student. Provoking students is a delicate matter that needs to be balanced with respect and sensitivity for differences.
Observation
Just as children learn through observation, so do adults. Some students come with natural ability and others need to learn how to focus and pay attention. Observation is an important part of the teaching/learning process. For that reason a number of suggestions for observations are found throughout this manual.
Choices
This manual is based on choices, for instructors using it and for the students in their classes. Students are more highly motivated when they are engaged with something that has deep meaning or value to them personally as individuals. Giving choices is the way to make it more likely that every student will engage. Only by having enough choices can the learner can dig into areas of study that are personally meaningful.
A Holistic Approach
Consider the importance of putting learning in context in ways that puts knowledge to use, rather than expecting the student to collect isolated pieces of information. The more students can practice and process what they learn within the context of varied real-life situations, the more they will gain. Help them to perform authentic tasks and reach an understanding of how what they are learning applies in real situations. Authentic tasks in an area of true interest are a winning combination over workbooks, drills, tests, and other simplistic learning exercises and activities.
AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT OF COLLEGE STUDENTS
Just as early childhood professionals wish to assess children in holistic and authentic ways, so should adult educators consider the limitations of objective tests and other traditional devices for assessing knowledge. Teaching goes beyond the delivery of information and the evaluation of the students’ grasp of the material. That’s the “lecture, assign, and test” method and it is not the only way. For those of you who are teaching this class for early childhood education students, who are on their way to becoming teachers of young children, think of yourself as a role model. Teachers of adults who use multiple ways to approach and assess the teaching-learning of their students demonstrate good early childhood practice. Using only limited approaches such as lecture and reading assignments to teach about multiple ways to facilitate the learning process is far less effective. Teaching isn’t merely telling and assessing shouldn’t be merely testing.
The Project Approach
An approach used by early childhood educators that works well with adults is the project approach. The project approach is a time honored, in-depth teaching-learning process that has been applied equally well to children and adults. A project can be collaborative or individual and can last over days, weeks, or months as students pursue the study of something of particular interest to them. Both product and process can be emphasized, that is, if students set out to learn something, the learning itself can be documented as part of the product. Sometimes the documentation of the process becomes the whole product. Or the project can de-emphasize the process and let the product stand alone. A research paper assumes a process, but the process is not a visible part of the end product. The most effective projects are the ones students choose themselves, although teachers who are good at provocation can sometimes send students in a direction they might not have gone on their own. Using a project approach as an assessment device allows students to be evaluated in areas of study that most interest them. Projects can be done individually or collectively. Portfolio assessment and the project approach provide an answer to the problem of how to treat everyone fairly but not exactly the same. A list of ideas for projects can be found in the Appendix.
Portfolios
Portfolios are collections of samples of the student’s work that assess both product and process. The portfolio is a common assessment tool of early childhood educators and can be used with equal success for adults. Student portfolios with samples of work done for the class provide a wider range of ways to demonstrate knowledge and skills than do tests. Portfolios can be used as ongoing assessment devices, as well as a way to document the student’s best work, serving as an ending record of what the student accomplished in the term. In the following section each chapter contains suggestions for items to be included in the portfolio.
Journals
Encouraging or assigning students to keep journals increases their self-reflective thinking, which furthers their learning. Journals can be purely for the students’ own use and never read by the instructor, or they can be part of either the grading/feedback system–or both. If used as part of the grade, the instructor’s expectations should be clear as to how the journal will be graded. In my own experience, I want students to feel free to write what they want, so I grade on the amount of time spent and/or number of pages turned in each time. I do not correct journal writing unless a student asks me to. I never grade on the quality of the journal writing or make judgments about it. When the quality is so low that I can’t understand what is meant, I simply say or write that I don’t understand. Or I explain what I do understand and ask if it is correct. I have a different mind set for reading journals than for reading student papers.
My own purpose for using journal writing is to create a dialogue with individual students by reading what they have written and writing back to each on a regular basis. My responses include: giving feedback, personal reactions, asking questions, or sometimes making suggestions. I often ask students to look further or deeper into their experiences recorded in the journal. I sometimes ask them to analyze. This works well with some students and not so well with others. With large classes journal writing doesn’t work because there’s simply not enough time for me to do all that reading and writing. In a large class, I either have students read and comment on each other’s journals or I use journal writing as one choice among other assignments. Some students hate journal writing and are delighted to have a choice about it. The “personal reflection” suggestions connected to each chapter (see the next section) lend themselves to journal writing if you choose to use them that way.
CREATING A SYLLABUS OR CONTRACT
The purpose of a syllabus is to inform the students of the teacher’s expectations. It is more than an outline of topics, a calendar of dates, and list of readings. All those are part of the syllabus. The syllabus should include the requirements of the course and the kinds of evidence, which document that the students have met the requirements. The syllabus serves as a written agreement between the teacher and students and it binds both students and teacher. A flexibility clause can be written in to allow for changes that may come up. In some cases the teacher and students develop individual personalized contracts instead of using the teacher-produced syllabus. If a syllabus is used, it should include:
1. Basic Information such as course name, code number, number of credits, location, days and times when class meets, the instructor’s name, office location, office hours and telephone numbers.
2. Text and other materials should be listed and it should be clear what is required and what is recommended, and where to find them.
3. Course description, which can be out of the catalogue or paraphrased and personalized by the instructor in accordance with the description in the catalogue.