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At Early Childhood Australia's National Conference in October this year, Joan Brink introduced delegates to the possibilities of the US HighScope curriculum. In this article, HighScope's Senior Director of Curriculum Development, Ann Epstein, explores what makes the curriculum so unique and successful.
Finding the recipe that works.
Many years ago, before there were good local bakeries in her town, Diana decided to bake her own bread. The ingredients looked simple enough (flour, yeast, water, sugar), and she'd been whipping up apple muffins and banana loaves for years. How hard could it be to bake bread?
She tried various recipes in cookbooks and magazines. Sometimes the dough didn't rise, either because the water was so hot it killed the yeast or so cold that the yeast never became 'active'. It was two months before Diana realised bread flour and cake flour were different. Arms aching after kneading, she was discouraged when the dough was as sticky as when she'd started. Every loaf smelled great coming out of the oven, but the results varied from inedible to incredible.
About a year later, books on bread-baking became popular. She tried several, without much luck, but finally found one that worked for her. It began with simple recipes and advanced to more complex ones. Each step explained 'why' as well as 'how'. Two weeks after buying the book, Diana had learned more than she had in a year of experimenting on her own. Now she was confident that she could bake a reliably tasty loaf.
Diana's story has a lot to tell us about learning to work with young children. Like Diana, early childhood educators can, and often do, learn by trial and error, in bits and pieces. But it's easier when learning follows a logical order and we don't have to figure it all out by ourselves. Just as Diana needed a resource that helped her learn in an organised way, those who work with young children can benefit from using a proven curriculum as a guide.
The advantages of using a curriculum
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A curriculum allows individual educators to benefit from the collective expertise of many. So much learning happens in children's early years – from understanding how books work, to figuring out how to share, to mastering the zipper on a jacket. Learning how to support all these aspects of development can, like baking bread, be surprisingly complex. It would be nearly impossible for a single person or even the entire staff of one agency to invent a complete curriculum from scratch. Developing a curriculum takes years of work by a group of thoughtful practitioners and researchers who pool their knowledge and talents. Practitioners who use the curriculum are drawing from this bank of collective wisdom.
A curriculum developed through a process of rigorous study and research has another major advantage over do-it-yourself approaches – it can offer evidence of effectiveness. It is not enough to adopt a curriculum in the belief that it is good. There must be proof that it works. Program administrators, taxpayers, parents and educators all need reassurance that the curriculum will truly benefit young children.
Flexibility is another advantage that may be offered by a curriculum. Using a single, proven curriculum does not mean that education is rigid. In fact, the approach should adjust to fit the children and community being served. Rather than providing a script to follow, a good curriculum assumes that the individuals using it have talents and ideas. It enables educators to build on the knowledge that already exists in the field, add in their own experience and observations, and then modify what they do for the individuals and groups in their program.
So, to sum up, we've discussed several key benefits – expert guidance, evidence of effectiveness and flexibility – that a curriculum can offer to early childhood educators. As the reader has probably guessed by now, we have a particular curriculum in mind that meets these criteria. The rest of this article will give you an overview of the HighScope Preschool Curriculum, one of the best known and most comprehensive early childhood curriculum models.
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About HighScope's curriculum
Active learning – whether planned by adults or initiated by children – is the central element of our curriculum. Children learn through direct, hands-on experiences with people, objects, events and ideas. Trained adults who understand child development and how to scaffold the important areas of learning in the preschool years offer guidance and support.
The HighScope Preschool Curriculum includes:
- a set of teaching practices for adult–child interaction, arranging the classroom and materials, and planning the daily routine
- curriculum content areas for three- to five-year-olds that define important skills and abilities in five areas:
- approaches to learning
- language, literacy and communication
- social and emotional development
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- physical development, health and wellbeing
- arts and sciences (mathematics, science and technology, social studies and the arts – visual, dramatic and musical).
- assessment tools to measure teaching behaviors and child progress
- a training model to help teachers implement the curriculum effectively.
What is the evidence that HighScope is effective?
Over 40 years of research shows that HighScope programs advance the development of children and improve their chance of living a better life through adulthood. Perhaps the best known research on the curriculum is the HighScope Perry Preschool Project study, which compared low-income children who attended our program with those who did not.
As adults, preschool participants had higher high-school graduation rates, higher monthly earnings, less use of welfare and fewer arrests than those without the program. These benefits added up to a US$16 return to society for every dollar spent on the program.
What is unique about HighScope?
The curriculum has contributed far too many innovations to the early childhood field to cover them all here. But a few elements particularly stand out. One is HighScope's emphasis on adult–child interaction. Modern child development theory stresses that learning is a social, interactive process.
HighScope, perhaps more than any other curriculum, defines specific adult strategies that harness the learning power inherent in the adult–child relationship. HighScope's interaction strategies are based upon the principle of ‘shared control' and enable teachers and children to be active and equal partners in the learning process.
A second unique feature of HighScope is the plan-do-review process, in which each child plans what he or she will do, carries out (and modifies as needed) the planned activity, and then reviews and discusses this afterwards with a teacher and a small group of peers. This process makes children's play more purposeful and encourages them to reflect, solve problems and develop new skills. It is also the model we use to train adults, and that teachers use to plan for children each day.
Ann Epstein
Senior Director of Curriculum Development
HighScope Educational Research Foundation
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To learn more about HighScope curriculum, publications and training opportunities, we invite you to visit our website at www.highscope.org.
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Learnings from High/Scope: Enriching everyday practice is an informative guide offering practical experiences of the HighScope approach in Australian settings. To order or find out more, please visit www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/rip0802 or freecall 1800 356 900.
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Every Child magazine – vol. 14 no. 4, 2008, pp. 12–13
Don't forget, Every Child is tax deductible for early childhood professionals
You can purchase this issue of Every Child magazine now.
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