80 MD2 Assignment 3

     

       

         

     

                               

                                           

                                         

                                       

                                 

                                       

                                                                       

                               

                                     

                             

                                         

       

                                             

                                         

                                                 

                                     

                                                                     

                                           

               

The Developmental Continuum

The Developmental Continuum Program Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SUE  BREDEKAMP: I'm Sue Bredekamp, and my  entire professional life has   been devoted to supporting best practices  in early  childhood programs  and in teacher  preparation. And I'm best known for  developing developmentally   appropriate practice, and writing a lot about that. Any  early  childhood professional will say  that the foundation of developmentally  appropriate practice, and of all early  childhood practice, is  knowledge of child development. And what does  that mean? What does  it mean to understand child development? Well, what it means  is, simply, that there is  a continuum  of development from  infancy, ongoing certainly  past age eight-­-­ but for  early  childhood, that's the range that we think  about-­-­ and infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and on into kindergarten, and the primary  grades. And if teachers  don't understand that continuum, they  can't really  understand what will be achievable for  children in general, at any  particular   point in their  lifespan, and what will also be challenging for  them.

And what's developmentally  appropriate for  a child is  not just what they  can do now, but what they're going to do next. What you want them  to be capable of doing. We don't meet children where they  are in order  to just keep them  there. We meet them  there to help them  make continued progress. And so understanding that continuum  helps  teachers  to assess  whether  children are on the right track, and to make decisions  about how they  can support their  learning and ongoing progress. And it's really  important as  we understand that developmental continuum  and all the various  domains-­-­ social, emotional, physical, cognitive, language-­-­ that we realize children's brains  aren't segmented in these little parts. Their  brain is  holistic, and they  are a whole child. And so whatever  we do around supporting their  development has  to be approached from   an integrated model.

I think  anyone who has  ever  either  had a child, or  even been a child, understands   that all children are different. And one of the things  that we understand about development is  not just this  developmental progression, but the fact that children are all individual in the way  they  progress  through that. And in some cases, they   may  be ahead in language, and not so where you would expect them  to be socially. And so, again, that's why  it's important to look  at the whole child. I think   above my  two great nephews, and when they  were three years  old, one was   literally  not-­-­ he was  really  still talking in two-­word utterances, and the other  was   literally  speaking in paragraphs. And the two-­word utterance little boy, Joey, it turned out he had a hearing challenge. He was  not hearing everything, and therefore, his  language was  not progressing at the rate that it would've been had he been getting the input he needed. So with that medical intervention, his   language took  off. And so teachers  can make assessments  of where children are developmentally, only  if they  really  understand that full developmental continuum.

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