Higher education practitioners must prepare early childhood educators to understand and implement all components of developmentally appropriate practice and provide equitable learning opportunities for all young children.
Fully achieving DAP guidelines and effectively promoting all young children’s development and learning depends on the establishment of a strong profession with which all early childhood educators, working across all settings, identify.
Developmentally appropriate teaching practices encompass a wide range of skills and strategies that are adapted to the age, development, individual characteristics, and the family and social and cultural contexts of each child served.
Observing, documenting, and assessing each child’s development and learning are essential processes for educators and programs to plan, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of the experiences they provide to children.
Because early childhood education settings are often among children’s first communities outside the home, the character of these communities is very influential in children’s development.
NAEYC defines “developmentally appropriate practice” as methods that promote each child’s optimal development and learning through a strengths-based, play-based approach to joyful, engaged learning.
Each and every child, birth through age 8, has the right to equitable learning opportunities—in centers, family child care homes, or schools—that fully support their optimal development and learning across all domains and content areas.
This position statement, one of five foundational documents developed by NAEYC in collaboration with the early childhood profession to advance high-quality early learning for all young children, defines DAP.
Educators who engage in developmentally appropriate practice foster young children’s joyful learning and maximize the opportunities for each and every child to achieve their full potential.
The extent to which educators can fully implement developmentally appropriate practice depends, as efforts to advance equity also do, on decisions at many levels, including program administration, professional development, policy, and more.
NAEYC’s guidelines and recommendations for developmentally appropriate practice are based on the following nine principles and their implications for early childhood education professional practice.
NAEYC congratulates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on being declared the 46th President and 49th Vice President of the United States of America, respectively.
Just as we lay the foundations for print literacy starting at birth, early childhood educators have a vital role to play in laying the foundations for the more sophisticated media literacy skills we expect of adolescents and adults.
We encourage you to adopt and adapt the activities below and also to share on social media, using the hashtags #earlyedvoter and #ECEwins or via email at [email protected], how you are engaging children, families, and staff around the importance of votin
