39 Quality on Early Childhood Education Programme

G. Baradha

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1 Introduction

 

Traditionally in India the early childhood years (from prenatal to five years) are considered to lay the foundation for inculcation of basic values and social skills in children. Consequently in the past much of the early care and education of the child was informal, within the family and largely through grandmothers caring practices, telling stories and traditional infant games, handed down from one generation to the next. With growing urbanization and increase in women participation in the work force across the country among all socio-economic groups, There has been a change in social structures and practices in the last decades. As a result, given the constant pressures and challenges of day to day existence is today’s complex society, the possibilities of “Informal Early Care and Education” for the young child at home is becoming less of a reality. It was this changing social context, over the years, which laid the seeds for the introduction of concept of early childhood care and education in the country.

 

Objectives

 

This particular lesson enables the students to

  • Know the onset of early childhood education
  • Quality in early childhood education
  • Determining factors in early childhood education

2 Onset of early childhood education

 

Since the 1980’s, early childhood education (ECE) has been defined as the education of young children from birth to age 8. Typically, ECE programmes contain several age related areas ranging from infancy, preschool, kinder garten and primary grades. Such programmers not only vary by age but by characteristic of the child in each stage, by purpose, and by institutional sponsorship – they are offered in a variety of settings under diverse modes and wide practices.

 

Significant short term benefits were evident on children Intelligence Quotient (IQ). Long term outcomes of ECE programmes have shown that children from low-income families who enrolled benefited a lot. As for long term gains children were more successful in areas of school achievements. Such programmes have also been associated with positive outcomes in cognitive, social and emotional development in children. These fact promoted government and educators to begin investing their respective resources in the development and enhancement of learning opportunities for young children.

 

The beginning of the 20th century witnessed the setting up of the Maria Montessori system in early 1930’s. Pioneers like Tarabai Modak and Gigubi Badheka, who started pre-school centres and also teacher training institutions along the Montessori lines, provided further encouragement to early childhood education. These effort through sporadic and undertaking by the voluntary organization, laid the foundation for the awareness and acceptance of the value and need for an organised thrust on learning in the early childhood years. In 1946 Maria Montessori met Mahatma Gandhi, who asked her to ‘Indianize’ her method to make pre-school education available to a large majority of children. Till India become independent of the British rule in 1947, the need for ECCE, particularly in the form of pre-school education, was primarily fulfilled by voluntary agencies and private institutions. The first government initiative in this area was setting up a central social welfare board in 1953, which started a grant-in-aid scheme for voluntary agencies. To start preschool centres

 

*       Why early childhood care and education is important?

 

The first six years of a child’s life have been recognized as a most critical ones for optimal development. Since the process of human development is essentially cumulative in nature, investment in programmes for the youngest children in the range of 0-6 years has begun to accept as the very foundation for basic education and life long learning and development. Over the years, the field of child care, inspired by research and front line experiences, has developed into a coherent vision for early childhood care and education.

 

It is now undisputedly acknowledged that the systematic provision of early childhood care and education (ECCE) helps in the development of children in a variety of ways which include

  • improving group socialization
  • inculcation of healthy habits
  • stimulation of creative learning process, and
  • enhanced scope for overall personality development

Thus ECCE must be promoted as holistic input for fostering psycho-social, nutritional, health and educational development of young children. For children belonging to under privileged groups and for first generation learners in the society, ECCE is essential for countering the physical, intellectual and emotional deprivation of the child. From the perspective of the community, ECE is support for the universalisation of elementary education, and also indirectly influences enrollment and retention rate of girls in primary schools by providing substitute care facilities for younger siblings.

 

The preschool education component of ECCE has demonstrated a positive impact on retention rates and achievement levels in primary grades. However, it is important to note that attendance in pre-schools does not automatically guarantee better academic achievement. Quality aspects, such as healthy environment, stimulating activities and encouraging, care giving teachers are imperative to ensure all round development in children. There is sufficient evidence to indicate that early childhood care represents the best opportunity for breaking the inter-generational cycle of multiple disadvantages such as chronic under-nutrition, poor health, gender discrimination, low socio-economic status and promotion of child rights.

 

*       National Policy on ECCE

 

Early Childhood care and Education (ECCE) found its due place in the policy frame work in India way back in 1986 when an exclusive chapter of the national policy on education was devoted to it. ECCE was defined in the policy, as an integrated and holistic concept of care and education of children between 0-6 years from socially disadvantaged groups . This provision was seen as the foundation for life and a support service for girls and working mothers. ECCE was further conceptualized as early stimulation for the children under 3 years and a more organised centre based ECCE programme (early childhood education) for 3-6 years old.

 

In India, the national policy on education (1986) recognizing the crucial importance of early childhood education, recommended strengthening ECCE programmes not only as an essential component of human development but also as a support to universalisation of elementary education and a programme for women’s development. Thus, Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS), the largest government managed programme was introduced and functioning successfully. It is an inter-sectoral programme which seeks to directly reach out to children from vulnerable and remote areas and give them a head-start by providing an integrated programme of health, nutrition and early childhood education.

*  The package of services includes:

  • Supplementary nutrition
  • Immunization
  • Health check ups
  • Referral Services
  • Non-formal preschool education
  • Nutrition and health education for children below 6 years

This policy on ECCE covers the above services under three stages:

 

1.  First stage (prenatal to one month)

  • Safe motherhood
  • Safe delivery
  • Sex ratio
  • Birth weight
  • Breast feeding (colostrum)

 2.  Second stage (one month to three years)

  • Reduction of infant mortality rate
  • Nutritional security
  • Child immunization

3.  Third stage (3to6 years)

  •  Early childhood education

*       3 Conceptual framework for qualitative early childhood education programme

     *     4 Determining factors in early childhood education

 

*  Establishment of ECCE Centre

  • Identifying local needs and location and safety of the centre and nature of the services
  • Sources of fund raising and community involvement
  • Ensure provision of essential facilities
  • Budgeting and mapping of resources
  • Ideal teacher to child ratio and managing large groups
  • Regularity, punctuality and discipline of the ECCE centre
  • ECCE teachers with training and motivation and other support staff

*       Designing and maintaining outdoor and indoor space

  • Design of sufficient space as source of learning and interaction such as small group seating and floor space with room for independent work
  • User friendly equipment and infrastructure to promote inclusive barrier free environment
  • Storage for materials, equipment and regulated access by children for self help skills
  • Display and orientation for children to engage in self directed tasks such as art material or read in a book corner or play with props and dolls
  • Optimizing and innovative use of space specially organizing the centre in small areas with limited resources
  • Outdoor play-space and sports for outdoor activity

*       Materials, indoor and outdoor equipment

  • Designing areas as inclusive spaces for differently abled such as wheel chair users, walkers
  • Toys-reusable, improvised and local materials are resources for activity corners
  • Selecting play materials, musical instruments, puppet theatre, devising methods for child-friendly access, use and clean up
  • Materials (improvised and brought) for wide range of activities such as cooking, planting and observing
  • Mapping agencies for children’s materials, books, toys and outdoor resources
  • Adequate storage and innovative waves to store such as in trunks or gunny bags in community based ECCE centres, maintenance and replenishment of materials

         * Maintenance of records in ECCE settings

  • Need for maintaining different kinds of records such as child related, teacher related and material related
  • Register for attendance, admission fees, teachers and other financial matters
  • Records for monitoring and regulating children’s growth and development i.e, health
  • Familiarity with evaluation measures for children’s progress
  • Survey of quality ECCE standards to appraise ECCE infrastructure and classroom dynamics

*      Disaster Management

  • Safety ECCE centre and nature of disaster and emergency
  • Familiarity with first aid, fire drills and display of pictures and material for dealing with emergencies
  • Understanding children’s fears and anxiety in course of natural or manmade  disasters
  • Engaging with parents to cope up with and resolve children’s problem

*       Training ECCE Personnel

 

At the moment varieties of training models are in operation in India, each having its own philosophy, methods and materials. The duration of training and the entry requirements vary from one model to the other. They include training of Anganwadi workers, preschool teachers, creche workers, Bal Sevikas and aides and auxiliary workers.

 

The training methodology consists of classroom teaching using audio and visual aids, group discussions and role play. Field work and preparation of kit are also mandatory during their course of training. The duration of the course is three months. The teacher educators are well qualified in Education, Home Science or Social Work.

 

Preschool teachers

 

Training of ECCE personnel to be preschool teachers is being done by government and voluntary bodies. Some of the training schemes are:

 

  1. Nursery Teachers’ Training
  2. Nursery Teachers’Training (Vocationalisation Scheme of CBSE)
  3. Montessori training of Association Montessori International
  4. Bal Sevika Training
  5. Post graduate diploma in Early Childhood Education

The training includes theory as well as practical work in areas of child development aspects such as developmental milestone, domains of all round development, individual needs, understanding children with special needs etc.

 

*       Methods and approaches in classroom

  • Children as active learners and participants
  • Balancing between discipline- participation, exploring and mediation, self directed and guided activity
  • Thematic approach, play-way method, activity method and project method
  • Multi grade teaching, peer tutoring and cooperative learning
  • Equipment, materials and diverse ways of using materials

*      Development of language and communication

  • Promoting listening, oral expression through multiple methods
  • Speaking, vocabulary and expressive language competencies
  • Addressing multiple languages and concept of code switching
  • Building reading skills with multiple approach alphabet, word and whole word approach, sentence and phonetic methods
  • Introduction and development of writing skills

*       Development of number, counting and number operations

  • Early development of vocabulary for size, shape, quantity and measurement of mathematical concepts
  • Matching, sorting, ordering and classifying objects and numerals
  • Understanding addition and subtraction
  • Counting, one to one correspondence, enumeration, backward counting, estimation
  • Games, puzzles, daily life activities as tools to expand mathematical concepts

 

*       Teaching of environmental studies, science and social studies

  • Ways to encourage children to observe phenomena, understand body and relation with the world
  • Natural and experimental situations to promote curiosity and spirit of enquiry
  • Food, health, hygiene and cleanliness
  • Festivals, celebrations and understanding of diversity as classroom resources
  • Recycling and reuse of resources, avoiding wastage

*      Child to Child Programme

 

This experiment involves strengthening the skills of older children in carrying of their younger siblings. In the majority of disadvantaged homes, as both parents have to go out to work, very often child rearing is left to older siblings. Under this project the primary school teachers are trained in the use of activity sheets involving concepts of health, hygiene, nutrition and child stimulation through activities, experiments, games, puppet plays, songs to older siblings.

 

*  The objectives of the ECCE teachers training courses for quality in education are to inculcate the following:

  • The emerging ECCE professional should be aware of the constitutional provisions and subsequent interventions for the development of young children. The course should also direct the teacher’s attention to the child rights perspective and towards integrating modern technological developments in education with traditional and folk literature.
  • The course should provide a platform to understand the process of growth and progress of children in the domains of development, range and variations in patterns of development. The attempt is to make teacher education holistic, interactive and reflective.
  • Teacher should be able, to organize and manage the classroom in terms of resources, time, schedules, innovative use of space and be aware of the health, nutrition and safety issues of the child and a developed ability to apply the knowledge in specific situations.
  • ECCE teachers also needs to know curriculum and classroom processes and organized framework of what the children can learn, and how the teacher with multiple approaches make learning meaningful. The course evolves through the crucial periods of development, from birth to 6 months, 6 months-3 years.
  • It focuses on various domains of development including physical, motor, cognitive, language, social and emotional development of creativity and aesthetic appreciation, development of values related to personal, social and cultural life, scientific ways of thinking and inculcation of healthy habits. The ECCE professional should be able to understand the interrelating aspects of development and develop activities with children that foster participatory learning experiences.
  • The course should provide opportunities to prospective teachers to gather skills to interact with the child’s community and understand the role of healthy parent-teacher contact in child’s development.
  • The ECCE teacher needs to be able to ensure school readiness and hence ascertain healthy transition to school.
  • The emerging teacher should be encouraging and supportive facilitator to children who realizes both the learning capacity of children, as well as ability to construct knowledge with sensitivity to attributes and needs of learner, their special abilities.

 

A sensitive and responsive role in the social ECCE is important for the ECCE personnel. Childhood is a crucial period for the sound context of education with the national goals for to understand. It is widely recognized that early childhood is a critical period for development of young children and that missed opportunities during these early years cannot be made up at later stages of the child’s life. Early childhood is a crucial period for realizing children’s optimal potential.

 

*       Deep understanding about the features of early years should be considered while framing the course of ECCE personnel training:

 

 Young children experience the most rapid period of growth and change during the human lifespan, in terms of their maturing bodies and nervous systems, increasing mobility, communication skills and intellectual capacities, and rapid shifts in their interests and abilities

  • Young children form strong emotional attachments to their parents or other caregivers from whom they seek and require nurturance, care, guidance and protection, in ways that are respectful of their individuality and growing capacities
  • Young children establish their own important relationships with children of the same age, as well as with younger and older children. Through these relationships they learn to negotiate and coordinate shared activities, resolve conflicts, keep agreements and accept responsibility for others
  • Young children actively make sense of the physical, social and cultural dimensions of the world they inhabit, learning progressively from their activities and their interactions with other children as well as adults
  • Yong children’s earliest years are the foundation for their physical and mental health, emotional security, cultural and personal identity, and developing competencies;
  • Young children’s experiences of growth and development vary according to their individual nature, as well as their gender, living conditions, family organization, care arrangements and education systems
  • Young children’s experiences of growth and development are powerfully shaped by cultural beliefs about their needs and proper treatment, and about their active role in family and community.

Conclusion:

 

So far we have learned what is qualitative early childhood education programme in the context of child’s developmental perspectives, particularly brain development, for smooth transition to primary school, support to disadvantaged section of people, meeting needs of changing family structure in terms of fulfillment of human rights, promotion of girl’s education and social equality, foundation for personality development and investment in human resource development which in turn would raise status of the national human development index, at the global level.

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