How important is preschool: Ask the Expert: Why is a Preschool Education Important? ‘When Children Attend High-quality Pre-K Programs, They Get a Really Great Boost in Early Skills That Set Them Up for Success in Elementary School,’ Says Assistant Professor Michael Little

Ask the Expert: Why is a Preschool Education Important? ‘When Children Attend High-quality Pre-K Programs, They Get a Really Great Boost in Early Skills That Set Them Up for Success in Elementary School,’ Says Assistant Professor Michael Little

This is part of the monthly “Ask the Expert” series in which NC State College of Education faculty answer some of the most commonly asked questions about education.

Early childhood is a critical time when a child’s brain is highly impacted by the contexts and environments that surround them. It is for that reason that NC State College of Education Assistant Professor Michael Little, Ph.D., says a preschool education is important for all students who are able to attend.

“Oftentimes, when children attend high-quality and effective Pre-K programs, they get a really great boost in early skills that set them up for success in elementary school,” said Little, who studies policies and programs that seek to improve early educational outcomes for students with a focus on connections between preschool and early elementary grades.

Decades of research have demonstrated the benefits of preschool, Little said, including a long-term study of an early model Pre-K program that began in the 1960s. Participants in that study, who are now middle aged, have been followed throughout their lives by researchers who have found that those who attended the preschool program demonstrated beneficial outcomes throughout their lives, including having superior health outcomes and being less likely to be incarcerated than those who did not attend preschool.

Studies on scaled up Pre-K programs, including North Carolina’s state-funded Pre-K program, also show that attendance leads to robust benefits for kids that set them up for success in early elementary school grades, Little said.

Despite these initial benefits, Little said that more can be done to help children sustain the academic gains that they make in preschool. Stronger alignment between preschool and the K-12 school system, specifically in kindergarten through third grade, can help prevent “Pre-K fadeout,” a phenomenon in which the early benefits of preschool can diminish in elementary school.

“This is a really critical challenge because, to deliver on the promise and effectiveness of Pre-K, we need to make sure that we’re sustaining the gains of Pre-K throughout elementary school and beyond,” he said. “That means coordinating and creating an aligned system of early learning that builds upon the gains that kids made in Pre-K and sustains them throughout the early grades. This is often referred to as P-3 alignment.”

Little’s own research has demonstrated that school-based preschool programs, which are located within an elementary school rather than in a separate building, could be a crucial element to improving P-3 alignment. When preschools reside in the same location as K-3 teachers, it can create conditions for educators to better collaborate and share student data in order to break down barriers that often exist between the worlds of Pre-K and K-12 learning.

Making sure that preschool and kindergarten teachers are able to communicate and create stronger transition practices from Pre-K to kindergarten can also help support P-3 alignment, Little said.

In addition to helping children to sustain academic gains, P-3 alignment also has the benefit of helping schools to achieve goals of educational equity, as children who attend state-funded preschool programs are often historically marginalized students or students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

“If the effects of Pre-K simply fade away once they enter elementary school, we’re not delivering on the promise of preschool as an equity achieving policy intervention. For us to close achievement gaps and really deliver on the promises of Pre-K, we need to ensure through P-3 alignment that the benefits of Pre-K are sustained,” Little said.

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Why Preschool is the ‘Most Important Year’ In a Child’s Development

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Publicly funded pre-K programs enjoy broad public and political support, largely because of research suggesting that preschool graduates enjoy both short-term and long-term benefits, including improved academic and school readiness, higher graduation rates, and lower incarceration rates. Public preschool is also a financial benefit to lower- and middle-class parents, as quality pre-K can cost as much as a college tuition.

“We are at a really critical moment for pre-K in the United States,” said Suzanne Bouffard, an education researcher and author of the newly published book The Most Important Year: Pre-Kindergarten and the Future of Our Children. In 2016, enrollment in state-funded preschool programs reached an all-time high of nearly 1.5 million children in 43 states.

While Bouffard applauds the momentum to make pre-K more accessible, she said policy makers are not paying enough attention to what is happening in these classrooms.

“We need to look at how we do pre-K, not just whether we do it,” said Bouffard. Without this vision, not only will students be poorly served, lawmakers may ultimately say, “Well, we tried that, we funded it, and it didn’t work.”

“Quality,” she said, “really matters.”

The Most Important Year

Pre-K is a foundational year because, for most children, it provides their initial exposure to school and sets the tone for their educational career. “They develop certain feelings, perceptions, and ideas about school. It’s a great opportunity to get kids off on the right foot,” said Bouffard. Conversely, she noted, a sub-par experience in pre-K has the potential to create “enduring negative emotions about school.”

According to Bouffard, researchers have found that few pre-K are truly poor quality, and few are truly excellent. Most are stuck in the middle “with considerable room for improvement.”  

She argues that many parents and lawmakers don’t know what to look for in a pre-K classroom — and that even elementary school administrators may not be well-versed in the distinct needs of this developmental age.

When Bouffard talks to parents, she tells them, “Don’t worry about a gorgeous facility. The most important things to look for is how the adults interact with children. You want to see them engage with children in a way that is positive, nurturing and genuinely curious.”

In fact, according to her research, the best pre-K programs are staffed by trained teachers who know how to build students’ self-regulation skills; nurture their creativity and curiosity; and foster an environment of playful learning.

Building Self-Regulation Skills

According to Bouffard, self-regulation — the ability to manage one’s behavior and emotions in a given situation — is the the most important skill to foster at this age.

“Good pre-K programs effectively build students’ self-regulation skills that will help them experience success in pre-K and beyond,” said Bouffard. These classrooms teach children “how to be learners,” including how to deal with difficult emotions, how to pay attention, and how to be peers who listen to and interact positively with their classmates.

“You want to teach children how and why to behave. What to do instead of just what not to do,” said Bouffard. Effective pre-K classrooms teach self-regulation through songs and routines; picture prompts can remind children of the steps in a process. Skilled preschool teachers have strategies for redirecting student behavior and use language that provides instruction. “It’s the difference between, ‘Be quiet –  I’m reading’ and ‘I know you are excited to share. Can you hold that and tell me after we finish story time?’”

Bouffard said that rewards and punishment are not effective tools because they do not teach kids how or why to behave. Rather, “it just emphasizes that you want them to do something.” Ironically, she said, “Kids who have the biggest struggle with self-regulation are those most damaged by these strategies.” When they are unable to earn the reward, they may feel frustration or shame or simply decide to stop trying.

Nurturing Creativity and Curiosity

Effective pre-K classrooms also engage students’ natural curiosity and creativity. In these classrooms, said Bouffard, you will hear teachers using open-ended inquiries such as:

• “How do you know that?”
• “How did you figure that out?”
• “Explain to me what you are doing.”
• “What do you think will happen if we . . . ?”

This dialogue between teacher and student focuses on the process of learning. “In pre-K everything should be process focused and not outcome focused. ” For example, art projects should be more about exploring materials and techniques than about producing a replica of what the teacher made.

Fostering Playful Learning

Much of the public debate around early childhood education comes down to which matters more: academics or play. That’s a false dichotomy, said Bouffard. “Play is really the way that young children learn. It’s a way that they experience the world, and it engages them and helps them learn more deeply.”

Bouffard is concerned that the “skill and drill” approach to teaching academics is most frequently used in classrooms serving at-risk preschoolers, in an attempt to close the gap on school readiness. Unfortunately, these teaching methods can “turn young kids off to school and introduces the possibility of shame and anxiety. [Skill and drill] doesn’t teach kids the curiosity and critical thinking skills that they need to develop in early childhood.”

However, pure free play — an approach she hears advocated more frequently by wealthier cohorts — also misses the mark. “I hear a lot about just ‘free play classrooms.”  But, Bouffard said, if it only involves setting out materials and not thinking about learning goals, there’s a real missed opportunity. For example, she said, researchers have found that children used more sophisticated language about building activity when they had a goal in mind.

What effective preschools aim for is “guided play” or “scaffolded play,” in which adults create a purposeful play environment that encourages student exploration. “For example, in setting up blocks, a teacher might put up pictures of buildings to inspire kids. They may ask students, ‘What are you doing?’ and gently push kids’ thinking by offering new information or nudging them to experiment,” said Bouffard.

Of course, the ability to find this balance rests with teachers. “Good teachers make it look really easy. That’s why it’s really important that we invest in teachers and give them the training to find that middle ground — to guide play without overly controlling it and to encourage kids to develop an understanding of letters and numbers without ‘skill and drill. ’”

Investing in Teacher Training

As states and cities make a commitment to fund early childhood education, they must also invest in support and training for pre-K teachers, said Bouffard. “We need coaches or mentors for early childhood teachers, particularly in the first few years of their career.” Teachers also need support in the form of other specialists, especially in responding to students with trauma and special needs. She calls for more cooperation between state agencies to make sure pre-K students are set up for success: “This is a time when kids age out of early intervention, so a lot of kids at community-based centers aren’t getting the help they need.”

And it’s not just teachers who need research-based training: “Everyone involved in the fate of these kids needs to have information about what developmentally appropriate practices look like,” including principals, site-managers and lawmakers.

Bouffard hopes this “critical period” of expansion leads to a more systematic review of the early childhood education glide path. “Sometimes policymakers view pre-K as the answer for closing the achievement gap,” she said. “We need to think about our whole system of care from birth to school.”  

DEVELOPMENT OF PRESCHOOL EDUCATION IN RUSSIA

Recently, in Russia, as in the whole world, a kind of educational “baby boom” has emerged – a powerful movement to develop education for young children. The impetus was the world-famous study, according to which government investment in the early education of children significantly improves the life outcomes of its citizens (Nobel Prize winner James Hackman). It has become obvious to politicians all over the world that early education is the first and most important step in a person’s education and investments in it are the most justified.

Pre-school education in Russia should provide children and their families with conditions for the realization of the age and individual capabilities of each child – the development of his initiative, independence and responsibility. It is at preschool age that the basic characteristics of the child’s personality, his interests and opportunities are laid, it is preschool education that ensures the emotional well-being of the child, his positive social and personal attitudes. Ignoring the characteristics of a child’s development at this age is fraught with serious, deep problems in his later life, including in school education, following immediately after preschool childhood.

We all come from childhood, our future rests on it as a foundation. It is in our power to make this foundation strong and reliable.

1. Problems of preschool education

Russia traditionally has competitive advantages in preschool education, which has been around for about 100 years. The main advantage is a well-established infrastructure, including buildings, functioning supply, security, communication, system management services, traditions of age-related pedagogy and the mass nature of the profession of preschool teachers. However, some features of Russian preschool education do not meet the challenges of the modern world. Excessive centralization of state responsibility for preschool education, financing of the system “from above”, lack of real powers and financial independence of municipalities, outdated strict regulations, petty, dictate of controlling departments, lack of independence of preschool organizations, early forced education of children – all this complicates the development of the system of preschool education in Russia .

The problem of equality and accessibility of preschool education. In many constituent entities of the Russian Federation, there are long queues of people wishing to send their child to kindergarten – a symptom of unsatisfied demand. According to the Federal State Statistics Service, 25% of preschool children in 2013 did not attend preschool institutions due to the lack of places, while in big cities there are 38.3% of such children. The network of preschool educational institutions (hereinafter – PEI) in Russia in 2012 decreased by 1. 2% compared to 2011, and the queue in them grew by more than 7%, according to the results of federal statistical monitoring of the activities of preschool educational institutions, which is carried out annually by Rosstat . At the same time, the coverage of children by preschool educational institutions amounted to 62.1% at the end of 2012, which is 1.5% higher than in 2011. This trend continued in 2013 – coverage is growing, and the network, albeit slightly, is shrinking. The fact is that in an effort to eliminate the queues, many municipalities solve the issue due to the filling of groups. Due to the desire to report on the indicators of enrollment increase in some regions (for example, in North Ossetia), the number of children in a group (per one qualified caregiver) reaches 50 people. (In most developed countries, the norm is 2 educators for 20 children at the same time). In the new federal standard for preschool education, adopted in 2013, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation did not include the maximum occupancy rate for groups – even the high one (27 people per teacher), which was laid down in the draft standard. Even the proportion of “number of children per adult”, which operates in the most underdeveloped countries, was excluded. As a result, the lives and health of children are under threat, the working conditions of teachers have become extremely difficult – overworked educators barely have time to dress the children for a walk. In several regions, an outflow of teaching staff from kindergartens was recorded.

If children aged 2.5 years or older still have the opportunity to be in municipal preschool institutions (according to Rosstat, 5.98 million children used preschool services in 2012), then children of toddler age (from two months and older) this opportunity is almost entirely lacking. There were only 1.3 thousand children under one year of age in the system of preschool education in 2012, and in 2013 the situation worsened. Despite the ever-increasing need of families for nursery groups, many municipalities have begun to increase the number of places for older preschool children at the expense of toddlers.

One of the solutions to the problem of accessibility could be the development of a network of non-governmental preschool organizations. However, the strict regulations of the educational authorities seriously impede the emergence of non-state kindergartens, which are necessary to solve the existing problem of accessibility. An example is the unjustified interference of the sanitary department in the educational process – for example, actual bans on opening kindergartens in vacated premises of residential buildings, excessive requirements for premises and equipment in a kindergarten. Kindergartens, in an effort to follow the overly strict standards of SanPins and the State Fire Supervision, are turning into faceless, almost sterile rooms, where there is no place for children’s creativity on the walls, written communication with parents, photographs and posters, although not a single case of fire for this reason has been recorded anywhere.

In countries with a developed system of pre-school education, the lack of places in kindergartens leads to support for non-state forms. The feeling of one’s own total responsibility, and, consequently, the need for total control, does not allow the governing bodies of preschool education in Russia to follow this path. The process of development of non-state forms of preschool education in Russia is very slow.

Trends towards the unification of education in Russia create problems with the variability of its content, forms and methods. The increased requirements of society for the quality of preschool education can only be satisfied in the conditions of variability, flexibility of programs, pedagogical technologies and forms of preschool education. The variability of preschool education should become the natural response of the system to the fact of the diversity of preschool childhood, the wider the younger the child. Flexibility and multiplicity of options for the development of children, the diversity of their interests are a feature of preschool age. The processes of globalization and the deterioration of the health of the population have increased this diversity many times over: in one group of a kindergarten there are children from different countries, cultures, social strata, speaking different languages ​​and integrated into different religious systems. Children with disabilities may also attend. Teachers and the child’s family should be able to choose preschool educational programs, forms and methods depending on the specific situation. The traditionalist attitudes of the system often impede this process, striving for the unification of preschool education.

In 2013, Russia adopted a modern and progressive state standard for preschool education, taking into account current trends in the development of this area. The standard supports variability, which, given as a direct right of the teacher (his academic freedom), as a necessary condition for his professional activity, can become a fulcrum that will make the system diverse and meet the special needs of families.

In modern education, based on variability and diversity, the figure of the teacher becomes central. In order to exercise their right to academic freedom, a teacher must have the appropriate competencies, must understand how to build the educational process in terms of variability. In many countries (Finland, Norway, Sweden, etc.) there are high requirements for the quality of training of teachers working in the preschool education system: preschool teachers have at least bachelor’s degrees. In particular, it was thanks to the understanding of the role of the teacher that the Scandinavian countries managed to create one of the most humane and effective systems of preschool education. The OECD studies provide convincing evidence of this. One of the main priorities of teachers is the education of children’s ability to free initiative action. The Russian standard of preschool education also sets this task. In the very near future, methodological materials will appear that will help teachers successfully solve this problem – they are already in development.

However, Russian kindergartens usually employ people trained according to an outdated model or who have no professional training at all. The social status of the profession is still low. The level of salaries of preschool teachers, who are the lowest in education, in no way corresponds to the highest responsibility for the fate of the child. When choosing the profession of preschool teachers, the “principle of double negative selection” is most effective – school graduates who do not have high professional ambitions often enter the pedagogical college, and college graduates who have not managed to get another job go to work as educators. The recent increase in salaries did not change the situation enough, since, on the one hand, it was not related to the quality of work of educators, and on the other hand, it affected only educators, and not their assistants and administrative staff.

In the last few years in the system of pre-school education, a strict orientation of kindergartens towards preparing children for school has emerged. At the same time, preparation for school is usually understood only as learning to read, count and write, although the most important thing is the child’s motivation, interest in learning at school. The practice of forced education of children too early inevitably leads to the disappearance of educational motivation, and as a result, to the emergence of school maladjustment and school neuroses.

It is well known that for developmental preschool education, preparation for school should not act as an isolated task. School readiness is a natural consequence of pre-school education, which is focused on each child. If a child develops in accordance with the laws of age and masters all the activities and cultural practices that are age-appropriate – at an individual pace and along an individual trajectory – the result is his desire and ability to learn further, which are real school readiness.

The misunderstood “preparation for school” leads to the overorganization of the child’s life in the kindergarten, displacing the independent play of children, which, according to the world’s leading psychologists, is the main factor in the development of the child. The game becomes something optional, arising according to the “leftover” principle, if there is time left from classes.

The merging of kindergartens with schools, which is a new trend in the field of preschool education and is most often due to the desire for economy, significantly worsens the conditions for the development of children. The education of young children is being started by teachers and administrators who are not prepared for such work, who do not understand the specifics of preschool childhood and who use “school” teaching methods.

At the same time, for example, in Denmark, there are playrooms that adults are not allowed to enter so that they do not interfere with children’s spontaneous play. OECD studies convincingly show that the main priorities of preschool education in the Scandinavian countries, such as developing the ability to take initiative, to interact between children, to prevent any violence against the child (the main task is to make the child feel good), healthy nutrition, hardening lead to that children are well prepared for schooling. Moreover, these countries are the most successful in the International Student Achievement Survey (PISA).

Parents are much less concerned about the role of preschool organizations in preparing their children for school than it seems to be the heads of educational authorities and even teachers of kindergartens and schools, who often consider preparation for school to be the most important task of a kindergarten. According to a study conducted by teachers of the Moscow State Pedagogical University and the Moscow Higher School of Economics, the priorities of parents are the psychological comfort and safety of children in kindergarten, their health, healthy nutrition (proper diet), early diagnosis and, if possible, correction of developmental problems. The latter indicator is especially important – problems detected at the age of 3 years in 50% of cases can be fully compensated before coming to school (this is shown by the experience of the Samara region), while at a later age, full compensation is either impossible or requires more efforts.

Closed kindergarten is a big problem. The family is a very important resource for preschool education, since the child at this age is closely connected with it. But parents, as a rule, are poorly informed about the content of their child’s education in a Russian kindergarten and have almost no influence on it. Separation from the family leads to many bad consequences both for the child himself (neurosis, “abandonment” syndrome, victimhood, learned helplessness, etc. ), and for the education system itself: teachers often fight with parents instead of making them allies . It is necessary to take into account the experience of the best kindergartens in the country, where the family is closely and very successfully involved in the educational process.

Parents’ interest in additional services in the field of preschool education is growing rapidly, and the problem of access to these services and information about them is very acute. Most often, low-income families need early diagnosis services, while they have neither information nor real opportunities to receive such services. Early diagnosis services make it possible not only to identify a health problem, but also to correct it in time, because if a problem is identified already at school age, it most often cannot be completely corrected.

The emergence of inclusive kindergartens in Russia, where both healthy children and children with disabilities study, can be assessed as a successful and successful undertaking. There are still few such kindergartens, even in big cities there are only a few of them, but the staff of teachers who work there are highly professional, and it is no coincidence that there are queues for such kindergartens, and not only from children with disabilities. There they respectfully and attentively communicate with each child, teach children to communicate with each other without offense and conflicts. The experience of such gardens should be extended to the entire system, but in no case should they be forced to spread until qualified personnel are trained.

The problem of assessing the quality of pre-school education is acute in Russia. At the heart of this problem lies the already mentioned tendency towards the unification of education. Departmental control and supervision most often has nothing to do with assessing the quality of preschool education itself, but only performs the function of supervision, forcing teachers and the kindergarten administration to follow some formally written rules for organizing their work, constantly reporting on their every step. At the regional level, mechanisms of petty total control over the actions of teachers are applied, i.e. – direct interference in the professional actions of the educator by officials. The process of educational interaction between the teacher and children is being destroyed. The ever-increasing mountains of papers and other directives from above are a consequence of this process.

Evaluation of the quality of education plays a big role in the real improvement of educational systems. In Russian preschool education, there has not yet been a clear idea of ​​what kind of education we are ready to consider quality. In the latest regulatory documents, in particular, in the Federal Standards of Preschool Education, the grounds for setting the main tasks of the sphere are outlined, which makes it possible to build a transparent system for assessing its quality. The main task of preschool education is the creation of psychological and pedagogical conditions for the development of the child’s intellect, his positive socialization and individualization, the protection and strengthening of his health, and ensuring his emotional well-being. The standard specifies the requirements for such conditions and allows them to be assessed.

It is important to involve parents in assessing the quality of preschool education. Now, if they are involved in the evaluation, it is most often through filling out questionnaires, which usually takes place formally. Evidence from international studies strongly suggests that parents have an important role to play in evaluating the quality of services offered to children. An effective multi-position assessment of the quality of preschool education should be built on the principles of democracy, equality of educational opportunities, freedom and emancipation of children, solidarity, which implies cooperation and compromise between teachers and parents.

2. Priority tasks for the development of preschool education

The emergence of the Federal State Standard for preschool education is an important step in understanding its quality. The standard is based on the inherent value of childhood and calls for respect for the personality of the child. The requirements for the programs and conditions of preschool education that are put forward in it take into account the data of modern research and provide grounds for the development of a new quality assessment system, primarily based on the conditions for psychological comfort, the well-being of the child, and the development of his social competencies.

Respect for the child and his family should become the main priority of the preschool education system, and this is what the future teacher should be taught. He should be able to teach proactive action, communication, educate the child’s self-esteem, stimulate his interest in another, unlike. In a preschool institution, conditions should be created for children to play independently, the space for initiative action should be expanded. The very appearance of the premises should stimulate the possibilities of various activities of the child and indicate respect for him. The presence, for example, of toilets with doors is a sign of such respect.

It is critically important to create conditions for the diversification of the system of preschool education in Russia. In particular, it is necessary to promote the development of a network of non-governmental preschool organizations, private entrepreneurship, and greater participation of society in the management and assessment of the quality of education. One of the first steps should be to change strict departmental regulations by removing outdated and unjustified prohibitions, including those related to fire safety, which make it difficult to place children’s drawings and crafts on the walls of kindergarten premises.

The most important task is to involve families in preschool education. The ability to build genuine partnerships with parents is the most important competence of a preschool teacher and the key to successful child development. Education of young inexperienced parents, their advisory support, including through Internet services that have been quality assessed by specialists, is an important type of service that allows supporting the development of children at an early age.

Federal law guarantees preschool education for children from two months of age. It is important that this norm of the law is respected, and in various forms, which make it possible to diagnose and correct developmental problems early. It is necessary to create centralized development support services in the regions, which, on the one hand, would provide advisory assistance to families, and on the other hand, with the help of specialists (speech therapists, psychologists, etc.), would correct the problems of children’s development, bringing them as far as possible, to the level of development corresponding to the age norm.

It is necessary to ensure the formation of the budget for preschool education from local taxes at the municipal level, providing for the responsibility of the subject of the federation in case of their insufficiency. Municipal governments should have real powers to manage the local processes of education for young children.

It is necessary to significantly increase the number of places in preschool institutions, not increasing, but reducing the occupancy of groups, gradually bringing the occupancy standards closer to European standards, and changing the structure and volume of the budget in order to introduce this level of education into a competitive environment (competition for the child) .

For this, it would be appropriate, at least at the level of subjects of the federation, where coverage problems are solved more effectively (Moscow, Belgorod region, some Northern regions), to introduce norms for the ratio of the number of children per adult, which increase with the age of pupils.

All these tasks can be successfully solved only with the availability of professional personnel – first, it is necessary to provide for compulsory and high-quality secondary vocational education for educators, and professional training for the administration of preschool institutions. As for the further increase in salaries in this sector, it would be advisable to increase them first of all for those employees who have undergone high-quality training or retraining and can demonstrate new competencies necessary for successful work within the new standard.

For the new Federal Standard to work, the federal authorities must provide advanced training courses for all employees. They should not give lectures about what is due, but teach behavior and techniques, the ability to observe and intervene without violence against the personality of the child. Preparing trainers for such courses is one of the priorities.

Participation in international studies, which are now starting at once in several international organizations, will allow Russia to track its progress in the field of preschool education and compare its achievements with others. It is important, therefore, that public authorities consider such research not as the results of competition with other countries, but as a resource for development, and provide them with support.

Author of the article:

Lenskaya Elena Anatolyevna – Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Dean of the Faculty of Management in Education school social and economic sciences.

Yudina Elena Georgievna – Head of the Department of Management of Preschool Education Moscow Higher School Social and Economic Sciences.

Material prepared: 2013

List of sources used: –

Standards in preschool education: pros and cons

Scientific and practical journal
Included in list of the Higher Attestation Commission under the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

ISSN 2782-4519

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№2 2013

• Heading:

  – Debating Club

Fragment of Article

According to the adopted Law “On Education”, preschool education becomes a stage of lifelong general education. In this regard, many questions arise. How important it is that the child goes to kindergarten and receives education and upbringing there, and not at home in the family, and if the child goes to kindergarten, then what level of development he should achieve, what standards he must meet. Attitudes towards standards in preschool education are ambiguous. Are they needed? If yes, in what form? We asked leading Russian and foreign scientists to answer these questions.

– Are standards needed in preschool education?

Larisa Alekseevna Paramonova, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Director of the Research Institute of Preschool Education. A. V. Zaporozhets:

– On the one hand, standards are a positive thing, because if they are built correctly in terms of content and preserve the specifics of preschool age, then we will have a competent idea of ​​what happens during preschool age in the development of the child and what challenges should be meet these standards. Thus, we will have, despite the variability of the types of preschool institutions, a common base of ideas about the necessary things that should take place at preschool age. Then distortions, and there are many of them, as in school age, will be much less.

On the other hand, the standards should provide for variability and provide an opportunity to implement them in any situation, using the characteristics of each preschool institution.

Sonia Sheridan, professor at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden:

– Sweden has pre-school education programs. There is a regulation that requires preschools to operate with certain quality standards. Specialists should evaluate all the processes that take place in educational institutions. They track the learning processes of preschool age. We are talking about the assessment of the institution, not the child.

As such, there is no single criterion or method of education. Teachers can choose how they work with children. We also have an inspection agency, the meaning of which is to analyze the work of preschool institutions.

Read the full text of the article in the journal “SDO”

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