Preschool Teachers’ Shared Beliefs About Appropriate Pedagogy for 4-Year-Olds 幼儿教师对4岁儿童适当教育的共同信念.pdfVIP

Early Childhood Education Journal, Vol. 33, No. 6, June 2006 ( 2006) DOI: 10.1007/s10643-006-0059-1 Preschool Teachers Shared Beliefs About Appropriate Pedagogy for 4-Year-Olds Joon Sun Lee1,2 The 18 preschool teachers in the study tended to agree that preschool education for 4-year- olds should foremost be fun and engaging, not stressful. Teachers should develop curricula based on childrens interests and everyday lives, and allow children to choose their activities and to direct their own play and exploration at their own pace. The goal of preschool edu- cation should be to promote childrens social, emotional, and physical well-being, and not focus so much on academic learning. KEY WORDS: preschool education; teacher beliefs; pedagogy; 4-year-olds. INTRODUCTION ands’’ (Bredekamp Copple, 1997, p. 23), the National Association for the Education of Young The United States has embraced as a national Children (NAEYC) took a big step forward to revise goal that ‘‘all children will have access to high quality its guidelines to reflect the complexity of these issues and developmentally appropriate preschool programs and to encourage both/and thinking: both social- that help prepare children for school’’ so that ‘‘all emot