Developmentally Appropriate Practice

Guiding the work of early care & education professionals

The medical, legal and education professions all abide by a set of ethical guidelines and principles that influence their work. The early care & education profession follows the guidelines developed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the nation’s largest professional organization of early childhood educators. The guidelines, are published in a document, Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Child hood Programs. The guidelines promote standards that reflect current knowledge and shared beliefs about what constitutes high quality, developmentally appropriate early childhood education.

Many early care and education programs strive to offer a Developmentally Appropriate Program. But what exactly does that mean, and how do families really know if a program is developmentally appropriate?

Developmentally Appropriate refers to an approach used by early care & education professionals that focuses on three very important principles:

1. Developmentally appropriate means understanding and being knowledgeable about how children grow, develop and learn. Researchers have identified predictable sequences of growth and change that occur in children. These changes occur in all areas of development: physical, cognitive, social, and emotional. Early care & education programs use this information when planning activities, conducting assessments and in planning staff development.

2. Developmentally appropriate means treating children as individuals. Since no two children are exactly alike, each child is respected as a unique person with individual patterns and rates of growth. Early care & education professionals must carefully observe each child to learn about their strengths, interests, and needs within the group. Through these observations, activities and experiences are provided that match the child’s developing and emerging abilities, while at the same time provide some challenge for continued growth.

3. Developmentally appropriate means treating children and their families with respect. Children grow and develop when they feel safe and secure within their families, neighborhoods, and communities. It is important that early care & education professionals working with children have some knowledge of the social and cultural backgrounds in which the children live in order to ensure that learning experiences are meaningful, relevant, and respectful for participating children and their families.

Early care and education professionals use the information gathered from these three principles to guide decisions when designing the curriculum, setting expectations, planning experiences and activities, offering materials, interacting with young children and when developing partnerships with families.

When visiting, selecting or observing an early care and education program ask yourself the following questions to determine if the program is developmentally appropriate:

Although many early care & education programs may interpret these principles in slightly different ways, they provide a common foundation for defining high quality early childhood programs. Such programs are ones in which children of all abilities, ages, races, cultures, socio-economic and family, lifestyle backgrounds feel loved, valued and appreciated.

For more information on Developmentally Appropriate Practice log onto the National Association for the Education of Young Children website, www.naeyc.org