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Developmentally Appropriate and Culturally Responsive Education:
Theory in Practice

Prepared by
Rebecca Novick, Ph.D.

April 11, 1996

Child and Family Program
Helen Nissani, Director
NORTHWEST REGIONAL EDUCATIONAL LABORATORY
101 SW Main Street, Suite 500
Portland, Oregon 97204

Table of Contents
Introduction
Developmentally Appropriate Practices: Overview
Early Literacy
Integrated Curriculum: Themes, Projects, Webs, and Inquiry
Mathematics: Basket of Facts or Search for Meaning?
Coverage, Multiple Intelligences, and Standardized Tests
Multiage Grouping: A Community of Learners
Bringing It All Back Home: Family/School/Community Partnerships
Enhancing Continuity for Children and Families
Culturally Responsive Teaching
Children With Disabilities
References

INTRODUCTION


It has been nine years since the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) published guidelines for developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) for children from birth to eight (Bredekamp, 1987). These guidelines were introduced in order to (a) enhance the quality of educational experiences for young children by tying child development knowledge to early childhood practices, and (b) foster professional identity and visibility for the field of early childhood education in order to serve political and advocacy aims in negotiating with the educational establishment and the public-at-large (Johnson & Johnson, 1992).

Although the guidelines reflected a consensus definition of developmentally appropriate practices involving the input from thousands of early childhood professionals, a number of controversies, confusions, and myths surrounded their arrival in the field. Attacked as structureless and non-academic by some educators, "an excuse not to teach in first grade," the guidelines were seen by some educators as being far too prescriptive and discouraging of reflection. A lively debate was touched off in which the appropriateness of the guidelines for all children (particularly for children from culturally diverse families, children with disabilities, and children at risk for school failure) was examined (Johnson & Johnson, 1992; Kostelnik, 1992; New & Mallory, 1994; Novick, 1993).

The debate is far from over and, given the nature of the field of early childhood, is not likely to be over soon. Clifford Geertz (1973) describes anthropology as "a field whose progress is marked less by a perfection of consensus than by a refinement of debate. What gets better is the precision with which we vex each other" (p. 29). The statement is equally relevant to the field of early childhood. Although a discussion of the controversies surrounding DAP is beyond the scope of this paper, NAEYC's response to their critics indicates that early childhood educators take seriously their view of DAP as a working hypothesis which continually changes through a dynamic process of questioning and reflection on practice. Revision of DAP to help all children reach their potentials as learners is an on-going process.

Influence of DAP

A growing body of research from such diverse fields as developmental psychology (Bruner, 1972; 1983; 1986; Sroufe, 1979; 1986), cultural anthropology (Heath, 1983), linguistics (Cazden, 1981; Halliday, 1975), early childhood education (Bowman, 1994; Clay, 1966; Kagan, 1992; Katz, 1993) and brain-based research (Caine & Caine, 1994; Hart, 1975) has provided a rich literature to inform best practices in the field of education. Yet, according to Darling-Hammond, professor of education at Columbia University's Teachers College, " Our school system was invented in the late 1800s, and little has changed. Can you imagine if the medical profession ran this way?" (Hancock, 1996).

If change has come slowly for middle and secondary-age children, during the last ten years, the field of early childhood education has seen a great deal of change in educational practices, due, in large part to the influence of DAP. Cooperative learning, integrated curriculum, whole language, family involvement, authentic assessment, and "hands-on learning" are just a few of the buzz words that have become part of the popular vernacular and are increasingly influencing classroom practices. Changes are being implemented, despite the difficulties presented by insufficient time for study, practice and reflection, and confusions regarding the practices themselves. Meier (1995) observes:

If it is our growing knowledge of human development that has spearheaded change in educational philosophy, it is teachers, often in concert with leadership from principals and district personnel, who have turned these theories into learning experiences for children. Over the last five years, the Child, Family, and Community Program (CFC) has worked in partnership with a number of innovative Northwest schools, studying, discussing, and documenting the challenges, as well as the opportunities, presented by these educators' efforts to change their educational practices. Over the next five years, the CFC will continue to work with innovative educators to develop papers and materials that will help other educators change their pedagogical practices to reflect what we know about how children learn and develop.

The purposes of this report is to provide a synthesis of the literature relevant to developmentally and culturally appropriate practices.

DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE PRACTICES: OVERVIEW


Based on theories of Dewey, Vygotsky, Piaget, and Erikson, developmentally appropriately practices reflect an interactive, constructivist view of learning (Bredekamp, 1987; Bredekamp & Rosegrant, 1992). Key to this approach is the principle that the child constructs his or her own knowledge through interactions with the social and physical environment. Because the child is viewed as intrinsically motivated and self-directed, effective teaching capitalizes on the child's motivation to explore, experiment, and to make sense of his or her experience.

Children's spontaneous play promotes learning by providing opportunities for concrete, hands-on experiences. These experiences not only help the child to master his/her environment but allow the child to develop the capacity for self regulation, abstract thought, imagination, and creativity. According to Vygotsky (1978), play and practical activity lead development by providing "a stage between the purely situational constraints of early childhood and adult thought, which is less context bound."

In this interactive approach to learning, the role of the teacher has been variously described as one who guides, observes, facilitates, poses problems, extends activities, and in Vygotsky's (1978) words, "creates a natural moment" in the child's environment. Rather than a dispenser of knowledge, the teacher acts as a "dispenser of occasions" (Phillips, 1993). A major theme in DAP is to make learning meaningful for the individual child, using practices which reflect both the age and individual needs of the child. A strong emphasis is placed on learning to think critically, work cooperatively, and solve problems.

Curriculum

Research has demonstrated that the human brain is a pattern detector; it works best when processing meaningful material (Caine & Caine, 1990). Thus, in a developmentally appropriate classroom, language development and emerging literacy are encouraged through the use of whole language approaches, which embed learning throughout the day in meaningful activities. To reflect the inter-relatedness of developmental domains, curriculum is integrated, using strategies which include learning and activity centers, and conceptual organizers, or thematic units. These themes or projects link together content from various subject areas and depict the connections that exist across disciplines.

Mathematics, rather than being thought of as a set of skills and procedures that children must acquire, is seen as the science for searching for order and pattern in the world around us (National Research Council, 1989). In order to understand how numbers apply to real life, children are given many opportunities for hands-on experience with pegboards, blocks, number lines, and materials for counting and measuring. Rather than memorizing isolated facts and rules, children actively participate in their learning, inventing their own procedures for solving computational and story problems. In Kamii's words (1989), in the constructivist approach, children "reinvent arithmetic."

In order to make sound educational decisions that effect the child, authentic assessment, which reflects the child's performance during typical activities in the classroom, is employed. Assessment practices utilized in developmentally appropriate classrooms include collections of children's work in portfolios, tape recordings of their reading, teacher observations, and summaries of children's progress. Integral to the assessment process is the opportunity for both children and their parents to participate in both evaluation and goal setting.

Citing social, cognitive, and emotional benefits for children, a number of early childhood educators advocate for mixed-age grouping (Katz, Evangelou & Hartman, 1990; Miller, 1994). These heterogeneous groupings not only provide opportunities for children of differing ages and abilities to work and play together, but they facilitate continuity for children by allowing children to stay with the same peer group and teachers for several years. Children have the opportunity to develop a relationship with a caring adult and with their peers.

Multiple Intelligences

The increasing recognition that children have and should develop multiple ways of "seeing" and "knowing" has provided an impetus for schools to expand the curriculum beyond the teaching of logical/mathematical, and verbal knowledge to include the "multiple intelligences" that make up the classroom (Gardner & Hatch, 1989).

In a developmentally appropriate classroom, the development of "aesthetic literacy" is encouraged through the exploration of poetry, dance, painting, and music.

In addition, the appreciation of multiple and diverse ways of seeing and "making sense" of the world is encouraged through the recognition and celebration of multicultural diversity. Multicultural education is seen as a perspective that should be integrated throughout all subject areas. Not only does such a curriculum help all children to develop cultural sensitivity and understanding, but it helps children from culturally diverse backgrounds connect the unfamiliar (the school culture) with the familiar (the home culture).

Bowman (1992) describes culture as a prism created from shared meaning; members of a cultural group see the world from a different perspective, making sense of their experience in different ways. The absence of continuity and congruence between the child's home culture and the school--an absence of shared meaning--may interfere with children's competent functioning in the new setting. Emphasizing the role of the teacher as co-constructor of knowledge, Bowman and Stott (1994) suggest that teachers must bridge the gap between the culture of the home and school by using interactive styles and content that are familiar to children, thus establishing new and shared meaning: "When teachers plan experiences that connect them to their children through understanding and respect, they can 'make meaning' together" (p. 131).

A Community of Learners

Research on brain development has provided new insights into the elegance and complexity of the human brain. Far from being a blank slate or an empty vessel that is gradually filled up with knowledge, the brain is designed as a pattern detector; perceiving relationships and making connections fundamental to the learning process. Because thoughts, emotions, imagination, and predispositions operate concurrently and are interrelated (Caine & Caine, 1990), in a develop-mentally appropriate classroom, schools attend simultaneously to children's intellectual, social, and ethical development (Lewis, Schapps & Watson, 1995). Based, in part, on the writings of educator and social critic John Dewey, proponents of this approach have offered the metaphor of "schooling for democratic living" to inform classroom practices. In such a democratic classroom, children learn, in Eisner's words (1991) to "develop an ethic of caring and create a community that cares."

In short, in a developmentally appropriate classroom, learning involves the "whole child" and addresses all four components of learning identified by Katz (1988): knowledge, skills, dispositions, and feelings. The curriculum strives to help children become lifelong learners, who can think critically and imaginatively, ask meaningful questions and formulate alternative solutions, appreciate diversity, work collaboratively, and perhaps most importantly, have the capacity to form caring relationships with others.

In the following sections, the major concepts, movements, and practices associated and compatible with developmentally and culturally appropriate practices are described in more detail. They include: early literacy and whole language perspectives, integrated curriculum, a constructivist approach to mathematics, multiage grouping, authentic assessment, family and community involvement, and culturally responsive teaching.

EARLY LITERACY


Research on brain development has provided evidence that language, social and cognitive development are essential aspects of each other. Increasingly, the acquisition of oral language is regarded as the most significant milestone in children's cognitive development. Language does not merely reflect thought; it is, in Vygotsky's words, "the nurse and tutor of thought," providing a schema for understanding and interpreting experience, and, as Dewey noted, providing a means "to sort one's thoughts about the world."

Because of the overriding importance of oral language acquisition for the development of the young child and because of the influence of current theories of language development on the teaching of reading and writing, a discussion of the major findings on this topic are presented in the following section.

Language Development

Discovering how children learn language has fascinated generations of philosophers and linguists. Whereas William Burroughs proposed that language is a virus from outer space, two somewhat less inventive, but more comprehensive, theories of language development were proposed during the first half of this century. The behaviorist, or empiricist associationism learning theory, delineated by B. F. Skinner in Verbal Behavior, conceived of language as "just another set of responses," which were learned by associating words with their meanings; learning was aided by imitating a model and being reinforced for correct responses.

In contrast, Noam Chomsky's hypothesis, based on nativism, proposed a universal grammar, or innate "linguistic deep structure," in the mind. In order to become competent language speakers, children needed only to be exposed to language. No particular effort on the part of caregivers to facilitate language development was considered necessary (Bruner, 1983). As psychologist George Miller put it, "We now had two theories of language development, one of them, empiricist associationism, was impossible; the other, nativism, was miraculous" (Cited in Bruner, 1983, p. 34).

In recent years, a broad-based approach, usually referred to as the "interactionist perspective," has emerged as the most influential theory in the field. Its basic premise is that at birth, infants are psychologically prepared to learn to talk and learn to do so within the context of reciprocal, social interactions with caregivers. Research is now verifying what mothers and fathers have always known: from birth, the infant is profoundly social.

Research has shown preferences of the newborn infant for a human face-like gestalt (Fantz, 1963), a feminine voice, and maternal odor (MacFarlane, cited in Cramer, 1987). An infant can remember and respond differently to the smell, voice, and face of the mother as early as the first few days of life. A study by DeCasper (cited in Associated Press, 1992) demonstrated that infants hear the mother's voice and are aware of varying intonations in speech before birth. In this study, several mothers read to their in-utero infants, each reciting a different Dr. Seuss story. At three days old, when they were read several stories, the infants preferred the story which had been read to them before birth.

Discussion of the optimal environment for stimulating language development generally identifies a pattern of responsiveness to the child as the crucial variable. Children learn language best in an atmosphere of psychological reassurance, with high levels of caregiver affection, acceptance of what the child is able to do, and attention to the child's focus of interest. Language development begins with mutual eye contact and reciprocal smiling. During these early caregiver-child interactions, social routines are first established and the basic rules of human interaction are learned (Bruner, 1983).

Bruner (1978) suggests that it is the infant's success in achieving joint attention with caregivers that leads him or her into language. While at first, mothers follow the infant's gaze and comment on what the child appears to be observing, by four months, most infants can follow an observer's line of regard. The infant, then, is predisposed to have competent interactions with the social environment, provided that the social environment is one that promotes competence. Through interactions with significant caregivers and later, peers, infants and young children develop not only language and other skills, but a sense of self-efficacy.

According to Vygotsky, word meanings are inherently social and, with development, become personalized as the child comes to "possess" them as his or her own (Nelson, 1985). A conversation between Alice and Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass illustrates this concept:

Undoubtedly, Humpty Dumpty represents an extreme case; however, the role of negotiation in language development appears to be well established (Bruner, 1983; Nelson, 1985). Bruner points out that in early language exchanges, mothers typically operate on the assumption that "no speaker is entirely ignorant." Although frequently they do not know what their children are trying to communicate, or whether their own speech has been understood by their children, "they are prepared to negotiate in the tacit belief that something comprehensible can be established" (1983, p. 86). Called variously inter-subjectivity (Trevarathen & Hubley, 1978), "jointly created little worlds" (Bruner, 1986), interfacing of minds (Bretherton, 1988), and developing a "mutual faith in a shared world' (Rommetveit, 1972, cited in Emde, 1987), this shared meaning appears to be a prerequisite for meaningful exchange.

The following exchange reported by Bruner (1983, p. 87) between twenty-two-month-old Richard and his mother provides an example of the importance of negotiation for the development of shared meaning. They are reading a book together.

Mother:   What's that?
Child:   ouse.
Mother:   Mouse, yes. That's a mouse.
Child:   More mouse (pointing to another picture).
Mother:   No, those are squirrels. They're like mice, but with long tails. Sort of.
Child:   Mouse, mouse, mouse.
Mother:   Yes, all right, they're mice.
Child:   Mice, mice.

Bruner observes:

In an optimal language learning environment, one that promotes both language acquisition and a positive sense of self, children are allowed to take responsibility for their own learning. Cambourne (1987) points out that no parents ever say, "Our pride and joy has not learned the passive/negative transformation yet. So for the next five weeks we'll teach him that. Then we'd better got onto the embeddings involving relativism and adverbial conjoiners" (p. 7). Nor, in his three year study of parent/child interactions, did parents expect their children to use the correct form, as soon as they heard it:

Instead, caregivers of children who are confident oral language learners interpret their children's communicative attempts as meaningful, expand on their utterances, and treat them as competent conversationalists, long before children say their first recognizable words. They provide a language rich environment, where "meaningful spoken language washes over and surrounds children" (Cambourne, 1987), from birth and (as the DeCasper research demonstrates) even before. Rather than serving as reinforcer and corrector, adults act as "providers, expanders, and idealizers" of language (Bruner, 1983). Because children are motivated to learn by "doing something with words in the real world" (Bruner, 1983), grammar is learned, not as an isolated skill, but in a meaningful conversational context.

Research in how oral language develops has greatly influenced our understanding of how children learn written language. Because oral language is regarded as the cornerstone of reading development, proponents of whole language and emergent literacy perspectives view literacy as beginning in caregiver/infant interactions. Oral and written language are seen as interrelated and developing simultaneously, each reinforcing and transforming the other. In this view, the underlying process of learning written and oral language is the same; like oral language, written language is best learned through actual use in a social context. Schickedanz (1986) argues that we have overestimated the extent to which oral language learning is natural, while we have underestimated the extent to which written language learning requires formal instruction.

Whole Language And Emergent Literacy: Theory In Practice

Although the behaviorist view of language acquisition is long outmoded, this view still greatly influences the methods and strategies that are used to teach reading and writing (Edelsky, Altwater & Flores, 1991). Reading is typically regarded as a "decoding" process, in which children learn to read by associating print with sound and printed words with their oral counterparts. Learning is facilitated by direct instruction, practice and reinforcement, which strengthen the associations until they become automatic or habitual.

Because behavior (in this case, reading behavior) is regarded as the sum of its component parts, learning the alphabetical code and word recognition are often taught as isolated skills, rather than in the context of reading or writing. Crawford (1995) sums up the behaviorist position: "The act of reading (and writing) can be broken down into a series of isolated skills, which can be arranged into a hierarchy, taught directly, and then brought back to the whole" (p. 78).

In contrast, the core premise of whole language is that, just as we learn language through participating in actual conversations, reading and writing are learned through actually reading and writing. In Baron's (1990) words, we learn to read and write the way we learn to talk. As in oral language leaning (in which rules are learned within the context of a meaningful conversational context), rules for decoding, spelling, and punctuation are learned through use, in the context of reading and writing meaningful texts. Frank Smith points out that there are far too many rules to learn through didactic teaching: "What is learned is too intricate and subtle for that, and there is too much of it. There is just not enough time" (Smith, 1983, p. 561).

Research on brain development has enhanced our understanding of how the brain processes information. Because the brain is designed to perceive and generate patterns, the brain resists learning isolated pieces of information that have no discernible pattern, such as learning telephone numbers, nonsense syllables, and isolated rules and conventions. Concentrating too heavily on the storage and recall of unconnected facts is a very inefficient use of the brain (Caine & Caine, 1990). Proponents of whole language argue that by practicing skills in isolation from their use, the skills become decontextualized and meaningless:

Thus, written language, rather than being a process of "getting the words and getting them right" (Adams, 1990) is a process of meaning construction. As Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989) observe, "words and sentences are not islands, entire unto themselves." They gain their meaning within the context of their use. Instead of "extracting" meaning from print, readers construct their own unique interpretation of the text, based on their knowledge and past experience (Rosenblatt, 1989). Smith describes text as a "two-sided mirror rather than a window, with writers and readers unable to see each other but gazing upon reflections of their own minds" (1982, p. 87).

Central to this interpretive approach is an emphasis on the social aspects of literacy: children become literate through dialogue with peers and responsive adults. In a whole language classroom, language is kept whole, useful, and meaningful; rather than a focus on teacher methodology, the starting point is with children, their interests and understandings. As Ira Shor (1992) observed, "What students bring to class is where learning begins. It starts there and goes places."

Creating a reading/writing classroom. A central premise of whole language and emergent literacy theories is that children come to school with much knowledge about literacy. Families of children who read early and "naturally" typically provide a language and "print rich" environment that fosters the child's interest in literate activities. Children's efforts at reading and writing are accepted with interest and enthusiasm and enhanced by adult questions and encouragement. Adults and older siblings frequently read to themselves and out loud to infants and children, demonstrating the importance of literacy, as well as its enjoyment. Researchers have found that extensive story-reading experience during the preschool years is strongly correlated with successful literacy development during the elementary school years (Schickendanz, 1986).

Teachers who utilize a whole language approach in teaching young children, strive to create a classroom environment similar to the home environment that has been shown to be optimal for natural literacy development. Such a classroom is both "rich in physical resources and social mediation." (Schickedanz, 1986, p. 4). While the goal of preschool and kindergarten is not to teach children to read and write, by providing multiple opportunities for children to engage in storybook reading, children gain an insight that is fundamental to learning to read: print makes sense. Schickedanz (1986) notes that "if we expect print to make sense, we can predict the text as we read along and monitor our decisions about what words are there" (p. 42). By listening to story books and paying attention to what the story is about, children develop the expectation that reading, rather than simply decoding unrelated words, is a meaningful activity.

As children grow and develop, they become increasingly adept at retelling the text accurately and progress from thinking that the pictures are read, to knowing that print can be read without reference to pictures. But as Schickedanz (1986) notes, "it is the relationship between speech and print that is the puzzle" (p. 44). The simple and predictable text found in many children's story books, combined with repeated readings, helps children develop an oral knowledge of the text, aiding the child's attempts to match speech to print. In a whole language classroom, a cozy reading corner, with large cushions and a variety of books, invites children to read individually and with peers, enhancing both literacy development and the enjoyment of reading.

Emergent literacy philosophy emphasizes the connections and interrelationships between reading, and writing, and oral language development (Crawford, 1995). Creating a "print-rich" environment provides multiple ways for children to discover relationships between oral and written language. Labels, signs, charts, calendars, and lists that children can help create, not only help to organize the environment, but also provide opportunities for children to read and write in functional and meaningful ways.

Literacy enriched activity centers encourage children to further explore the relationship between reading and writing. With the addition of telephone books, materials for writing letters and lists, and books to read to dolls, a housekeeping corner can provide numerous opportunities for children to explore print. A nearby grocery play center, complete with newspaper ads, cash register receipts, coupons, typing paper, inventory sheets, pads of paper, and toy paper money (Rybcezynski & Troy, 1995), provides a natural complement. Rybcezynski & Troy observe: "As children play at being "grown-ups," who use reading and writing for real reasons in a particular environment, they uncover some of the mysteries of printed language" (p. 7).

Scribbling, writing, and spelling. Whole language supporters view written language learning, not as accumulation of ready-built parts, but as a developmental process (Edelsky, Altwerger & Flores, 1987). Spelling development is believed to begin the first time a child picks up a writing instrument and makes a mark on a page (Griffith & Leavell, 1995, 96). Clay (1975) describes three stages of scribbling: (a) random scribbling for pleasure, that may have certain characteristics of print, e.g., rectangular rather than circular; horizontal, rather than vertical; (b) scribbling with the understanding that symbols can convey meaning (c) creating mock messages, in which mock letters and beginning letter forms appear.

From these forms, children progress to writing the alphabet letters and eventually to invented spelling. However, even when children are capable of writing a number of letters, they may use all of these strategies to create messages. Like infants and toddlers who can speak a number of clearly enunciated words but who use a mixture of jargon and words to approximate sentences, young children may use a mixture of scribbling and writing when they write long messages.

In this developmental view, invented spelling is seen, not as a sign of incompetence, but as an important stage of writing. Schickedanz (1986) explains:

Caregivers typically appreciate babies' communicative attempts and remember babies' invented words fondly (Who is not charmed by cross-eyed bears named Gladly or a bald man who becomes "a man with a barefoot head"?) (Nelson, 1989). However, because teachers frequently expect children to conform to conventional standards in writing, with no developmental stages in between, invented spelling is often looked at as something to overcome (Schickedanz, 1986).

In a whole language classroom, teachers encourage young children to move to standard spelling by modeling writing and providing an environment rich with opportunities to explore purposeful and meaningful print. Even intermediate-age children are encouraged to use invented spelling in a first draft, using standard spelling when their writing is for others (Griffith & Leavell, 1995, 96). In this way, children are encouraged to explore the form of written language, much as they explore oral language: by generating and evaluating hypotheses, building upon their understandings of how words are spelled (Nelson, 1989).

Schickedanz (1986) points out that learning how to write involves much more than learning to write alphabet letters (although it does, of course, include this ability). Learning to write also involves knowing (a) how writing and speech relate, (b) how form and style vary depending on the situation, and (c) how a reader will react to what we have written (p. 72). Although these abilities require a complexity of thinking beyond the reach of most preschool and kindergarten children, the development of these competencies can be enhanced by accepting what children are able to do. Encouraging young children to write often and freely, without requiring them to meet conventional standards, helps them to create their own strategies for matching print and speech. In addition and most importantly, when teachers value children's early literacy efforts, they enhance children's capacity to see themselves as writers.

Proponents of emergent literacy and whole languages approaches view writing as a dynamic process, "an active, communicative, social, meaning-making enterprise" (Pappas, Kiefer & Levstik, 1990). Rather than an emphasis on the component parts (e.g., the formation of letters, the spelling of words, grammatical conventions), the emphasis is on helping children to clarify thoughts, discover new meanings, and use writing to communicate. The writing process typically involves the following steps: topic selection, prewriting, composition of a first (rough) draft, sharing the draft with friends and readers, revising, editing, illustrating, if appropriate, and final publication (Moll & Whitmore, 1993). However, Pappas, Keifer, and Levstik (1990) caution that the writing process is not a lock-step sequence of events; rather, the stages simultaneously affect and interact with each other.

In a reading-writing classroom, a writing center with space for three or four children to work comfortably, provides a space for children to make greeting cards or books, write notes, letters, or stories. The center includes a variety of writing supplies, including many types of writing tools, cards, paper, stencils, stapler, hole punch, magic slates, child and chalk board. Because teachers do not require children to have mastered the alphabet, reading, or standard spelling before beginning to write, children of all ages have many opportunities to experiment with writing in a risk-free environment.

Summary

The strategies used in whole language classrooms are many and varied, reflecting teachers' creativity and experience. In a typical classroom, multiple opportunities for children to actively participate in activities that have meaning in the child's daily life are provided, including: shared book experiences, designed to resemble story time at home; collaborative reading with peers; literacy enhanced activity centers; open-ended discussions; dramatization of read-aloud stories; individual and group narration of stories, based on actual or imagined experience; reading and writing centers; and interactive journals.

Strickland (1990) described the critical elements of a reading-writing classroom:

Classrooms which utilize whole language and writing process approaches have a workshop atmosphere (Edelsky, Altwerger & Flores, 1987). Children read and write individually and in groups, sharing information, tips, and insights. They are encouraged to take ownership of their learning and are given ample time to study a topic in-depth, taking advantage of many different resources, found in the home, school and community.

A responsive and encouraging classroom environment, where children have many opportunities to engage in literacy activities, engenders not only literacy development, but positive feelings toward reading and writing. When children see written language as useful, enjoyable, and relevant to their daily lives, they are well on their way to becoming life-long learners. As Eisner (1991) notes, "A much better index for school achievement than standardized test scores is the level and quality of the conversations children engage in away from their classrooms (p. 11).

Dangerous Dichotomies

Whole language and emergent literacy perspectives, solidly grounded in linguistics, developmental psychology, and brain-based research, have become a pervasive force in American education. In many classrooms, teachers have abandoned traditional approaches and are implementing literature-based programs, designed to cultivate a love of books and fluency in writing.

These changes have not come without controversy. Attacked as yet another interesting "fad," a "philosophy of osmosis," by some educators (Daniels, 1995), whole language proponents have sometimes responded in ways that encourage the reduction of complex issues into either/or opposites (Moorman, Blanton & McLaughlin, 1994). The debate often appears to be polarized into two warring camps: reading and writing are a matter of (a) "getting the words and getting them right; the sense will take care of itself" versus (b) "take care of the sense; the words will take care of themselves." Research has demonstrated that neither of these extreme approaches works for all children.

Learning to read and write. As discussed earlier, there is much evidence that children who come from families who place a high value on literacy and who have a rich oral language vocabulary and extensive experience with story book reading tend to be early and competent readers. Schickedanz (1986, p. 38-39) notes that by the time such children enter school, they have already learned:

It is easy to see why children who enter school with these competencies are at a distinct advantage over children who have little experience with books. However, even with such advantages, reading remains somewhat of an "unnatural act" (Stanovich, 1986). Although all children (in the absence of severe disability), even in far from optimal language learning environments, learn to use language in a functional way, merely placing children in a "print rich" environment does not ensure acquisition of reading and writing skills. Some instruction in decoding, spelling, and punctuation, within the context of authentic reading and writing experiences, is usually necessary.

Fortunately there are many excellent books and articles that provide teachers with a sound philosophical basis for literacy instruction and practical methods for implementing it. They include many specific strategies that teachers can employ to help children learn to match print to speech, enhance phonemic awareness, spell, and cultivate comprehension, writing, and editing skills. From a synthesis of research on comprehension instruction, Fielding and Pearson (1994) have identified four components of successful programs:

Research has demonstrated a positive statistical relationship between the amount of time spent reading (and being read to) and both reading comprehension and increases in vocabulary and concept knowledge (Nagy, et al. & Stallmen, cited in Fielding & Pearson, 1994). Although children typically spend a great deal of time on workbook assignments, Durkin (cited in Fielding & Pearson, 1994)) concluded that these exercises mostly tested students' understanding instead of teaching them how to comprehend. In contrast, instruction of strategies within the context of reading real texts has been shown to improve comprehension.

Explicit Instruction, a model described by Pearson and Dole (1987), involves four phases: (a) teacher modeling and explanation of a strategy, (b) guided practice during which teachers gradually give students more responsibility for task completion, (c) independent practice accompanied by feedback, and (d) application of the strategy in real reading situation. Clay and Cazden (1990) caution that "teaching should dwell on detail only long enough for the children to discover its existence and then encourage the use of it in isolation only when absolutely necessary" (p. 207).

Opportunities for children to engage in open ended discussions about literature and projects, where teachers guide the discussion and encourage multiple interpretations (instead of one right answer), enable children to learn from each other -- to be enriched and stimulated by "the power of each other's ideas" (Meier, 1995). Understanding is enhanced when children connect knowledge and past experience outside the classroom with text information. Literature response logs (Routman, 1994) and interactive journals (Thomas & Oldfather, 1995), in which children engage in a written dialogue with the teacher, enable children to explore the meaning and purpose of their literature curriculum. In addition, by connecting reading and writing, these two aspects of literacy can enhance each other, helping children to crack the speech to sound code. Ehri (1989) points out that reading directs writing toward more conventional forms, and writing enhances readers' interest in and grasp of the alphabetic structure of print.

All of these strategies have been shown to be highly effective for most children. But what about children who are not successfully learning to read and write, who seem to be falling further and further behind?

Children At-Risk For School Failure

The U.S. child poverty rate rose from 22.3 percent in 1992 to 22.7 percent in 1993, leaving 15.7 million children in poverty, the highest number in 30 years. Young children fared even worse. Between 1989 and 1992, the number of poor children under six grew from five to six million, and the poverty rate for these children reached 26 percent (Children's Defense Fund, 1995). More than a third --2.8 million -- of the nation's three and four-year-old children were from low-income families in 1990, a growth of 17 percent since 1980 (GAO, March 1995).

Research has demonstrated a strong correlation between proficiency in oral language and success at reading and writing. Problems with language are believed by some to be at the heart of the difficulties many low-income children encounter in school. In a survey conducted by the Carnegie Foundation, when teachers were asked what problem most restricted the school readiness, overwhelmingly they said, "deficiency in language" (Boyer, 1991).

It is important to note that most low-income parents provide nurturing environments for their children's development, despite the difficulties presented by living in poverty. In addition, although white middle-class Americans place a high value on the decontextualized, abstract written word, other ethnic groups and social classes may encourage the development of other intelligences, including aesthetic, musical and kinesthetic literacy. A study conducted in an elementary school in Charlote, North Carolina (Stone, 1992), found that 64 percent of children were either tactile or kinesthetic learners, compared to only 21 percent who were primarily auditory learners and 20 percent who were visual learners.

In addition, many children from diverse cultural backgrounds, who may also be poor, have a great deal of knowledge and language competence that goes unrecognized by teachers who are predominantly white and middle-class. Thus, differences in verbal interaction and narrative styles may be interpreted as deficits (Delpit, 1995). Delpit points out that teacher education usually focuses on research that links failure and socioeconomic status, failure and cultural difference, and failure and single-parent households. "It is hard to believe that these children can possibly be successful after teachers have been so thoroughly exposed to so much negative indoctrination " (p. 172).

Teachers, then, can do much to ameliorate the difficulties that children from low-income families by having high exceptions for all children and by examining their own biases and beliefs regarding children living in poverty. If schools are to meet the needs of all children, they must build on the strengths, experience, and competencies that children bring to school, encouraging and providing opportunities for children to utilize their multiple intelligences.

Poverty and early language learning. While being poor does not inevitably lead to problems in school, poverty's adverse effects on children and families have been well documented. Poverty gives rise to many types of deprivation and increases the likelihood that numerous risk factors are present simultaneously: in parents, child, health care, housing, support systems, schools, child care, and neighborhoods. Due to the interaction of multiple risk factors, children from poor and minority families are disproportionately at-risk for school failure. Nationally, poor children are three times more likely to drop out of school and poor teen girls are five and a half times more likely to become teen mothers (Children First for Oregon, 1994). According to J. Lawrence Aber, the director of the National Center for Children in Poverty, "The increasing number of poor young children reflects a 20-year trend that is having devastating consequences on children today whether they are toddlers or teenagers."

A poor child is twice as likely to have low birth weight, three times as likely to have a teen parent, five or more times as likely to be abused, and twice, or in some high-risk communities, ten times as likely to die before their first birthday as are children in middle-class families (Children's Defense Fund, 1994). According to Halpern (1989), poverty harms children on three levels: (a) directly, through the physical consequences of material hardship: Inadequate housing, child care and medical care, poor nutrition, inferior schools, and dangerous environments; (b) indirectly, due to consequences of server and chronic stress; (c) through the dehumanization that defines the experience of poverty in America.

As discussed earlier, the optimal environment for stimulating language development is one of responsiveness to and acceptance of the child's communicative attempts. By responding to infant's babbles, coos, and smiles as if they are meaningful and including children in conversations long before they say their first words, parents help children to become confident and competent language learners. Dore (1985) suggests, "Perhaps the single most important aspect of conversational feedback for the initial acquisition of language is the adult's attribution of intentionality to infant vocalizations" (p. 345). An optimal environment is provided by caregivers who (a) accept and value behavior that children are able to do; (b) are highly responsive to children's interests; (c) provide opportunities to exercise control over activities; and (d) provide activities and interactions that are developmentally appropriate (Snow, Dubber & Blauw, 1982).

In contrast, a parenting style that relies on directives, direct teaching, and teaching by imitation has been associated with lower language functioning (Snow et al., 1982). In a longitudinal study, Tough (1982) found that it is precisely this parenting style which is prevalent among low-income families. The majority of the talk of middle-class mothers falls into the reflexive or associative category. For example, a middle-class mother might say, "Please get off the counter because I'm afraid you might fall." In contrast, the talk of disadvantaged mothers falls more frequently into the categorical category of speech, for example, "I'm telling you to get down now. Do it because I said so."

Parents who respond to their children's interests in various aspects of the world, helping them to observe, compare, reflect, predict, empathize, and reason are offering their children experience in the says in which parents think (Tough, 1982). But parents may actively discourage thinking and hinder the development of curiosity and interest in the world. Hart and Risley (1992) found that low SES children frequently experienced a language impoverished environment, receiving substantially less parenting per hour than children in middle-class families, and that these differences were strongly correlated with subsequent IQ measures of the children. In addition, a substantial proportion of parent utterances to children functioned to prohibit the children's activities. These investigators found a significant inverse relationship between the rate of prohibitions and children's IQ. They concluded that the strong relationship between even low prohibitions and unfavorable child outcomes suggests that prohibitions have a toxic effect on children's speech development.

It is not only the quality of the language-learning environment that is different for many poor children. The amount of verbal interaction between parents and their children varies greatly by social class. Farren and Ramey (1980) found that middle-class mothers increased their involvement with their infants from six to 20 months, whereas many low-income mothers decreased their involvement. In a longitudinal study conducted by Farren and Haskins (cited in Farren & Ramey, 1980), middle-class mothers played with their 3-year-olds twice as much as poor mothers.

Hart (1982) found that although the language of poor children displayed as great a variety and complexity as middle-class children, they used complex structures less frequently. In addition, poor children added new words and structures more slowly than advantaged children. The result was "a cumulative, ever-widening gap between the size of the lexicon in use by poverty versus advantaged children" (p. 209). Although high quality early intervention and preschool can do much to ameliorate the difficulties of low-income children, these programs are frequently either unavailable to many low-income families or of low quality.

Child care and early intervention. The critical nature of the first three years of life in the developmental outcome of children is now well understood. Early intervention research demonstrates the benefits of reaching children at younger ages, with strong emphasis on family involvement. Yet, despite a 26 percent increase in the poor infants and toddlers population during the 1980s, federally-funded programs serve only about one percent of all poor infants and toddlers (Government Accounting Office (GAO), 1994).

While interventions, which begin during the first three years and that continue through the child's primary years are optimal, the benefits of high quality preschool experiences have been well documented, particularly for poor children. However, children from low-income families are far less likely to be enrolled in preschool programs than middle- or upper-income children. A 1995 U.S. General Accounting Office document reported that in 1990, approximately 35 percent of poor three-and four-year-olds participated in preschool, compared with approximately 60 percent of those in the highest income group.

Tough (1982) points out that preschools and schools frequently operate in a way that does not encourage children to become involved in their own learning, relying instead on teacher directed activity, with children often in the position of passive responders. While schools frequently "teach language," both Tough (1982) and Hart (1982 ) propose that, "It is not that children from disadvantaged environments lack language, but that their expectations about using language do not support learning" (p.13).

A responsive environment, in which children's communicative attempts are encouraged and responded to in a way that encourages further dialogue can do much to facilitate language development. According to Marion Blank (1982), "there is no substitute for a dialogue with an adult who provides a good language model and who presses a child to stretch his or her cognitive functioning." Data suggests that 20 minutes three times per week of one-to-one interaction can lead to dramatic gains in children's language competence.

Yet, in many preschools and schools, due, in large part, to high child/teacher ratios, teachers frequently do not respond to children's questions and comments, or respond in ways that end the interaction. In addition, in some early intervention classrooms, teachers have been taught to concentrate on the form of language, rather than the substance -- on whether a child uses correct grammar, rather than how the child uses language to communicate or to reason. Halliday, McIntosh, and Stevens (1964) have labeled this traditional focus on form as being akin to teaching a starving man how to use a knife and fork (cited in McGuiness, 1982).

Even in high quality preschools, one-to-one adult-child interaction in the context of a meaningful conversation, is difficult to manage. In the Carolina Abecedarian Project, a demonstration day-care center, designed to prevent school failure of children raised in poverty, teachers were able to spend less that ten minutes per day per child (McGuiness, 1982).

Numerous studies have shown that our child care system is inadequate to meet the needs of our nation's children, particularly children from low-income families. Due in part to our society's strongly held beliefs that early care and socialization of children are not only the right but the responsibility of the family, our child care and preschool system have never been integrated into a comprehensive educational system. In the absence of government regulation and sanction, these systems have grown into a non-system of programs, with widely different philosophies, practices, and quality of care. Isolated from one another in a market economy, their relationship is typically characterized by competition, rather than collaboration (Caldwell, 1991; Kagan, 1991).

A study conducted by the University of Colorado at Denver, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of North Carolina, and Yale University (1995) reported that across all levels of maternal education and child gender and ethnicity, children's cognitive and social development is positively related to the quality of their child care experience. Yet they found that child care at most centers in the United States is poor to mediocre, with almost half of the infants and toddlers in settings having less than minimal quality. In addition, the level of quality at most U.S. child care centers, especially in infant/toddler rooms, does not meet children's needs for health, safety, warm relationships, and learning. Other studies have found:

Ready To Learn. Rising poverty, combined with an inadequate child care system and insufficient comprehensive early intervention and family support programs, has had a profound effect on our nation's young children. According to a 1991 survey of kindergarten teachers by the Carnegie Foundation, more than a third of the 3.5 million children who enter the nation's public schools each year are not ready to participate successfully (Boyer, 1991). Greene (1992) points out, "That's more than a million kids predestined for failure every year" (p. 4). "What we find so shocking is that such a high number of kindergarten students come to school educationally, socially and emotionally not well prepared," writes Boyer.

Although many children will gain the skills they need to succeed in kindergarten and beyond, many will not. As children experience an ever-widening gap between their competencies and school expectations, they may experience a pervasive sense of failure that may eventually lead to dropping out of school. Schools can identify children at risk for reading failure and design effective programs that enable children not only to accelerate their learning, but also maintain their gains throughout their school years. However, schools may instead provide an environment that exacerbates the difficulties, creating a "double whammy" effect that seriously compromises children's academic success. (Stanovich, 1986).

The rich get richer. As discussed earlier, research has demonstrated a strong correlation between the amount of time spent reading and reading comprehension, vocabulary growth, and concept knowledge (Anderson, et al., 1988).

Yet studies conducted in the 1970s and 80s revealed that children spent more time in workbook assignments than in actually reading texts. Estimates of how much time children spent reading ranged from seven to 15 minutes per day from the primary to the intermediate grades (Anderson, et. al., 1985).

Primarily because of the belief that children must be taught reading readiness skills before they engage in reading and writing activities, the skill/reading time ratio is typically the highest for children of the lowest reading ability. Delpit (1995) points out:

Thus, focusing on accumulating isolated skills, for later assembly into the whole, may leave little time for the real thing, contributing to what Walberg (cited in Stanovich, 1986) dubbed "Matthew effects," that is, a situation in which the rich get richer and the poor poorer. There is substantial agreement among researchers that reading is a significant contributor to the growth of vocabulary, concept knowledge, and comprehension skills. Stanovich (1986) notes, "It appears that the bulk of vocabulary growth does not occur via direct instruction " (p. 379). Children who are reading well and who have good vocabularies will read more, learn more word meanings, comprehend more, develop fluency, and hence read even better (Stanovich, 1986).

Allington (cited in Stanovich, 1986) found that in his first grade sample, the total number of words read during a week of school reading-group sessions ranged form a low of 16 for one of the children in the less skilled group to a high of 1,933 for one of the children in the skilled reading group. Children who read slowly, due to inadequate vocabularies and deficient decoding skills, read less, and as a result, have slower development of vocabulary, comprehension skills, and concept knowledge. Stanovich explains: "Reading for meaning is hindered, unrewarding reading experiences multiply, and practice is avoided or merely tolerated without real cognitive development. This downward spiral continues -and has further consequences " (p. 364).

How can these snowballing consequences of reading difficulties -- limited vocabulary growth and concept knowledge, reduced motivation to read, inhibited performance on many academic tasks, loss of self-esteem, and eventually school failure and drop out -- be prevented? For most children, ample opportunities to read and write authentic texts, with explicit instruction in decoding, spelling, and punctuation within the context of meaningful communicative endeavors, is sufficient to enable them to become proficient readers and writers. Children who have had little experience with story books, who may have oral language deficits (in comparison with their more advantaged peers), who exhibit little phonological awareness (awareness of the speech sounds or phonemes to which letters correspond), and who may not see reading and writing as relevant to their daily lives, may need something extra.

Ensuring Success At school: What works? What Doesn't? Although most educators and policy makers profess to believe that all children can learn, our educational policies often belie this belief.

Approximately 12 percent of all school-aged children are placed in special education programs, many on the basis of reading failure, and then remain in special education for many years, often for their entire school careers (Slavin, et. al., 1993). Slavin and his colleagues conclude that while success in the early grades does not guarantee success throughout the school years and beyond, "failure in the early grades does virtually guarantee failure in later schooling" (p. 11).

One of the most popular strategies used to improve performance is retention. Each year approximately 2.4 million students per year are retained, at a cost of nearly $10 billion. In some urban districts, as many as one fourth to one-third of U.S. kindergarten children and one-fifth of first graders are retained. Not only is this a costly strategy, but research strongly suggests that it is an ineffective, and even a harmful one (Nason, 1990; Shepard & Smith, 1990). Holmes (cited in Shepard & Smith, 1990) reported that in a meta-analysis of 63 controlled studies, 54 studies showed overall negative effects on achievement and emotional well-being.

Children in Yamamoto's (1980, cited in Shepard & Smith, 1990) study of childhood stressors rated the prospect of repeating a grade as more stressful than "wetting in class" or being caught stealing. The only two life events they felt would be more stressful than being retained were going blind or losing a parent. Yet retained students interviewed by Byrnes (1989, cited in Shepard and Smith, 1990) indicated that they may already be plagued by feelings of failure at being unable to meet school expectations. Like the high achieving students, they viewed retention as a necessary punishment for being bad in class or failing to learn.

Longitudinal studies find that disadvantaged third graders who have failed one or more grades and are reading below grade level are extremely unlikely to complete high school (Lloyd, 1978, cited in Slavin, et al., 1993). Thus, failure to learn to read may eventually lead to school failure and drop out. In turn, in today's "economy with limited seating," (Girioux, 1983), students may end up in dead-end jobs, unemployed, or worse, join the ranks of young people in our nation's burgeoning prisons. Thus, as in Ben Franklin's cautionary tale, a little neglect may have disastrous consequences, for our nation as a whole, and for the individuals whose lives are stunted by failure to learn such a basic skill as reading.

Yet, research is clear that we know how to ensure that virtually all children acquire the skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary for success at school and beyond. After a major, federal funded review of the effects of programs intended to prevent school failure, Slavin and his colleagues (1993) concluded unequivocally: "Early school failure is fundamentally preventable (p. 17).

Programs that work. Research has shown that programs that identify at-risk children in the first grade and begin intervention before a history of failure has set in can provide children with the experiences they need to be successful at school. Effects of programs for students who begin after first grade are much less significant (Salvin, et al., 1993; Speigel, 1995). In their review of intervention programs, Slavin and his colleagues (1993) identified a strategy that stands out from all others in effectiveness: one-to-one tutoring, beginning in the first grade, for children identified with reading problems. Although all forms of individualized tutoring were more effective than any other reading strategy, tutoring by certified teachers was the most beneficial.

Reading Recovery, Success for All and Prevention of Learning Disabilities are three programs that provide one-to-one tutoring for 20 to 30 minutes a day for during the first grade by certified teachers, as part of their intervention strategies. All three programs have been found to produce gains in reading that averaged 75 percent or more at the end of first grade and lasted into the third grade (SREB, 1994).

Yet it is clear that, just as preschool provides no silver bullet or inoculation that assures success throughout the school years, intensive tutoring for a few months in the first grade will not be enough for all children. For all at-risk children, high quality instruction in the elementary grades is also necessary. For some high risk children, family support services and extended tutoring might be necessary (Slavin et al., 1993). Slavin and colleagues propose that we need to provide at-risk children with the services they need at a particular stage of development. They observe:

Is a commitment to educating all children a costly endeavor? Yes. Are the alternatives even more costly? Of course, the answer is "yes." Comprehensive preschool and early intervention programs, at a cost of approximately $4,000 to $6,000 per child, per year, have produced sustainable gains in the areas of social competence, with fewer grade repetitions and referrals to special education, and more positive attitudes toward school. Schweinhart and Weikart's (1993) recently published their findings through age 27 on the High/Scope Perry Preschool Project. They reported that:

Although high quality classroom instruction, essential for at-risk children to sustain gains made with one-to-one tutoring, is relatively inexpensive and benefits all children, extended tutoring and family support services for children that need these additional services, can be costly for schools, as much as $800 per child. Yet, reducing retentions and special education referrals creates major savings in the long run. In addition, compared to the costs of a life time of public assistance at $2,550 a year or $25,000 per person per year in prison, educational interventions are clearly a bargain.

Summary

Research in how oral language develops has greatly influenced our understanding of how children learn written language. Because oral language is regarded as the cornerstone of reading development, proponents of whole language and emergent literacy perspectives view literacy as beginning in caregiver/infant interactions. Oral and written language are seen as interrelated and developing simultaneously, each reinforcing and transforming the other. In this view, the underlying process of learning written and oral language is the same; like oral language, written language is best learned through actual use in a social context.

Teachers who utilize a whole language approach in teaching young children strive to create a classroom environment similar to the home environment that has been shown to be optimal for natural literacy development. In a whole language classroom, children are given multiple opportunities to engage in reading and writing and to participate in open-ended discussions and written dialogues with the teacher.

Serving as a guide and resource, rather than a dispenser of information, teachers use questions and comments to encourage exploration of literature in a context of joint inquiry. Children learn decoding skills, punctuation, and spelling while reading and writing authentic texts and are encouraged to link their knowledge and past experience with text information. If necessary, one-on-one tutoring, combined with other support services, is provided to ensure every child's successful early literacy development.

Other Voices, Other Classrooms

In our culture, high value is placed on verbal/linguistic and logical/mathematical intelligences, with particular emphasis on learning through the decontextualized word found in print. It is clear that learning to read is fundamental to success at school and beyond. Failure to learn to read is strongly correlated with school dropout, often with devastating consequences for individual children and for society. Because of the vital importance of literacy, opportunities for hands-on learning usually take a back seat to literacy activities, even in some whole language classrooms. Gardner and Hatch (1989) point out that the ability to fashion a product -- to write a symphony, execute a painting, stage a play, build up and manage an organization, carry out an experiment -- are typically not included in our definition of intelligence.

Delpit (1995) recounts the story of an Alaska Native teacher (D.) when she was a bilingual aide in an Anglo teacher's classroom.

An integrated curriculum offers opportunities for children to cultivate what Malaguzzi (1993) called "the hundred languages of children." Howard Gardner of Harvard University identified seven sources of intelligence. In addition to logical-mathematical and linguistic, he includes: spatial, musical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intra-personal. There is increasing understanding on the part of educators and researchers of the importance of all of these intelligences for a child's development and academic success.

INTEGRATED CURRICULUM:
THEMES, PROJECTS, WEBS, AND INQUIRY


Eleanor Duckworth has said that the development of intelligence is "a matter of having wonderful ideas and feeling confident enough to try them out" (1972, p. 227). Proponents of an integrated curriculum strive to create such a classroom environment by encouraging active, engaged learning, through open-ended discussion and multiple modes of inquiry. Based on brain research, which demonstrates that the mind is designed to perceive patterns and relationships and works best when learning takes place in the context of meaningful activities, integrated curricular approaches encourage children to bring all of their intelligences and experience to the learning activity.

In order to provide opportunities for children to engage in the in-depth study of a particular topic over an extended period of time, children work on projects, individually and in groups, posing questions, making decisions and choices, and pursuing interests (Katz, 1994). Teachers act as coach, facilitator, and partner in inquiry, suggesting and providing resources and strategies. Subjects, rather than being separated into discrete areas, each with its own sequence of skills, are integrated. It is important to note that an integrated curriculum is not synonymous with fuzzy-mindedness. Bredekamp and Rosegrant (1995) state, "We believe that integrated curriculum cannot achieve intellectual integrity unless it is thoroughly grounded in the knowledge bases of the various disciplines, which have evolved over centuries" (p. 2).

Wills (1995) contrasts an integrated, inquiry driven curriculum with a traditional prescriptive approach to teaching, in which learning is viewed from a linear perspective, "much like a train racing along a railroad track" (Wills, 1995).

The project approach (Katz & Chard, 1989) and the inquiry model (Wills, 1995), like more traditional thematic units, provide opportunities for children to learn about a topic. However, unlike thematic units, which usually consist of pre-planned lessons, teachers using a project or inquiry approach plan for possibilities. Rather than standardized, predetermined outcomes, the goal of an integrated curriculum is what Eisner (1991) refers to as "productive unpredictability -- creative thinking" (p. 103). Not only reading and writing, but play, visual art, music, dance, drama, observation, and investigation provide multiple ways for children to "get to the heart of a subject." As Hawkins observes, "You don't want to cover a subject; you want to uncover it" (cited in Duckworth, 1972).

Curriculum, then, becomes a negotiation, a balance achieved among three sources of input: children's interests, teachers' interests, and the required unit (Wills, 1995). Learning is characterized by a joint search for understanding, with teachers and children becoming partners in inquiry. Wills explains:

To enhance children's ability to make sense of their world, projects should be relevant to their lives outside the classroom, drawing on children's knowledge, interests, and experience. Once a topic has been selected, teachers and children brainstorm what they think they know about the topic and what they want to know. Making a "web" or a concept map, a mental representation of concepts and relationships, helps extend the theme and provides an overview of resources and activities that can aid in the investigation.

Topics are explored from multiple perspectives, using a variety of printed information, manipulable materials, and resources from the community -- people, animals, and places -- that contribute to children's understanding of a theme (Pappas, Keifer & Levstik, 1990). Opportunities for children to express themselves in multiple languages --visual art, music, drama, dance -- are particularly important for children from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds. Projects that free children form the need to express themselves only in words help to build concepts and bridge language differences (Abramson, Robinson & Ankenman, 1995). Choices of projects for young children are limited only by time, resources, and the collective imagination of the classroom. Global themes, such as change, freedom, relationships, patterns, and communication, are especially well suited to integration (Nielsen, 1989).

Projects typically culminate in some kind of product, such as published book (either individually or collaboratively written and illustrated) or a play. Classrooms often are transformed into the topic under study. For example, a class studying an ecosystem may "become" an ecosystem, complete with flora and fauna, fashioned from various materials. In one class observed by the author, the children created a city; children built their own replicas of shops or homes of their choice, then "lived" in them for several weeks. One student brought fresh flowers daily for her "flower shop" and decorated it with homemade curtains and murals. A theme about Egypt may lead to the classroom turning into a museum, with students becoming tour guides for other classes (Moll & Whitmore, 1993).

Although projects can provide opportunities for children to investigate a topic in-depth, proponents of project and inquiry models do not suggest that this kind of work should dictate curriculum content. "The unit of study is a path toward understanding something better, not a wall around the curriculum (Rosegrant & Bredekamp, 1992).

Learning centers. Learning centers provide opportunities for children to learn through concrete experiences with materials and other children. A typical preschool and kindergarten classroom may be divided into a number of such centers, including housekeeping or dramatic play; a block corner; sand and water; art; reading; writing; and a science center. A thematic curriculum can help provide structure for children's independent and collaborative explorations and activities. Although learning centers are usually not used in older elementary classrooms, older children (as well as adults) may benefit from hands-on learning opportunities which engage all the senses.

In Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom (1989), Campbell describes his third grade classroom, which is divided into seven learning centers, each dedicated to one of the seven intelligences described by Gardner. For two-thirds of the day, children rotate through the centers, exploring a topic such as outer space and using all seven intelligences. He reports that, over the year, not only did children's academic achievement improve, but discipline problems were reduced and children developed self-direction and cooperative learning skills.

These findings are backed by brain research which has shown that learning is more meaningful and more likely to be retained when children connect, not only aurally, but emotionally and physically, with the material (Hancock, 1996). Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989) argue that by separating knowing and doing, "education defeats its own goal of providing useable, robust knowledge" (p. 32). They maintain that learning is "fundamentally situated" in the activities and situations in which it takes place.

Challenges. Although solidly grounded in cognitive psychology and bolstered by positive teacher reports, implementing an integrated curriculum can be cumbersome and time consuming, as well as exciting and unpredictable. In-depth study of a subject through discussion, open-ended questioning, and multiple modes of inquiry requires considerable time for both teachers and children to read, reflect, dialogue, explore, and experiment. In a recent study by the author, some teachers expressed doubts as to the efficacy of these practices for efficiently promoting skill acquisition. Despite using an educational approach that focuses on teaching skills within the context of a developmentally appropriate classroom, worries about "getting children ready for next year" were expressed by a number of teachers (Novick, 1996).

Wide-spread use of norm-referenced tests adds to the concerns. The tension between "coverage and making sense of things" (Meier, 1995) and between "getting children ready for next year" and encouraging multiple intelligences is exacerbated by the continued use of standardized tests which tend to measure a restricted view of intelligence and performance. The use of authentic assessments may do much to reduce the mismatch between curriculum and assessment. (This topic will be discussed later in the paper).

However, even with kinder and gentler assessments, the tension between encouraging skill acquisition and in-depth understanding is one that all teachers inevitably confront, as they move from a traditional, didactic teaching style to a more child centered one. Teachers must find their own balance between implementing a prepackaged curriculum, with step-by-step skill building exercises and a more meaningful curriculum, which may build skills less systematically. To do so requires time for observation, reading, reflection, dialogue with colleagues, and support at the district, state, and federal levels.

"The quest," John Dewey, lamented, "is for certainty." If schools are to help children learn to think critically and imaginatively and to appreciate multiple viewpoints, a certain amount of uncertainty and ambiguity may not only be inevitable, but necessary for good teaching. While the role of educators has typically been one of transmitting knowledge, skills, and social and moral rules of the culture (Kohlberg & Meyer, 1972), many of our best thinkers, writers, artists, and inventors have produced their creations, not by rote memorization of information and rules, but through play -- "that special form of violating fixity" (Bruner, 1983).

In Defense Of Play

The role of play in learning is one of the most talked about and least undertook aspects of DAP. Although early childhood educators are often quoted as saying, "Play is the work of the child," in the enlarged DAP guidelines, Bredekamp and Rosegrant (1992) took pains to dispel the myth that DAP classrooms are child indulgent places, where children are "just left to play," or, even worse, chaotic environments where children are in control of the classrooms. Rather, for play to promote learning, "teachers must know why, when, and how they can help play become an enriching, meaningful learning experience" (p. 5). There is widespread agreement among early childhood educators that children's play benefits from support from adults and peers to reach new levels of competence (Berk & Winsler, 1995).

What is Play?

The primate species is characterized by a prolonged period of protection by caregivers, a time that is typically dominated by play. An enormous amount of time is spent observing adults and incorporating what is learned into play experiences. Although play is difficult to define, most educators agree on a number of characteristics of play: (a) Play takes place in an atmosphere of emotional reassurance, in which opportunities are provided for testing limits with impunity; and (b) play is intrinsically rewarding and enjoyable, even when it requires hard "work" (referred to as "serious play" by Kohler, 1926, cited in Bruner, 1972).

First and second grade children in a study by Wing (1995) distinguished play from work on a number of elements, many of which involved the voluntary or obligatory nature of the activity, indicating considerable agreement with Huck Finn's pronouncement, cited above. For example, children typically characterized play as something you get to do, while work was something you have to do:

Cindy:   When there are new materials, you get to play with them and do whatever you want. And just get used to it. Like when the sand was here, we could do whatever we wanted with it.
Interviewer:   Is it still playing?
Cindy:   Um, no. Now, it's estimating. It's like playing, only you have to do what the teacher says (p. 228).

Children also considered freedom of physical movement in the room, smiling and manipulating toys as play-like. Their answers indicated that for some children the act of sitting down for any length of time may be very hard work:

Cameron:   When you're playing like sometimes you are sweating and when you're doing math it's like working...When you're playing you like run around, and when it's -- when you work, you just walk around.
Mary:   If you're playing, then you're not really doing anything sitting down. And if you're working, you have to sit down and do it. (p. 236).

Again, research on the brain helps to explain why it is important for children, not only to have adequate daily exercise, but to be more physically active in the classroom. Hancock (1996) explains: "Physical movement juices up the brain, feeding it nutrients in the form of glucose and increasing nerve connections -- all of which make is easier for kids of all ages to learn" (p. 58). Generally, the younger the child the more important it is for active engagement with materials, peers, and teachers, in order for learning to take place. When children are able to talk while they work, sharing ideas, excitement, and laughter and when their hands are active, their minds are engaged. A teacher in a third-grade bilingual classroom expresses this viewpoint when she tells her children, "Talking is probably the most important thing we do in here because you learn the most when you can talk while you work" (Moll & Whitmore, 1993, p. 29). A DAP classroom, then, is often filled with the pleasant din that accompanies active learning.

Playing with words. Although Piaget regarded private speech (self-talk that does not seem to be addressed to another person) as a symptom of cognitive immaturity, Vygotsky viewed the private speech of young children as a problem-solving tool that guides behavior, helps children learn language, make sense of their world, express their emotions, and simply play with words (Berk & Winsler, 1995). This view of private speech as playing an important part in development is increasingly accepted by educators and development psychologists; private speech has been studied by a number of researchers. In particular, Weir's Language in the Crib (1970) and Nelson's Narratives from the Crib (1989) provide delightful examples of the extended solitary monologues that some young children engage in before going to sleep. In the following example, Anthony, Weir's two-year-old son explores the meaning of the words "big" and "little" and practices his counting skills (Cited in Berk & Winsler, 1995) (p. 118):

hi big Bobbig Bob and Nancy and Bobby
that's Boband Bob
that's Boband two, three Bobbys
big Bobthree Bobbys
little Bobfour Bobbys
big and littlesix
little Bobbytell the night, Bobby
little Nancybig Bob
big Nancybig Bob not home

In addition to the practice that such speech provides for learning word meanings, grammatical structures, and pronunciations in a risk free environment, these solitary stories help children to make sense of the events in their daily lives. Stern (1989) argues that around the end of the second year, a "narrative sense of self" emerges. These narratives help to "get ordinary life under control," by anticipating the day's events, sorting out the week's routines, and recounting past events, illustrated by the following musings by Emily, age 28 months:

Anthony's and Emily's soliloquies demonstrate that the habit of playing with words can not only help to sort one's thoughts about the world, but also lead to creative use of language, using rhythm, alliteration, rhyme, and imagery. Wasserman (1995) points out:

As educators, we can help to foster, not only the functional use of language, but also its esthetic use, through encouraging oral and written play with words.

Research on play. Although teachers have been trained to pay close attention to the amount of children's "time on task," studies with primates indicate that it is the very exaggeration and lack of economy of play that encourages extension of the limits (Bruner (1972). Bruner concludes that primate play produces the flexibility that makes tool using possible. Studies with primates have found that tool use appears first in play, then in problem-solving.

It is probably the "push to variation" (rather than fixation by positive reinforcement) that gives chimpanzee manipulation such widespread efficacy -- such opportunism as dipping sticks into beehives for honey, using sticks for clubbing lizards and rodents, an using branches for striking at or throwing at big felines (p. 695).

A number of laboratory studies indicate the necessity of initial play with materials in order for them to be converted to instrumental ends. Animals that successfully solved problems using tools did so after an extended period of play with the tools. Few succeeded before play (Bruner, 1972). The intrinsic motivation of play, the lack of concern with positive reinforcement or reward, is illustrated by this example:

Studies by Bruner (1985) demonstrated that, like chimps' play, children's play has positive effects on problem solving and concept development, effects that are substantially better than through direct instruction:

Research on children's play has provided abundant evidence that play promotes cognitive, language, and social/emotional development. Socio-dramatic play, in particular, has frequently been studied. Preschoolers who spend more time at socio-dramatic play are advanced in general development, show an enhanced ability to understand the feelings of others, and are seen as more socially competent by their teachers (Berk & Winsler, 1995). Pretend play offers an arena in which all facets of conversational dialogue can be extended, to resolve disputes, to enter into a group engaged in make believe, to ensure continued collaboration, and to exchange points of view (Berk & Winsler, 1995).

Memory is also enhanced through fantasy play. Newman (1990) reported that opportunities for play with objects enhances children's ability to remember names of objects and Silvern (1986) found that recall of an unfamiliar story is promoted by opportunities to act out the story.

Play, then, can help school become a place where learning makes sense. Children use all their intelligences to solve problems, learn new concepts, collaborate with others, and make connections between what they know and what they want to know. Play offers opportunities for children to create something new, to develop self direction, to take risks with impunity, and, perhaps, most importantly, develop habits of play that can last a lifetime (Wasserman, 1995). It is no wonder that Vygotsky regarded play as a leading factor in development, providing a stage between the purely situational constraints of early childhood and the abstract thought of adults: "In play, the child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though the were a head taller than himself" (1978, p. 102).

Singer and Singer (cited in Bert & Winsler, 1995) argue that for optimal development of imagination, significant people in the child's life must establish a climate for make-believe, encouraging and accepting the child's imaginings with enthusiasm and respect. Following the child's lead and elaborating on the child's contribution helps pretending to become a joint activity, with the child gradually taking over more responsibility for creating and implementing the fantasy theme (Bert & Winsler, 1995). Telling stories, initiating joint pretend, and providing materials (such as puppets and costumes) that inspire make-believe can help a child develop what Singer and Singer (1995) refer to as "a sense of wonder."

Because our educational system typically uses a narrow conception of cognition, cultivating a sense of wonder has never been high on a list of academic goals. Rather, schools often have a goal of achieving an ideal of pure reason, unencumbered by emotions or past experience, reflected in Descartes' famous dictum: "I think therefore I am." The legacy of the Cartesian tradition, with its roots in the Socratic-Platonic view of knowledge, is still the dominant way of thinking in most areas of education. Its premises include: the separation of mind and body, thought from feeling, the work of the head from the work of the hand, and a belief in pure thought and perception -- uninfluenced by culture, language, and the senses (Bowers & Flinders, 1990; Eisner, 1994).

Yet developmental psychology and brain research have demonstrated the inter-relatedness of thought and feeling, the importance of using all the senses, and the necessity, particularly for young children, of active, hands-on learning. It is clear that cognition without feeling is no more attainable or desirable than cognition unbiased by tradition and culture. Although "extra-curricular activities," such as music and gym are often the first to be cut, educators would do well to develop an appreciation of the vital role of play in a child's healthy development and provide opportunities for children to cultivate their imaginations and engage their emotions, through drama, athletics, art, music, and dance.

In Possible Lives, Mike Rose (1995) reports an interview with a highly successful science teacher who challenges the myth of the passionless scientist:

Of course, not everyone will be a famous scientist, artist, or inventor. Yet there is convincing evidence that play helps children develop the social, emotional, and cognitive attributes that are crucial not only for success in school and beyond, but for individual fulfillment.

MATHEMATICS:
BASKET OF FACTS OR SEARCH FOR MEANING?


For decades, the behaviorist view of learning has encouraged teachers to regard mathematics as "one of the drill subjects' (Skinner, cited in Krogh, 1994). Recently, however, our understanding of how children learn mathematics has been influenced by the writings of Piaget, who advocated a constructivist view of learning, in which children actively construct their knowledge through interactions with the physical and social environment. In this approach, mathematics is regarded as a particular kind of knowledge, requiring abstract reasoning and reflection on relationships and patterns in the world around us. Based on standards set forth by the Commission of Standards for School Mathematics (1989), Kamii (1989) has identified four broad goals for arithmetic. They are that children:

A Constructivist Approach To Mathematics

From his many years of studying children, Piaget identified three kinds of knowledge: physical knowledge, logical-mathematical knowledge, and social knowledge (Kamii, 1985). Physical, or empirical knowledge, refers to knowledge of objects in external reality. The color and weight of an object are examples of physical properties that are in objects in external reality and can be known by observation.

The second type of knowledge is logical-mathematical and concerns relationships created by the child. Unlike empirical abstraction, in which the child focuses on a certain property of an object and ignores the others. logic-mathematical thinking requires reflective abstraction, or in Kamii's words (1985) constructive abstraction. For instance, when a child is presented with a red bead and a blue one, and says they are different, the difference is a relationships created by the individual. The source of this knowledge is internal, existing only in the minds of those who can create it between the objects (Kamii, 1985).

Social knowledge refers to conventions worked out by people (Kamii, 1991). For example, although the spoken words one, two, three belong to social knowledge, the numerical concepts underlying these conventions belong to logico-mathematical knowledge. More than 300 years ago, Comenius pointed out that young children might be taught to count but that it takes longer for them to understand what the numbers mean (Krough, 1994). Young children may believe that numbers are actually names for the objects they count, like Jane, Mary, and David. Developing logic-mathematical knowledge requires both maturation and experience.

A critical issue in the constructivist approach advocated by proponents of DAP is to present problems to children that are meaningful and relevant to the child's experience and development. For young children who have not developed abstract reasoning skills, meaningful concepts and solutions are those that are developed in response to real-life problems. Manipulation of objects is essential because young children think better when they physically act on the objects. Kamii (1985) points out it is not the manipulation itself that is important; "what is important is that mental action is encouraged when children act on objects themselves."

For the preschool and kindergarten child, activities such as counting the number of doors in a school and measuring how many children can sit in an activity area, using their own bodies as the standard, capture the child's interest and facilitate understanding. Building with blocks can help a child understand spatial relations. Hancock (1996) notes, "Angles and dimensions are better understood if children chuck their work sheets and build a complex model to scale" (p. 58). In addition to hands-on manipulation, it is important to allow ample time and opportunity for children to invent their own procedures for solving computational and story problems.

The Japanese approach, which has proved highly successful, is to focus on one or two problems during a single learning session (Krogh, 1994). Children play mathematical games, thinking of as many ways as possible to solve a problem and share solutions with each other. Instead of saying, "That's right" or "That's not right," teachers are encouraged to ask the class such questions as, "Does everybody agree?" and "Does that make sense?" (Kamii, 1989).

An historical perspective. Krogh (1994) notes that, historically, mathematical systems have developed in response to real-life problems. She writes:

Piaget reasoned that if today's knowledge was created through centuries of constructivism, there might be parallels between the way children build knowledge today and the way humanity built it in the past (Kamii, 1989). The human physiological fact of ten fingers and ten toes led in all mathematical cultures to some sort of decimal system (Krogh, 1994). Until around 1600, computations were performed with objects such as pebbles and counters and with abacuses. Whereas a variety of boards, tablets, and abacuses have been invented, the basic principle of representing the base-ten system remained the same for centuries (Kamii, 1989).

Kamii (1989) points out that when our ancestors used the abacus, they used writing only to record the results of the calculations carried out with the abacus. She explains:

Using an abacus to perform addition and subtraction requires the student to begin with the highest-order unit and proceed from left to right, towards the ones. In a number of studies with elementary school children, Kamii found that children who are encouraged to invent their own proceedings also work form left to right. Madell (1985) stated that if children are allowed to do their own thinking, they universally invent left-to-right procedures. Kamii (1989) concludes that "since arithmetic was invented by human beings in the past, it is not surprising that today's children invent the same procedures" (p. 27).

Algorithms. Today's algorithms are a relatively late achievement. It was not until the sixteenth century that the use of Roman numerals was replaced by our modern Hindu-Arabic system of numeration (Groza, cited in Kamii, 1989). In contrast to using an abacus, where the person using it has to know whether the place value is ones, tens, hundreds, etc., in a written algorithm, once the columns have been aligned, every column can be treated as ones (Kamii, 1989).

Kamii argues that direct instruction with traditional addition and subtraction of algorithms, where columns of numbers are treated as single units and operated from right to left, inhibits understanding: "By trying to transmit to children, in a ready-made form, the results of centuries of construction by adult mathematicians, we deprive children of the opportunities to do their own thinking" (p. 32).

Kamii points out that when children learn algorithms before they have a well developed number sense, children are forced to give up their own numerical thinking. In contrast, when children are allowed to think for themselves and invent their own solutions, children develop self-confidence in their ability to solve problems and a deeper understanding of mathematical systems. There appears to be abundant theoretical evidence that, as Kamii (1989) argues, "The desire to make sense and to exchange points of view with other people undergrids the child's growing ability to think logically." In the following section the empirical evidence that supports this theoretical framework is discussed.

Research On Children's Numerical Thinking

For her doctoral research, Suzanne Colvin, an early childhood educator, explored the way first graders learn to add and subtract, examining the efficacy of various teaching strategies. She observed that young children, though adept at memorizing facts and rules, appeared to have no clear understanding of what they were doing. In addition, she found that story problems were difficult for everyone.

After making sure that three classes were relatively equal in their readiness to learn addition and subtraction, she devised three teaching approaches for the three classes, testing before and after the seven week instructional period. The first class was taught in a traditional manner, according to the instructions in the text book, adopted by the school system. In this approach, facts were presented first, followed by story problems to make use of the just-learned facts.

In the two other classes, Colvin used a constructivist approach, one in which children were encouraged to solve problems in a variety of ways. Teachers' instructional strategies were based on the premise that the exact answer is less important than the thinking process that produces a reasonable answer. In one such approach, which Colvin referred to as "immediate, children were given story problems that were relevant and interesting to them. After the children discussed, drew, or role played the problems, Colvin showed them how to represent the problems and their answers in written symbols. In the third approach, (called "delayed"), children spent five weeks discussing and acting out many mathematical story problems; symbols were presented to the children only during the last two weeks of the project.

A number of differences emerged among the three groups. The immediate and delayed groups both made progress in solving story problems, exhibiting interest in the process and developing confidence in their abilities. The traditional group, however, who never developed any interest in story problems, made no progress in solving them, concentrating instead on getting the right answers to the computational problems. The traditional group also did poorly on writing number sentences to go with story problems and vice versa, while the delayed and immediate groups made steady progress. Despite the fact that the traditional group spent much more time practicing addition and subtraction facts, both the immediate and delayed groups out-performed the traditional group in understanding of arithmetic symbols.

Colvin concluded that daily exposure to interesting story problems seemed to be the most effective approach in helping young children develop higher-order thinking. She also found that subtraction was difficult for all first graders and questioned the efficacy of introducing it at such a young age. From her studies, Kamii (1989) came to a similar conclusion. She notes that subtraction is difficult even for fourth graders and suggests that subtraction should only be introduced in the third grade.

A Piagetian analysis might help to explain why, like the White queen, who couldn't "do subtraction under any circumstances," young children avoid subtraction whenever possible. According to Piaget (1983/1987) all part-whole relationships are hard for young children to make. While addition involves two levels of abstraction (units of one and the whole), subtraction involves thinking in two opposite directions simultaneously. Kamii (1989) explains:

How early use of algorithms inhibits understanding. Young children, of course, are typically taught double digit addition and subtraction through the use of algorithms. According to Kamii (1985; 1989; 1991), algorithms unteach place value, hinder children's development of number sense, force children to give up their own numerical thinking, and make children dependent on the spatial arrangement of digits and on other people. A number of studies reported by Fuson (1990) and Kamii (1988; 1991) support this position.

Kamii (1991) describes a digit task where a second-grade child is shown the number 16 and asked to count out 16 chips. The interviewer then draws an imaginary circle around the 6 in the 16, and asks "What does this part mean?" Although typically the child correctly answers six chips, children who do not understand place value usually assign only one chip, rather than ten to the numeral one, the tens digit. In a comparison with children taught algorithms, as opposed to those who were not, 67 percent of the constructivists, and only 15 percent of the traditional group, showed ten chips for the 1 in 16.

Interestingly, when the interviewer asked children to explain their answers, the explanations frequently revealed that math was already a subject that was not expected to make sense. For example, when the interviewer probed, reminding children that they had counted out 16 chips and asked the children, "What about the rest of the chips? Is something strange here?", only a few children replied that something was strange. Most of them said that that was how things were supposed to be.

In data collected in an elementary school, Kamii (1989) again compared answers of second-grade children who had been taught algorithms and those who had not. Most children in both groups were able to get the correct answer to an addition problem, such as 7 + 52 = 186 in vertical form. How-ever, when the problem was presented horizontally, 45 percent of the "no algorithms" class, compared to 12 percent of the algorithms class, got the correct answer. She reports that the important difference lay in the incorrect answers. Whereas children in the "no algorithms" class often began by saying "180 and 50 is 230 and most were able to estimate the answer, the algorithm class revealed a poor number sense by their answers, which ranged from 29 (by treating all the numbers as ones) and numbers in the 900s (by adding 7 to the 1 of 186 and carrying 1 from the 10s column).

When similar problems were presented to all third and fourth graders a year later, the performance of the fourth graders who had been taught algorithms was worse that that of the third graders. The magnitude of the fourth graders' errors was greater and their answers indicated that they thought only about isolated columns, treating each column as ones. Kamii (1989)observes:

When children who had been taught algorithms transferred to classrooms of constructivist teachers, all had enormous difficulty with place value. However, above-average students, when asked to explain their procedures, quickly concluded that the left-to-right method used by classmates is easier. Below-average students, however, "Clung tenaciously to algorithms without much progress in knowledge of place value." Kamii (1989) concluded that "human beings are much harder to unprogram than computers and children at the bottom of the class suffer the most from the damage caused by algorithms" (p. 46).

Because algorithms enable children get the right answer, children who are proficient in their use often score quite well on achievement tests. In order to demonstrate that standardized achievement tests emphasize pupils' lower-order thinking, Kamii and Lewis (1991) compared second-graders scores on an achievement test with their answers to questions requiring higher-order thinking. Comparison of children's scores in traditional and constructivist classes scored slightly below the traditionally taught children (79th percentile to 85th percentile). However, data related to place value, mental arithmetic, story problems, and estimation revealed that the traditionally instructed group did not understand place value, had poor number sense, and were unable to deal with novel problems never before encountered.

Summary

It seems clear that using a "jugs and mugs" theory of learning (where the teachers are perceived to be knowledge-brimmed jugs and children the empty mugs waiting to be filled) (Hawley, 1990), that we hinder children's natural inclination to make sense of their experience. School may become a place where nothing ever seems to make sense (Goodman, 1985). Delpit (1995) describes a first grade student who, while proficient in math in the "real" world, was unsuccessful with the decontextaulized problems encountered on worksheets. Yet, outside of school, due to his mother's drug problem, he served as the main caretaker in the family, caring for his four-year-old sister, doing the laundry, and much of the shopping:

Helping children connect their experiences outside the classroom with the academic curriculum can do much to bridge the gap between home and school and to make learning meaningful and relevant. Research has demonstrated that children's understanding of mathematical concepts is enhanced by opportunities for children to engage in hands-on manipulation of objects found in their everyday world, inventing their own procedures, and generating and discussing hypotheses in a collaborative setting (Cobb, Wood & Yackel, 1993; Kamii, 1989; Colvin, in Krogh, 1994). Thus, the role of education is not just to "give children the 'right' answers; instead teachers facilitate mathematical understanding by encouraging dialogue and negotiation of meaning in a context of joint inquiry.

COVERAGE, MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES, AND
STANDARDIZED TESTS


As we have seen, the goal of a developmentally appropriate education is to optimize the developmental potential of each child, enhancing children's ability and propensity to think critically, empathetically, and imaginatively and to use their multiple intelligences in the real world. The ability to formulate alternative solutions, ask meaningful questions, resolve conflict, and exhibit cross-cultural competence are not simply ideals to strive for; they are necessary skills for success in the increasingly competitive job markets of the twenty-first century. Yet, if producing the successful employee and citizen requires a post-modernist approach (Elkind, 1994), many of our assessment strategies remain based on positivist assumptions of objectivity, rationality, and efficiency.

As discussed earlier, our educational system has been greatly influenced by the cultural transmission ideology. Because, in this view, the educator's job is the direct instruction of information and rules, the approach is characterized by teacher-controlled learning, instructional technology, quantifiable, and predetermined outcomes. Interacting with and complementary approach is a psychometric philosophy of education. According to the psychometric philosophy, the learner is seen as having measurable abilities. Individual differences in performance are regarded as reflecting differences in amount of ability (Elkind, 1991).

Whereas the goal of a developmental approach is to nurture students' ability to form their own interpretations of a text or event, in a psychometric approach, answers are either right or wrong. Education is seen as imparting quantifiable knowledge and skills which can be measured objectively on standardized tests. According to Elkind (1991), "The developmental approach tries to create students who want to know, whereas the psychometric approach seeks to produce students who know what we want" (p.9).

Education's "swoon into the arms of quantifiable scientific psychology" (Becker, 1983) has resulted in a reliance on a very powerful knowledge industry, which provides standardized tests and text books. Although many teachers are working to integrate learning and emphasize in-depth understanding, the scientific-technological philosophy of education, which "has successfully reduced all worthy education to observable, measurable answers to multiple choice questions" (Bredekamp, 1991), greatly influences our evaluation practices. In turn, these practices shape curriculum, often becoming, as Bredekamp and Rosegrant (1992) observe, "the tail that wags the dog." Raising the "entire country above the 50th percentile in achievement tests" (Zigler, cited in Kohlberg & Meyer, 1972) has become a driving force in education.

For example, the need to prove that teachers are teaching and children are learning the information contained in text books often forces teachers to "teach to the test." Yet, as Kamii ( 1991) argues, "Even though teachers and principals are held accountable to produce higher test scores, policy makers and those who purchase these tests are not held accountable to prove that the tests, in fact, improve instruction" (p.9). In fact, many educators argue that standardized tests, while fast and relatively inexpensive (dubbed the "fast food of assessment" by Bredekamp & Rosegrant, 1992), result in no benefits to children and may instead have harmful effects. According to Meisels (1992):

In addition, educators have charged that such tests: fail to describe children's growth, development, and progress; measure a restricted view of intelligence; are unrelated to classroom activities; provide no information to individualize and improve instruction; limit the breadth and depth of content coverage; create stress for children; label and stigmatize some children; are culturally biased; and emphasize lower order thinking (Bredekamp & Rosegrant, 1992; Darling-Hammond, 1994; Hills, 1992; Kamii, 1991; National Research Council, 1989; Shepard, 1989).

Darling-