Social Studies In Early childhood

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Social Studies In Early childhood

• EDEC 3220
• Instructor Dr. Nganga

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Why teach social studies humanities in early
childhood?

• It is especially critical that preschool and
  primary-age children be given instruction in the
  social studies, for these are the ages when the
  foundations of good citizenship and critical
  thinking are laid. At the same time, students
  from ages 3 to 8 require special attention to a
  balance between content and process, and a
  recognition that they will exhibit a wide range
  of individual variation in interest and ability.

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Continued

• offer the necessary balance between content and
  process, and can be the basis of an excellent
  early childhood curriculum.
• However, students from ages 3 to 8 require
  special attention to a balance between content
  and process, and a recognition that they will
  exhibit a wide range of individual variation in
  interest and ability

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Social studies

• It is up to us as classroom teachers to work
  with the standards to decide how to structure
  experiences so the child both recognizes the
  concept and is able to extend it beyond his or
  her own life. Then more globally, how do we move
  it from child to child, from child to classroom,
  from child to school community, and on out into
  the world? I think that is the challenge for us
  to interpret the standards so this will happen-
  Alaska Department of Education

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NAEYC guidelines

• National Association for Young Children (NAEYC)
  and the National Association of Early Childhood
  Specialists in State Departments of Education
  (NAECS/SDE),
• For young children social studies should take
  place in the here and now. Children at the
  preschool/primary age levels are entering school
  or group settings with pre-operational kinds of
  thinking and moving into concrete operational
  thinking. In both of those cases they are limited
  to understandings that are based on their
  experience and their interactions and
  observations with other people. They are not yet
  at the point where they are really able to act on
  or actively think about or work on abstract
  ideas.

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Guidelines continued

• The concept of the "expanding community"
  curriculum is still with us. However, people who
  have interpreted that approach haven't really
  done justice to the potential for the learning
  processes that are inherent in this approach. We
  don't want to trivialize it we want to make sure
  this concept includes the necessary parts of
  relationship thinking, children's ability to
  generalize from their experience to broader
  experiences through symbolic or dramatic play.

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Continued..

• Another trend in social studies curriculum was
  the "social living" curriculum. But the "social
  living" curriculum has sometimes allowed teachers
  to simply say, "Children need to work things out
  and so I give them lots of opportunities to play
  and interact." And that is what they do, without
  having it linked to more complex kinds of social
  studies concepts.

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Continued..

• I've seen cases where people will
  inappropriately take the standards for the 8 to
  10 year old and merely simplify them to something
  a 5-year old can do. I would liken that to trying
  to build the second story of a house before you
  have built the foundation. It is possible that
  many of the content topics which appear in the 8
  to 10-year old and higher levels may not be
  appropriate for the preschoolers and primary
  grade students. It may be sensible instead to
  expect these young students merely to be "aware"
  and "familiar" with some of the ideas and
  standards.

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Continued..

• We need to give children opportunities to develop
  as whole people, to relate their social studies
  types of experiences to their own knowledge,
  skills, and attitudes. I would recommend that a
  guideline focus on ongoing daily processes that
  affect young children's lives. One of these is
  conflict. They have to learn to deal with
  conflict, how to experience and accept it, and
  how to resolve it.

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Continued..

• Early childhood is also the time to make sure the
  prerequisites for various social studies concepts
  are developed. For instance, before learning to
  share, a child needs to understand ownership, and
  so should have experiences owning something
  himself or herself.
• I think interdependence is a really important
  concept for young children to start
  understanding. But interdependence requires first
  that they reflect on the nature of
  interconnectedness.

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More..

• I want to stress the concept of the "big ideas."
  For instance, there's the concept of the social
  unit. This leads to explorations of family,
  needs, roles, and interactions. Children could
  then begin thinking about structure,
  interdependence, and change.
• Then there are the concepts of freedom and
  justice. You need to teach these concepts in a
  very concrete fashion so kids feel and experience
  them. The whole process of connecting personal
  experiences of freedom and justice with freedom
  in government takes maybe four or five years, but
  it should start in preschool.

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More..

• In terms of social studies skills, alongside
  problem solving, decision making, organizing, and
  evaluating information, I would add an
  understanding of cause and effect. This is an
  important part of conflict resolution.
• I want to stress also that emotions play a
  crucial role in the successful use of all these
  skills.