Course Description
Significant figures, incidents, pedagogical, and curriculum approaches that have greatly influenced contemporary early childhood and elementary education. Readings in the course will include primary sources of works produced by thinkers and educators influential in shaping the field's discourses and debates.
Athena Title
Hist Disc Debate Early Ch EDEL
Equivalent Courses
Not open to students with credit in EDEL 8210E, EDEC 8210E
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student learning Outcomes
- Students will be able to identify historical figures and incidents that have influenced contemporary Early Childhood and Elementary Education.
- Students will be able to compare and contrast philosophies and features of pedagogical and curriculum approaches in Early Childhood and Elementary Education.
- Students will be able to critically examine how the ideas of historical thinkers and educators have been interpreted and used to shape and justify the field’s discourses and debates.
Topical Outline
- a. History of stage theories of human development: From Greek thinkers to developmental psychologists (e.g., Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Luther, Hall, Freud, Gesell, Piaget, Erikson)
- b. Propositions for early education and child-centered pedagogy (e.g., Comenius, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel)
- c. Education through play, the senses, and first-hand experiences (e.g., Montessori, Kilpatrick, Hill, Malaguzzi, Steiner)
- d. Conflicts between behaviorist approaches and progressive education (e.g., Bereiter & Engelmann vs. Mitchell, Weikart)
- e. Debates over developmentalism (e.g., Bredekamp, NAEYC vs. Lubeck, RECE)
- f. Traditions of equity-oriented education (e.g., Owen, McMillan sisters, Derman-Sparks, and scholars drawing on critical theory, poststructuralism, posthumanism, new materialism, decolonial and Indigenous philosophy)
