After the U.S.- based National Association for the Education of Young Children – or NAEYC – launched its national accreditation system for early childhood learning programs in the early 1980s, they made an interesting observation. While their accreditation criteria frequently referenced the term “developmentally appropriate practice”, when they met with different people across a variety of programs, they found little agreement about what that term actually meant. In response, the association released a position statement in the mid-80s to help create a more cohesive understanding and application of the term across the field of early education.
In the same spirit of responsive care that they endorse, NAEYC revises and updates their position statement about every 10 years to respond to the current state of research and social discourse, and to clarify misunderstandings.
The Fourth Edition of NAEYC’s Position Statement was released at the end of 2020. If you’ve been curious about what kind of changes can be found in this latest edition, I’ll be jumping into some of the main concepts and key changes in this episode.
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Notes from the Show:
(*May contain affiliate links.)
Read NAEYC’s newest position statement on Developmentally Appropriate Practice here.
Compare the changes from the last statement (2009) here.
I mentioned watching one of NAEYC’s recent on-demand trainings on DAP. You can find that for purchase here. (It does offer a one-hour certificate for those who need to track PD hours.)
Sign up for the free ecourse I mentioned and learn about the 5 Keys for Intentional, Whole-Child Development by heading here.
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Highlights
(00:00) – Understanding NAEYC’s Developmentally Appropriate Practice
(03:03) – Understanding Developmentally Appropriate Practice
(14:37) – Importance of Developmentally Appropriate Practice
(16:23) – Core Considerations in Developmentally Appropriate Practice
(22:34) – Recognizing the Importance of Guided Play
(25:20) – Flexibility in Developmental Progressions
(31:56) – Clarifying Misconceptions in Strengths-Based Approach
(34:07) – Principles of Developmentally Appropriate Practice
(35:01) – Shifting Away From Best Practices?
Transcript
Transcript produced by Podium.
00:00 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
Hi, I’m Amanda Morgan, and this is Not Just Cute the podcast where we discuss all kinds of topics to help bridge the gap that exists between what we know and what we do in early childhood education. We’re starting conversations with academics, authors, decision makers, educators and parents so that together we can improve the quality of early childhood education while at the same time protecting and respecting the childhood experience. After the US-based National Association for the Education of Young Children, or NAEYC, launched its National Accreditation System for Early Childhood Learning Programs in the early 1980s, they made an interesting observation While their accreditation criteria frequently referenced the term developmentally appropriate practice, when they met with different people across a variety of programs, they found little agreement about what that term actually meant. In response, the association released a position statement in the mid-1980s to help create a more cohesive understanding and application of the term across the field of early education. In the same spirit of responsive care that they endorse, naci revises and updates their position statement about every 10 years to respond to the current state of research and social discourse and to clarify misunderstandings. The fourth edition of NACI’s position statement was released at the end of 2020.
01:31
If you’ve been curious about what kind of changes can be found in this latest edition. I’ll be jumping into some of the main concepts and key changes in this episode. Before we begin, I wanted to let you know that I recently released a free mini course covering five keys to intentional whole child development. If you’d like to learn more about how to implement and advocate for developmentally appropriate, responsive early education, sign up for this free course. In today’s show notes. You can find those show notes for this episode at notjustcutecom. Forward slash podcast. Forward slash, episode 40. If you’ve been wanting to get caught up on the latest changes to NAEYC’s statement on DAP, you are in the right place. Let’s jump in.
02:17
Now as I mentioned in the introduction, the original position statement was released by NAEYC in the mid-1980s and about every 10 years they make revisions and release a new edition. So this is the fourth edition. They began working on it, at least from what I saw, late 2019, and I’m sure there was something going on. From the minute that they released one edition, I’m sure they start looking at and listening to concerns with it and start making some considerations for changes to the future editions, but it was released and finalized at the end of 2020. So this fourth edition is now available and I’ll share some links in the show notes so that you can get a copy as well. So I was able to watch a training from NAEYC and I’ll see if I can link to that as well. And I listened to Sue Bredekamp talk about some of these changes.
03:07
Now she’s been one of the top names that you’ll hear when, anytime, you read anything about developmentally appropriate practice, and particularly when you read these position statements, you’ll find her name every single time from the very beginning, and one of the things that she pointed out was that the core considerations which I’ll talk about in just a moment are the same. They are essentially the same, and some of the things that we call attention to or emphasize differently this time around, that they emphasize in this position statement, have to do with responding to the current context and to misconceptions that people have. So they’re trying to communicate this same idea, this concept of developmentally appropriate practice, but then they’re paying attention to how it’s being used and how it’s being perceived, and they’re making adjustments to those little things that they feel are either misunderstood and being misapplied, or they’re making adjustments to things that have been influenced by more current conversations or by more current research, and so they’re going to apply those changes in how they revise this position statement. Now, in Dr Bredekamp’s discussion, one of the things that she emphasized and it’s emphasized in the position statement itself as well is that the main change, the most extensive change that they put in this edition wasn’t really something new, but something that they put a lot more emphasis on this time around, and that was an emphasis on the importance of social, cultural and historical contexts. So recognizing that everything that we talk about pertaining to development, and therefore developmental appropriateness, has to be considered within a social, cultural and historical context. And that’s something that we have to keep in mind and consider.
05:05
And one of the things I found particularly interesting that she emphasized, and that is emphasized in the statement as well, is that as we talk about that, we are not only talking about the context as they apply to the children in our care, but that we also have to consider those same contexts for the adults as well. So for the teachers that we work with, for ourselves, for everyone within this learning community, we need to take into account those social, cultural and historical contexts that then influence development and influence relationships, because all of that development you know, I’m sure you’ve heard me say before, human development happens within the context of human relationships. And to add to that, what the statement is saying is it happens in context. Development happens in a lot of context and relationships are a big part of that, and those relationships are influenced by social, cultural and historical context, and development is influenced by those contexts as well, and so it puts a lot of emphasis on this and brings a lot of awareness to that. Now, that’s again not to say that it didn’t exist before. Ideas and about context for all these cultural aspects and contexts that influence development and taking into account these individual differences as well. But I don’t remember them applying that understanding to the adults last time around, and I could be wrong, but I don’t remember seeing that.
06:40
And I know for certain, and because that’s what Dr Bredekamp has emphasized as well, that that has been a big focus in this most current edition is recognizing the implications of those contexts. So if you print out or pull up the newest edition of the position statement, that’s one of the first conversations that you’re going to see. After that, it gets into some of the core considerations and it gets into some of the main principles, and I’m going to talk about those, but I want to skip. If you’re following along with your own, you’ll be more towards the back. It starts to talk about some of the changes in considerations, and in that there are two things that I want to emphasize. So we just talked about the fact that recognizing context was one of the big. It wasn’t a big change, but it was a big emphasis in the ways that they revised this edition. The second thing that I would say is a big change, but again, not so much that they’re shifting their position, but that they’re talking about it differently.
07:43
You’ll find on page 34, they make a specific note in a section that says reframing best practice. So one of the things that they point out is that they are no longer going to use the term best practice, that they intentionally did not use that in this edition, though they have in the past, and the reason is again because it has been misunderstood and misapplied. They said, and I’ll quote from this section it says rather, quality practices informed by evidence, research and professional judgment are referred to as guidelines for practice, and it goes on to talk about that. So they’re saying they’re purposefully not using the phrase best practice, and the reason for that is because there was this misunderstanding that when they referred to best practice, there was this idea that that meant there was one singular best practice that had to be used and applied to every situation, which is not true and also makes it prone to your own personal interpretation. And then you use that lens of what is best practice in your classroom to try to pass judgment on another classroom, as though best practice is the same for every classroom. And if you think of it that way, there are some universal things right that we know are best practice, that are respectful and responsive. Those principles are important regardless.
09:03
But when we talk about best practice, they were saying there was this misunderstanding. In fact, the way Sue Bredekamp put it is she said that it was often oversimplified and that people thought of it as though it was a recipe, that there is one specific recipe that everyone must be using and that is what we call best practice, so everyone needs to do it the same way. And she was saying that misses the whole point, because if you read through the position statement or if you spend much time studying developmentally appropriate practice or human development in general, you will recognize that there needs to be a large dose of responsiveness and adapting and changing. So I often say that diversity is inherent in developmentally appropriate practice. If you are not adapting and responding to the differences in front of you, you are not using developmentally appropriate practice.
09:57
And so what this team found as they were revising this statement was, they said you know this term best practice is tripping people up. They think that it represents one thing, like it’s something that comes in a box that you can buy at the store and pull down from the shelf and everybody gets the same thing, and they use it all exactly the same way, and that they want people to get away from that idea. And so instead, they’re emphasizing the fact that best practice is not one singular practice, and I’m going to read this quote from that same section. It says what’s best is a dynamic and creative set of practices that embrace and build on the varied assets children bring to the learning community. And they go on saying that we need to take more of a both and approach rather than looking at either or either as best practice or not, but that we can apply some of these both and approaches, that there’s not a single one way to do things, and this is something that I’ve come across as well, and I’ve mentioned before that oftentimes when people will say, you know, is this developmentally appropriate, is that developmentally appropriate?
10:59
Or I’ll hear or see people in online conversations saying, oh, that’s not developmentally appropriate or this is not, and while again there are some general principles that we can apply, whenever someone would say to me, is that developmentally appropriate, is this activity developmentally appropriate? My first response is developmentally appropriate, for whom? Right, because the whole concept of developmentally appropriate practice is that it takes into account the children that we are engaging with, and so one activity may be developmentally appropriate for a specific child or group of children and it may be completely inappropriate for another child or group of children, and I think that’s the same thing that they’re getting at with intentionally not using the phrase best practice in their statement, because they said it was being misunderstood and used as an oversimplified concept, a one size fits all concept, and what instead they want to emphasize is that we use principles and that we apply them in a responsive way. So those are two of the really big shifts in emphasis and in regards to best practice, it’s a real shift in intentional wording that they are using and not using anymore. The other thing that I want to call to attention, though, is that they emphasize what has not changed right. So, while they have emphasized some things differently or called some things to attention or changed the way that they’re talking about certain things, there are other aspects that, by and large, have stayed the same. That again, they may be talking about things differently, but at its core, the concept of developmentally appropriate practice is still the same. It’s kind of like if you’ve ever talked about in kind of a philosophy class, there’s big T truth and little t truth, and big T truth is absolute the truth, and little t truth is the best understanding we have of that truth, and I feel like what they’re saying is developmentally appropriate practice. That’s a big T truth and that’s something that’s not going to change. But the way that we talk about it and explain it is a little T, and we keep having to erase that little T and write it again, and erase it and write it again, because we’re trying to do our best to explain a really big concept, and that concept doesn’t really change, but our understanding of how we apply it and the way that we talk about it and explain it is going to shift to try to get as close to that big T as we possibly can.
13:31
So in the statement, if you go to page five. This is one thing I really appreciate about this new version that they’ve released is, I feel like visually it’s the easiest to read. They’ve formatted it differently. In the past it’s always been just a lot of black text that just rolls together for pages and pages and pages. This one, I feel, is formatted in a way that is much more user-friendly. And one thing that I particularly appreciate is on page five there’s a section that says defining developmentally appropriate practice. And I’ve never felt before like you could sit down to the statement and just say here’s a short form definition, here’s the quick version and now we’re going to dig into the meat of it. I’ve never felt like I could find that before. This one does that, and they have a couple of paragraphs that dive into the definition in short form before they get into all these lengthy discussions. And I’m going to take just a sentence of that long, or sorry, it’s the short form definition, but I’m going to take just the first sentence because I think that’s your shortest version of the explanation or definition.
14:37
It says NACI defines developmentally appropriate practice as methods that promote each child’s optimal development and learning through a strengths-based, play-based approach to joyful, engaged learning. I think that’s a great definition and it emphasizes some really important aspects to developmentally appropriate practice. When I’ve been asked to give a short-form definition, I’ve said that developmentally appropriate practice means that the way that we teach young children aligns with what we know about how they actually learn and grow. And so when I read that statement, that’s exactly what they’re saying, that it’s saying we need to use methods that promote children’s optimal development and that we do that through strengths-based, play-based approaches to joyful, engaged learning. So those components about strength-based, play-based, joyful, engaged those are all based in research and what we know about how young children learn and grow, and they go on in that section to talk about the importance of whole child approaches and recognizing the different areas of development and learning, that we pay attention to all of those things and that we build it upon some of this framework that they go on to explain later on to build developmentally appropriate approaches. So the very next part that they talk about are the core considerations that should inform the decisions that we make. Because, again, if they’re talking about not just having this idea that it’s one size fits all best practice, but that it’s a set of principles and information that we then use and make choices, and that our choices might look different than someone else’s choices because it needs to be responsive. So if we are going to do that, we need to understand what are the core principles that we use.
16:23
And there are three core considerations that they start out with, and these three core considerations have stayed the same. So when I compared this to the last edition of roughly 10 years ago, they are basically the same three core considerations, and that is one is commonality, or just the general concepts of development, how they are the same, so some of those concepts of development that are the same from one child to the next. The second is individuality, so the way that it is different for one child to another. And then the third is the context, so everything in the child’s context, the social and cultural context and the context of the program and the educators there. That all of that is also something we have to consider as we look at developmentally appropriate practice. So these three core considerations, the common or general approaches to development, and then the individual sorry, the individuality of that and then the context. All of those three core considerations were listed in the last edition as well, but the wording is a little bit different and it brings to the front a lot of the really important discussions that we’re having right now and just reword some of them differently. But I wanted to emphasize that those three core considerations have remained the same, that it’s not that they’ve invented a whole new position, but that they are emphasizing different aspects in different ways to be responsive to newest research and newest discussions going on, so that they can make sure that they’re speaking to what people really are needing to put into practice right now sure that they’re speaking to what people really are needing to put into practice right now.
18:03
So once we think about those three core considerations, we’re looking at an understanding, a general understanding of development, and we want to make sure we apply that when we make decisions and we’re looking at individual needs and differences between children and making sure we apply that when we make decisions. So if I am teaching in a classroom that is a general ed classroom versus a special needs preschool, which I’ve done a little bit of substitute work with, what goes on in those two classrooms is not going to be exactly the same, because what we know that fits into that individual context is different between those two classrooms. So we look at the again, what we know generally, and then we need to look specifically and individually. And then, third, looking at those individual contexts, so the context that children are growing up and developing within and also the context of the program and everyone involved in that program. So it’s bringing in a lot of different pieces to that context that we need to be aware of and apply when we make decisions. So if we take that core understanding and apply that first and foremost, we’re going to get most things right if we are considering those three things.
19:13
But after the core considerations it goes on to talk about principles of child development and learning and the implications that inform our practice. And this is where it starts to get more meaty and a bit thicker right, and I only want to touch on a few things from that. I’d encourage you to read this on your own, but I want to pull out just a few things that I found particularly interesting. One is that these principles, as it goes through this section, it’s kind of a numbered list and in the past, well, in this edition, play is on the number three bullet of this list. On number three they mentioned. Play promotes joyful learning that fosters self-regulation, language, cognitive and social competencies, as well as content knowledge across disciplines. Play is essential for all children, birth through age eight.
20:02
And what I found particularly interesting is that I went back and looked in the last edition, so the third edition. That’s about 10 years old now and in that list play is not mentioned on the bulleted part of the headings of those lists until number 10. And this time they’ve moved it up to number three. Now, throughout all of this list of principles there are some new things, but mostly it’s new wording and kind of combining number two and three over here, for example, or not literally, but they’re taking certain sections and kind of combining them into one and then adding a new section here and just rearranging and revising, not necessarily creating something completely new, ranging and revising, not necessarily creating something completely new, but they’re moving things around a little bit and using some different words and context to talk about different concepts.
20:49
And so it was interesting to me to notice that they did talk about the importance of play before, but before it was number 10 and now they brought it up to number three. It’s one of the very first things that is mentioned as people go through this list of principles to consider, and to me I felt like that was a bit of a commentary of where we’re at, both in the fact that we have so much research to support the importance of play in early learning and development and also that we have so much pressure pushing against that and it is becoming such a challenge in some areas to get support for that play and the importance of that play. And so to me, this is my own interpretation I feel like they moved that up on the list from number 10 up to number three because it is so important and because it is a message that needs to be heard. And within that, underneath that heading, I really loved reading they defined, let’s see. They say researchers studying the pedagogy of play have identified three key components, and I just find this fascinating and exciting. So the three key components that they’ve pulled from the research on learning through play is number one choice. Learning through play is number one choice. Number two wonder. And number three delight. I absolutely love that. So if we’re looking at our play-based education environments, we want to make sure that we are offering choice and we are inviting them and engaging them in things that spark wonder and that we are fostering delight. I think those are great. Those are three fantastic words to keep at the forefront of our minds as we work towards having better play-based educational environments.
22:34
Let’s see, as they go on in that section, they also point out something that I think is very important, that has come up in a lot of discussions that I’ve had with people and in trainings that I’ve done, and that is recognizing that there are many different types of play and they are all important, they are all valuable, but that if we can think about play as kind of being on this continuum in fact they say a continuum ranging from children’s self-directed play to direct instruction so again, getting away from these either or thoughts about you know, is it play or is it instruction? But if we could picture this continuum and on one side we have self-directed play, completely self-directed, and on the other end of the spectrum we have completely teacher-directed, direct instruction they go on to say this neither end of the continuum is effective by itself in creating a high quality early childhood program. Further down, they say in the middle of the continuum is guided play, and I’ve been reading a lot of really fascinating research about that, about guided play and how powerful it is in helping our children to learn. And again, I sometimes come across these arguments, these discussions that are, you know, trying to qualify play as only fitting certain parameters and if adults try to get involved or guide the play or support the play or try to match objectives to it, somehow it’s not play anymore, when in reality we know that children absolutely need free, self-directed play. That’s really important and it does promote and support so much growth and development. But we also know that if we want to use play as a method, if we use play-based teaching methods, then we need to use guided play. That’s where the research tells us that play as a pedagogy is most effective in guided play scenarios. And that doesn’t mean that we come in with a heavy hand and try to control everything, but it means that we are intentional in our planning and our preparation and in the way that we implement and engage and interact in those playful environments. Engage and interact in those playful environments that, honestly, if you prepare or set up a provocation or an invitation to play, that is an element of guided play. That involves some element of scaffolding and structuring the play. So it’s something that I could probably go into a much longer discussion just on guided play, and we may need to save that for another episode, but I loved seeing that in here, this discussion about recognizing how important play is, moving that up on the list but then also having a discussion about the research that tells us about the importance and the power of guided play when we’re talking about play as a pedagogy.
25:20
After that section on play, they go on into the next section. The heading says this although general progressions of development and learning can be identified, variations due to cultural context, experiences and individual differences must also be considered. And I’m not going to go through every single section, but this just happened to be the very next one and I found it particularly interesting because, again, single section, but this just happened to be the very next one and I found it particularly interesting because again they’re wanting to emphasize that our concepts about the general idea of developmental processes, that while those exist and that there are general progressions of development, that our thinking about them has become somewhat rigid and possibly less helpful than it should be, that we need to recognize those individual differences. So what calls to mind for me is that we need to get away from this obsession with check marks and trying to fit every child into a rigid box or a rigid framework for development. While we do need to be aware of developmental norms, particularly so that we can make sure we’re getting the right support for each child, we also need to get away from such a fixed view that, again, like I’ve talked about before this idea that every flower on the bush is going to pop open on the exact same day. That’s just not how things work, and so, while we want to be aware of these general concepts, we also want to recognize the flexibility, the individuality that is just inherent in development, and they bring in a new metaphor. That’s part of why I wanted to talk about this. At the end of that segment they said the notions of stages of development has limited utility. So that idea that they are fixed stages, they’re saying, is tripping people up. They go on to say a more helpful concept may be to think of waves of development that allow for considerable overlap without rigid boundaries, so kind of getting away from a rigid way of viewing developmental processes and recognizing that development happens differently across different areas of development. So you may have a child who is very advanced in one domain and feeling like it’s a little bit slower in another domain, that that is actually very normal. And while we do again want to be aware of the general process and make sure that we are aware of anything that might cause us some concern, we also want to recognize again I love the new imagery that they use of waves and recognizing that the boundaries are not quite as fixed and rigid as we might have thought Through.
27:52
Each section talks quite a bit. It weaves in this concept of cultural variations and context and recognizing that there are differences that we need to be aware of and respectful of and responsive to. In section six there was another thing that caught my eye. In that section they mentioned the importance of a child’s sense of agency, which really caught my attention. I found it interesting and what they go on to explain. It says studies have found that some children are denied opportunities to exercise agency because they are mistakenly deemed unable to do so, and when I first read that I thought, okay, what’s the example? I’m not exactly sure what this applies to.
28:31
What they go on to talk about is in multiple situations whether we’re talking about children with special needs, developmental delays, speech delays, different things to consider like that or in situations where perhaps younger children who are not yet speaking, or in situations where a child is not a native English speaker and maybe there are some language barriers, they’re pointing out that there are some instances that they’re finding that in these types of scenarios that sometimes adults are maybe leading with too heavy of a hand, where we think we’re being so helpful and we’re just going to make some assumptions for these children, we really could be more mindful and give them as much agency as we possibly can. Give them that sense of agency. And it goes on to say to make sure that we are following children’s lead in noticing their interests and responding with appropriate action and conversation, so that we need to be aware of all children, their interests, and respond to that and engage with them in conversation, and that that includes children who are building communication skills, whether that again is a language delay or just a matter of age or a matter of speaking multiple languages, and so they’re learning another language and they come into an English-speaking classroom. We need to recognize that all of these children need to feel a sense of agency and so we need to be very mindful and respectful of that.
30:06
They go on to list several different principles there are in this list. I believe they cover nine. In past lists they’ve actually had more than nine but, like I said, it’s not necessarily that they got rid of some, but they kind of combined and rearranged a lot of things. One thing I did notice in this list number nine speaks to technology and interactive media and that’s somewhat new and definitely different in our day and age. It’s a different consideration than we’ve had in the past and I think they give some really great suggestions for helping us to recognize what types of media are helpful and when it is not. And they are straightforward in saying there is no evidence that development is enhanced when children younger than age two independently use devices with screen media. So they are straightforward with that. But they do give us some things to keep in mind that when we do use interactive media or technology, if that’s a choice that we are making to include that, that there are some things we want to keep in mind, and they basically just point out that it should not be used passively, that it’s always going to be better if there is engagement, if there is some agency again or control that the children have, that they are empowered, that there is some measure of it being adaptive and responsive to them. And then, ultimately, they point out again that technology and interactive media should expand children’s access to new content and new skills. They should not replace opportunities for real hands-on experiences, and that’s something we really want to keep in mind that while there may be some great tools and there may be some situations where we absolutely have to use technology, we want to make sure that we are not allowing it to take the place of real hands-on experiences.
31:56
Now there are a few things that I want to speak to specifically, while generally I agree with so much that is in here and actually I’m not disagreeing with some things that are said in here but what I want to do is make sure that we get ahead of some of the misconceptions that may be about to form. Now, right, so part of the reason that they keep revising the position statement is to correct and address misconceptions, because we hear them say one thing and I could be right now misinterpreting some things, and so they go through the next edition and try to clarify some of those points. So when I read it in that way and think, as I teach developmentally appropriate practice to teachers and in schools, what are some of the things that maybe I need to get ahead of some misconception. So, while it’s not so much that I take particular issue with what it says, as it is that I have concerns about what people may be hearing when they read through this, and there are just a couple areas that I want to touch on. One is that they put a particular emphasis on strengths-based approaches, and I think that is fantastic. We do want to come from a strengths-based perspective and supporting and helping our children to grow. What I am worried about people mishearing is that a strengths based approach means that we don’t have goals, or that we’re not goal or growth oriented, or that we turn a blind eye to needs that children have. So we want to support and come from a strengths based perspective and, at the same, so we want to support and come from a strengths-based perspective and, at the same time, we want to provide scaffolding that builds from those strengths and supports further growth. In fact, in their statement there are a few places where I could pick out and say see, this isn’t what they’re saying when they talk about strengths-based, they are still working towards growth On page 12, if you have your own copy part way down on the left-hand side they say that we need to have learning activities that offer challenging but achievable goals for children that are also meaningful and engaging, and that these activities will look very different right as we apply them to different children.
34:07
On the other side of that page it says all subject matter can be taught in ways that are meaningful and engaging for each child. The notion that young children are not ready for academic subject matter is a misunderstanding of developmentally appropriate practice. So again, they’re saying that we absolutely are teaching children, we’re helping them to grow, we’re even teaching them academic quote-unquote material is absolutely important and appropriate for young children. The notion that we have to choose one or the other is a false choice that we can teach those things in engaging ways, in responsive ways, in strength-based ways. So I want to make sure that, as we focus on strengths, that at the same time we are also focusing on continued growth. So don’t mistake strengths-based for ignoring places where there’s room for growth.
34:58
Okay, so that’s my first caution. The second caution that I have is that, as they are moving away from the term best practices, I understand their concern with that. I would agree that it opens up this opportunity for misunderstanding and misuse in this idea that there’s a one-size-fits-all that we call best practice. And so I appreciate that shift and, at the same time, I want to make sure that people understand the reason why they’re shifting away from that term. It’s not that anything goes and that we don’t have standards anymore and whatever.
35:31
Right, that’s not what they’re saying. They’re saying that we need to recognize that what they used to call best practice is still a thing, but they’re shifting the attention and helping people to recognize that it is principle-based and that it is responsive, that there is still a high level of care that is expected, but that if it is truly developmentally appropriate, then it is responsive and that is based on principles that we understand. And it’s going to be different in different contexts, and so, while we may want to get away from the term because it has engendered some misunderstandings, the concept that it represented still exists. It always has been there. They’re just trying to help us understand it more clearly. So really, it’s about principles and it’s about being responsive and applying what we know into the context where we are teaching.
36:25
So the last thing that I want to address is, again, one of the main emphasis pieces that they have is on the cultural context and recognizing and being responsive to cultural context, and it’s really really important that we do that. I don’t take issue with that about oversimplifications or overgeneralizations, as we attempt, in all good intentions, to be more responsive and aware of different cultural contexts. I think maybe we’ve all been in that situation. I know I have where I’m sitting in a class that is helping us to be more aware of different cultural contexts and as I’m listening, I start to feel like we’re overgeneralizing, we’re painting with a broad brush, that, while I appreciate somebody helping me see a different perspective than my own, it’s really dangerous when we imply that every person from that group matches every one of those same cultural expectations or descriptions and we want to be really careful about that that when we say, hey, this cultural group is XYZ and we need to be aware of this, that and the other, now, while we may want to know that the most important thing that we can do to be responsive to the cultural context of the children that we work with, with the people that we work with, the very best thing that we can do is to know them, to know them individually, to know their families, to know that they each have different ways of experiencing and expressing who they are and where they’re from, and that applies to every single person, every single child in our care that we need to know them individually and recognize that each one of them has a different context. And that, while there may be some overlap between some of those groups or within some of those groups, that at the bottom line they are individuals with individual experiences and contexts that we need to respect and respond to. And within the position statement they do call attention to that, pointing out that no group is monolithic and that we need to be careful these are my words now that we need to be careful, making sure that we don’t overgeneralize or oversimplify in a well-intentioned effort to attend to cultural differences. Those cultural differences and cultural contexts again filter down to an individual level, and so, ultimately, we need to know the people that we’re working with the adults and the children and the families, and when we build those relationships, we will understand the context and we’ll be able to respond to those.
39:14
The final thought that I want to leave you with is this NACI’s position statement on DAP is something that every early childhood professional should be familiar with, and at the same time, I want you to consider something this document is constructed by committee, with a lot of discussion and, almost certainly, some debate. So, while the essence of that document has remained the same over the years, the details and the presentation have been revised four times. Clearly, while this is an important resource for our profession, I really don’t think that it’s intended to be the end-all, be-all gospel truth. Rather, if we examine the history of this document, its existence has served as a perpetual launchpad for further questions and further examination and more discussions, discussions that have led to that statement’s continual revision. I personally don’t think that those discussions were intended only for the names that you find at the end of the document. I don’t think that those discussions are just for those people at that table. I think that those discussions are also supposed to happen for us. As professionals. We should be familiar with NACI’s position statement and as learning communities, we should discuss how those principles and perspectives apply to our own practice and in our own context. It is okay to wrestle with questions and find principled applications that may look a little different than someone else’s. The entirety of this philosophy rests on awareness, respect and responsiveness. We bring that to our practice only when we’re willing to go beyond simply knowing the information, beyond just knowing what’s in the statement, and instead go past that and add the necessary step of reflecting on it. Only then, with that reflection, can we authentically apply it.
41:26
I would love to hear your thoughts on NACI’s latest revision. What are you wrestling with or what are you curious about, or what ahas have you had? What are the parts that you underline and highlight? As always, you can email me at amanda at notjustcutecom. Thanks for listening to Not Just Cute the podcast. You can find show notes at notjustcutecom forward slash podcast. Forward slash, episode 40. There you’ll find links to Nacy’s revised statement, along with other interesting tidbits addressed in this episode. Show notes will also share a link to the free mini course covering the five keys to intentional whole child development.
42:12
Forward slash podcast. Forward slash episode 40 to get signed up and receive key resources to help you implement and advocate for developmentally appropriate, responsive early education. I’m Amanda Morgan. You can read more on my blog and sign up for the Not Just Cute newsletter at notjustcutecom and follow me on Facebook. That’s facebookcom. Forward slash notjustcute. I’m also freshly on Instagram where I have some fun things planned for this new year, so follow me there at Amanda underscore notjustcute. Thanks for listening today and, as always, thank you for standing up for children and for childhood.
