In this module we will focus on content you are likely to find in the Sub Area of the test that focuses on Child Development, Learning and Assessment.
We can all agree that knowledge of Child Development is very relevant to the work of early childhood educators. Knowing the ages and stages of specific developmental milestones, particularly within infancy and the preschool years, is key as this will come up in several questions within this section:
There may also be a couple questions that relate to developmental or cognitive theories/theorists. Piaget and Vygotsky are two such theorists to be familiar with.
The second focus of this sub area, Learning, is a bit more broad. This relates to not only knowing how young children learn best (through hands-on, concrete materials and content that develops meaningful from young children’s prior experiences), but it also refers to the ways in which teachers set up their learning environments to support socialization with peers, to guide children in becoming self-directed, independent learners, and to support higher level thinking skills by designing learning activities that scaffold children’s ability to move from the concrete toward representational and abstract thinking as they enter the primary grades. For more information, check out this blog post at Third Space Learning or this video by Dr. Nicki Newton.
The final aspect of this sub area is Assessment. There will be questions that relate to both formal and informal assessments used in early childhood classrooms. You will want to understand the uses and types of informal assessments, such as observation, anecdotal notes and portfolios and how these more authentic forms of assessing young children’s learning compare with other assessment tools that are also used in PreK-second grade classrooms (such as developmental screenings, checklists, running records). It is important to keep in mind that whenever we are talking about assessment of young children, the goal is to inform the teacher about the child/children so that instruction can be planned with their specific needs in mind. Assessment is a tool that allows us to gather information about the children we teach (what they know and can do at a given point in time) so that we can develop and plan educational activities that are a level the child can understand and is able to learn from. View a reference document of assessment terms here.
Now, let’s turn our attention to reviewing select practice questions related to Child Development, Learning and Assessment.