DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE PRACTICES IN ECE IN BOTSWANA: A MYTH OR REALITY?
Abstract
Globally, Early Childhood Education (ECE) has been governed by National Association of the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). This organisation concerned about the welfare and education of young children (0-8years) produced guidelines for practitioners and all involved in the teaching of young children on how best to teach and educate young children. These guidelines state that children need to be taught content that is developmentally appropriate. This means that content should be designed to suit the age, individual nature of the child as well as the culture of the child. While Botswana has taken bold steps in providing ECE to children who would not have been able to enrol in ECE one wonders whether the provision afforded meets the requirement of providing these children with Developmentally Appropriate Practices (DAP) as mandated by NAEYC. The absence of such practices may impact on the learning of young children. This paper argues for the importance of the DAP practices in the current ECE provision. It is suggested that the DAP can provide children with quality education that they deserve; it can also allow children to learn at their own pace. The absence of such a practice can impact the quality of ECE consequently impacting on the proper development of children holistically. Data collection and analysis used mixed methods being qualitative and quantitative. Questionnaires and interviews were uses as data collection instruments. A total of 15 questionnaires were distributed to ECE teachers in the Greater Gaborone Zone of which 11 were returned. A total of 11 interviews were conducted. The participants were mostly women with a few men.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejes.v8i7.3814
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