What is "developmentally appropriate?"

8/5/2013

A blog posting over at Schools Matter @ The Chalk Face has gathered a lot of interest--78 comments, many of them outraged.

The New York State Education Dept. has a website that is meant to help teachers prepare for the Common Core Standards. Author Chris Cerrone posted a bit of a 1st grade curriculum module on early civilizations. Here it is:

Cerrone asked primary grade educators to weigh in: "what do you think of the vocabulary contained in this unit of study?"

The responses in the 78 comments were nearly uniformly negative. As you might expect from that volume of commentary, the criticisms were wide-ranging, much of it directed more generally at standardized testing and the idea of the CCSS themselves.

But a lot of the commentary concerned cognitive development, and I want to focus there. This comment was typical (click for larger image).

There is an important idea at the heart of this criticism: developmental stages. This commenter specifically invokes Piaget, but you don't have to be a Piagetian to think that stages are a good way to think about children's thinking. Stage theories hold that children's thinking is relatively stable, but then undergoes a big shift in a relatively brief time (say, a few months) whereupon it stabilizes again.

So lessons would be developmentally inappropriate if they demanded a type of thinking that the child was simply incapable of, given his developmental stage.

I have argued in some detail that stage theories have two major problems: first, data from the last twenty years or so make development look like it's continuous, rather than occurring in discrete stages. Second, children's cognition is fairly variable day to day, even when the same child tries the same task.

I have argued elsewhere that trying to take a psychological finding and using it to draw strong conclusions about instruction--including what children are, in principle, ready for--is fraught with problems. How much the more is that true when using a psychological theory rather than an experimental finding.

So if Piaget will not be our guide as to what 1st graders are ready for, what should be?

The experience of early elementary educators, of course, and some of the people commenting on the blog posting are or were first grade teachers. And almost unanimously, they thought this material was inappropriate for first graders. (Some thought kids this age shouldn't be learning about other religions at this age. No argument there, that's a matter of ones values. I'm only talking about what kids can cognitively handle.)

But if we adopt a proof-of-the-pudding-is-in-the-eating criterion, lessons on ancient civilizations are fine because they are in use and children are learning. The material shown above is part of the Core Knowledge sequence, around for more than a decade and used by over a thousand schools. (NB: I'm on the Board of the Core Knowledge Foundation.)

And Core Knowledge is not alone. Another curriculum has had first-graders learn about ancient civilizations not for a decade, but for about a century: Montessori. (NB again: my children experienced these lessons at their school, and my wife teaches them--she's an early elementary Montessori teacher.)

Montessori schools teach the same "Five Great Lessons" at the beginning of first, second, and third grades. They are

The history of the universe and earth
The coming of life
The origins of human beings
The history of signs and writing
The story of numbers and mathematics

Photo from milwaukee-montessori.org

Naturally, these lessons are presented in ways that make sense to young children, but they are far from devoid of content. Montessori educators see them as the foundation and the wellspring of interest for everything to come: biology, geology, mathematics, reading, writing, chemistry and so on.

If it seems impossible or highly unlikely to you that 6 year olds could really get anything out of such lessons, I'll ask you to consider this. Our understanding of any new concept is always incomplete.

For example, how do children learn that some people they hear about (Peter Pan) are made up and never lived, whereas others (the Pharaohs) were real? Not by an inevitable process of neurological maturation that makes their brain "ready" for this information, whereupon they master it quickly. They learn it bit by bit, in fits and starts, sometimes seeming to get it, other times not.

And you can't always wait until children are "ready." Think about mathematics. Children are born understanding numerosity, but they understand it on a logarithmic scale--the difference between five and ten is larger than the difference between 70 and 75. To understand elementary mathematics they must learn to think of numbers of a linear scale. In this case, teachers have to undo Nature. And if you wait until the child is "developmentally ready" to understand numbers this way, you'll never teach them mathematics. It will never happen.

In sum, I don't think developmental psychology is a good guide to what children should learn; it provides some help in thinking about how children learn. The best guide to "what" is what children know now, and where you want their learning to head.

mathew link

8/5/2013 02:57:56 am

Thanks Dan. Only wish that there was some way to cram this knowledge into the heads of senior professors at our national's teacher ed programs. Ironic, I know.

Steve Peha link

8/5/2013 06:04:54 am

Dan,

Thank you again for writing so clearly about such an important idea.

Many times extremely well-educated educators, often MAs and Ph.Ds in Early Childhood Education, have told me that what I teach to young children is not developmentally appropriate.

My response is usually to ask if they have ever tried teaching the same things I teach to young kids. The answer is usually "Certainly not!"

What I want to say is the obvious, "Well, then, how do you know?" But that just angers people.

What I wonder at is not that this attitude or set of beliefs exists and persists. This I can understand. What I don't understand, and am hoping you can help me with, is what form of cognitive bias would a well-educated educator have to hold that would encourage them to withhold learning experiences from children? Or to criticize successful teaching that they themselves have never even attempted?

I'm asking because I'd like to develop a better way of working with people who hold these ideas. Truth is, people who believe in "developmental appropriateness" dominate my world. And I really need to do a better job of working with them as opposed to merely going into their classrooms, working with their kids, getting good results, and proving them wrong—often in front of their colleagues.

Much as I value empirical evidence, I recognize there is little value in showing people that they are wrong. But I find myself in a tough position here: If I agree not to teach their students, I cannot work. But when I do teach their students, I cannot succeed because the results I typically achieve are judged to be offensive in some way—and my behavior is deemed unprofessional.

Any thoughts here for me?

Thanks,

Steve

Dan Willingham

8/6/2013 09:31:41 pm

Steve--have you asked them "what makes you think it's developmentally inappropriate?"

Steve Peha link

8/7/2013 05:55:58 pm

I have asked that. And the most common answer I get is something along the lines of "They're just not ready." But, again, I often wonder how they have reached that conclusion without having tried. At the very least, I think any rational person would have to consider it a testable proposition.

At the beginning of my education work int he mid-90s, the phrase "developmentally appropriate" was all over the place. Not understanding the politics at that early time in my career, I thought it meant, "What kids were ready to learn."

So I just started teaching things. And I discovered something interesting: the better I got at teaching, the more "ready" kids seemed to be.

At a certain point, I recognized that it was my development as an educator that made the difference.

I was also bombarded with the term "grade level" as though there was a generally held view that certain skills were considered to be representative of what kids at a certain grade could do.

This never made sense to me. And still doesn't. In my first year with kids, I really wasn't successful at teaching them much of anything. One might conclude that what I was teaching simply wasn't "at grade level" or that the kids weren't "at grade level". But I don't see how either of those things could have made any sense.

I was just really bad at teaching.

A perfect example was paragraphing in writing. I had long been told that this was something to be started in 3rd grade and ideally mastered in 4th. But as I found better ways to teach it, I eventually ended up with many kindergarteners who could write multi-paragraph pieces by the end of the year.

I had a similar experience with basic math facts (with whole numbers up 12, say). I often saw these things being drilled hard at 4th grade and kids at even 5th grade not quite mastering them with automaticity. But I studied a few things about it. Came up with some different ways to teach it. And eventually got good enough to help most 2nd and 3rd graders master this information. I suppose if I tried a little harder, I might get some 1st graders to that level as well. This, too, seems like a testable proposition.

Is there such a thing as "grade level"? And, if so, what does it really mean? Also, where did the idea of "grade level" curriculum come from in the first place?

Thanks,

Steve

Loura Whitney

8/13/2013 05:48:50 am

Steve, I so completely agree that many ASSUME what is not developmentally appropriate simply because they never attempted to teach it. Someone was amazed that my then 2 year old could recognize and spell the names of the colors of the rainbow. It wasn't "developmentally appropriate" learning material for a two year old, but then again, I'm not a trained educator. I figured it couldn't hurt to present the information to him, and it would be great if he learned it (and again, wouldn't hurt him if he didn't). As it turns out, he learned it very quickly.

Peter

8/5/2013 06:21:19 am

Steve, you speak for many teachers.
Like so many of us I work with people who've accepted as almost fact the theories of Multiple Intelligences and Bloom's Taxonomy, and Project-Based Learning yet have no data or research that backs up their beliefs. My pedagogy does not consist with these theories, yet we as teachers are judged partly by our implementation of these theories.
I sense this year I may reach a point where I'll have to vocally challenge these practices, yet I want to do it in a way that is encouraging versus derisive.

Erica

8/5/2013 10:21:06 am

Your ending comment: "I don't think developmental psychology is a good guide to what children should learn; it provides some help in thinking about how children learn." is a point I wish more educators would attend to. Every so often I teach a class in the MAT program at my university and I always start off with a similar point. I remark that if teachers understand the nature of knowledge acquisition and the principles of cognitive growth and development, then they don't need a curricular package to tell them how to teach. My position is not a popular one with the regular COLED faculty, nor with most of the MAT students. They want a curriculum to teach from. To my mind, what most needs to change in our approach to education is the attitude about what teaching is, and the knowledge about how to go about doing that. If teachers not only knew their subject matter but were also confident in their abilities to help their students' knowledge and skills grow, teaching and learning would look very different. But the pre-service teachers I know are not confident in their ability to understand cognitive growth nor in their ability to effect positive change, thus they hang on to curricular packages and they ask to be told how to teach x,y, or z. If I spend (to their minds, anyway) too much time on cognition in my classes, they start clamoring for discussion on curriculum. Anyway, your remarks are a step in that direction, if only the audience that needs to hear it will take the time to think about it.

David Wees link

8/5/2013 01:24:45 pm

So a few thoughts.

1. The idea that learning happens in a more continuous fashion seems obvious to me, so much so that I assumed that this is what "developmentally appropriate" meant. Thank you for that clarification.

2. What children have actually experienced matters. This was one of Seymour Papert's adjustments on Piaget's theory, as I recall. A child who has a rich background in vocabulary and well educated parents who talk to them (a lot) is more likely to remember and be able to use these vocabulary words listed, but the child who has little experience with this vocabulary desperately needs it.

3. You don't improve the educational experiences of children by artificially impoverishing what they experience in an effort to simplify it enough for them. The world is complicated and part of learning to negotiate the world is being able to make sense of complicated ideas. I do not believe that abstract thinking magically appears in children; I think that it is the result of many, many encounters with situations (and people) which require and model thinking abstractly.

David Wees link

8/5/2013 01:27:49 pm

An aside, Maria Droujkova has done a lot of work experimenting with bringing ideas fundamental to calculus within the reach of very young children, and my understanding is that she has had some success with this approach. I believe some of this is captured in the Moebius Noodles project.

Ray

8/6/2013 06:01:40 am

I taught for over 10 years at a charter school that used to use the Core Knowledge sequence. To say that I have come away from this experience disillusioned would be an understatement.

At first I was enthusiastic. It was fun to explore ancient cultures with such young children. But the sequence for each year covers such a wide range of topics that there is no depth to instruction and little time to review. The theory was that what students were (very briefly) exposed to in one year would be picked up in another year. But the sequence appears to be designed with little awareness of how much review young children need in order to actually remember something. First graders are taught about Judaism and this subject is reviewed again ... in fourth grade. By this time the students have forgotten what little they had been able to learn in the few days they had spent on this subject three years ago.

In addition, the sequence has such a heavy emphasis on history and geography that science is squeezed out. Our students routinely scored poorly on the state science tests given in 5th and 8th grade. It was no wonder, given that the Core Knowledge sequence was so weak in science compared to the state standards.

In spite of the endless reassurances that all this content knowledge would pay off, our students continued to perform poorly on state reading tests. It was painful to see children struggling to master Tigris and Euphrates when they lacked basic reading skills.

If the Core Knowledge sequence has been used for more than a decade by over a thousand schools, shouldn't there be clear evidence of its effectiveness? I don't mean a few short term positives for a few boutique schools, I mean solid evidence that the students who go to Core Knowledge schools outperform peers when matched for things like SES, ESL, and parent involvement.

Dan Willingham

8/6/2013 09:40:23 pm

Ray
there is some research on the core knowledge seq., but not the large-scale studies we'd want to see. it's hard to persuade a researcher to study something (given that such a study is AT LEAST a two or three year commitment) that isn't already well-entrenched. Otherwise, why bother? The NY adoption will change this, certainly.
I'm sorry to hear you had such a crummy experience. . .it doesn't match what I've heard from teachers at other CK schools . . .

Ray

8/8/2013 05:55:19 am

Here's a simple challenge that won't take more than a few minutes of your time. There were a number of schools in New York that instituted the CK and showed promising results http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/nyregion/nonfiction-curriculum-enhanced-reading-skills-in-new-york-city-schools.html?pagewanted=all. Oddly, these results were highest for kindergarten and went down for each subsequent grade. There were no positive effects at all for vocabulary. This is not what one would expect if CK were really building ever more content knowledge each year. This year's test scores are out for New York. How are these schools doing? Do they compare to the results of the Success Academy schools? If they do, you win. I'll agree that CK works and that my school was just an outlier.

Dan Willingham

8/8/2013 06:56:58 am

haha, Ray, that's a lot of faith in the NYC test. . .not only can it tell you whether a school is good, but if not, it can diagnose why!

Ray

8/8/2013 08:59:44 am

It's not that much to ask for. Did these schools do well on the tests or did they continue their downward slide? You don't have to compare them to Success Academy. Just give us any evidence that they didn't keep going down each year. It is worth noting that when these schools did well on the kindergarten tests, Core Knowledge was eager to trumpet this on their blog.

John M. Holland link

8/6/2013 09:23:05 am

Dan,
Thanks for your post on this. As usual, your perspective is complex and fairly accurate.

"lessons on ancient civilizations are fine because they are in use and children are learning"

I think what would help me would be if you could define learning in this context. Do you mean learning as in memory, learning as in application, or learning as in incorporating into an already existing schema of knowledge?

I think what challenges my thinking in your post is this statement:

"Naturally, these lessons are presented in ways that make sense to young children, but they are far from devoid of content."

Is this not at it's core a "developmentally appropriate" statement? How is this different than developmentally appropriate? I ahve taught algebraic concepts in preschool for years but, I am not teaching "algebra".

In many ways I don't like "developmentally appropriate" practice because it limits some teachers think children can do. In another sense, the role of social emotional development at the core of this idea of appropriate. When is it appropriate for students to learn of the knifing of Julius Ceasar by his best friend? 1st Grade?

Maybe the point is here that the prior knowledge and experiences play more of a role in developmentally appropriate practice than they should. I am sure your own children could grasp and apply more complex concepts than some of my high poverty students based on their experience. However, Ceasar's assassination is well within many of my students' realm of experience. Does that make it appropriate?

Finally, math is not the same as history, comparing them is faulty logic. History depends on a realm of experience, math the application of concepts. In general, in preschool, you can teach math at much higher levels than history because, once you establish the law conservation you can address most of math students engage with up until high school. But, until you establish conservation, there is no math, there is only make believe.

Education Realist link

8/6/2013 06:51:49 pm

I have sophomores and juniors who would struggle with that material, so the idea that first graders could cope with it is ludicrous. While I saw some teachers bring up developmental appropriateness, most of the teachers said something along the same lines as my comment--that it's absurd on its face to pretend this material is appropriate for first graders.

I am puzzled by anyone who would suggest that the teachers are somehow deficient for flatly asserting their kids aren't capable of that material.

I was interested to read of Ray's direct experience with Core Knowledge. I've often wondered if it wasn't a bit of a fire hose for low ability kids and now that I see a sample, I'm even more concerned about it. I do believe content knowledge is the key to improving reading comprehension, but CK is designed for the suburbs, with mostly mid-high ability students--ironically, the very kids who don't really need direct instruction in content. From what I can see, most schools who select CK have high achieving kids to begin with.

Isn't the Montessori population also mostly a suburban white group, or is there a whole inner city Montessori faction I've missed?
.

Dan Willingham

8/6/2013 09:57:10 pm

Sorry, I'm not following your point in the first paragraph: what makes the material inappropriate?

I disagree that CK is designed for middle class and wealthy kids. It's low-income kids who are less likely to encounter this knowledge at home, and therefore need most to see it at school. I'd make the same argument re: Montessori (and so would Montessorians, strongly, because Maria Montessori made it)--we don't want to go down the path of thinking that content-rich curricula are for rich kids and the poor kids get something else.

Deirdre Mundy

8/7/2013 10:54:07 am

Also, if you read a history of Montessori, the program was developed for the poorest of the poor in Italy's cities. Maria Montessori wanted to create a program that would give tenement kids whose parents were working all day and whose families were uneducated the same advantages that middle-class kids received. Orphanages also quickly adopted her program.

In the US, Montessori schools became the province of the rich because they WORK and rich people like things that work. However, it was originally intended for the sort of kids that we put into Head Start.

If we could provide Montessori to the poor, I think we'd see better outcomes.

Education Realist link

8/7/2013 06:14:53 pm

"I'm not following your point in the first paragraph: what makes the material inappropriate?"

The material is far too difficult. Way beyond first grade capabilities. That was what the teachers were saying, and I wholeheartedly agree.

"we don't want to go down the path of thinking that content-rich curricula are for rich kids and the poor kids get something else."

I never mentioned income directly. I did say suburban white, but that was a proxy for ability in my mind, which is misleading. Sorry. I'm much more interested in ability than income.

And in terms of ability, I'd say the opposite. High ability kids need less content, because they can acquire the information from reading. Low-mid ability kids need more content knowledge via direction instruction.

However, I think CK curriculum, and Montessori as well, are primarily *used* by high ability (yes, proxied by income) kids. Therefore, saying "hey, it works!" is a problem. We can agree that content knowledge is important while still disputing whether the firehose that CK uses is appropriate for low ability kids (proxied by income and race).

So for you to argue that this is CK curriculum, that kids are learning it, and therefore it is "fine" with proof in the pudding just doesn't convince me. If CK is teaching this to low ability kids (best sample, poor blacks and Hispanics), in public schools to kids who can't be expelled or kicked out, whose parents did *not* reach out to get this program, then great. I'll eat that pudding. Otherwise, I'm with the teachers.

Ditto Montessori.

Dan Willingham

8/8/2013 03:25:24 am

Actually lots of examples. Here are two:
Montessori is in Milwaukee public schools w/ the demographic you describe: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/313/5795/1893.summary
CK is Oklahoma city, likewise: http://www.coreknowledge.org/mimik/mimik_uploads/documents/106/How%20Do%20We%20Know%20This%20Works.pdf

Education Realist link

8/8/2013 04:41:58 pm

Thanks. Couldn't read the Montessori one--behind a paywall.

As to the CK one, I didn't see answers to these questions:

1) Did the OK kids in CK schools choose these schools? Why were half of them CK, half not?

2) They didn't break the results down. Were the results stronger for incoming high scores, weaker for low scores? What about race, were the results the same for each group? Did CK eliminate the achievement gap for kids starting from 1st grade with this program?

3) Were the matched pairs representative of the district population?

Forgive me if those answers were there; I didn't see them.

8/7/2013 02:15:46 am

This appears to be a case where the opposing sides need to split the difference. Lower-income children do need content-rich curriculum even more than the children of well-educated parents do. But, it has to be scaffolded sufficiently so that they can get a grip on it, given that their previous experience may not prepare them well to fully absorb it.

Deirdre Mundy

8/7/2013 10:56:16 am

Well, pre-schoolers get a great foundation in biology through shows like Wild Kratts and Dinosaur Train. Why couldn't we have something similar for history? On another blog discussing this issue, one comment brought up the Magic Treehouse books. As read alouds, they could definitely introduce K and 1 classes to history!

Jean Burt

8/8/2013 12:58:59 am

Teaching at a community college, I see the fruits of Chicago K-12 education. I don't know if the public schools try to use "age-appropriate" materials. Whatever they're doing, they're not sending us students who can read, write, and do basic math.

My husband & I homeschooled our kids. We didn't follow any set curriculum, although we did use E.D. Hirsch's books. Basically we provided a very "rich" learning environment full of books, trips to the museums, zoos. From the time they were about 3 months old, I read to them - usually at least 3 hours/day. We read about anything that interested them. When they were 1, it was farm animals. When they were 2 it was cars and trains. We made sure they were exposed to "core" concepts, but otherwise stuck to what interested them. By the time they were 6, they were discussing DNA and basic chemistry.

I think it's a shame that many kids often get a "dumbed down" education. That being said, however, we are a middle class family. The challenges of educating children whose parents don't read to them and provide good early education are enormous. I don't think these problems can be solved with any specific curriculum - but, again, I have to believe that a rich learning environment is a good thing at any age.

Alice Mercer link

8/9/2013 09:31:39 am

My concern is more about the standards alignment issues. After seeing the lesson plans, and seeing both NYS Social Studies Standards, and Core Knowledge ones, these are NOT aligned to NYS Social Science and History standards, and I have NO idea why the state would post them as model lessons. If they continue to post CK lessons (I couldn't see lessons beyond Grade 2 on that site, when last I looked), this is going to cause problems. 2nd Graders in NYS (and in my state, California) are supposed to study their neighborhood whereas, Sixth grade, which I teach, does Ancient Civilizations. Common Core is supposed to have us use the ELA standards to meet our content standards. These lessons will not align with content standards, unless we now plan to convert to Core Knowledge for Social Science and History. This is a mess, and points to the problem of a too rapid roll-out. Now we're ending up with schools in Chula Vista, CA being told to teach Core Knowledge, so they are implementing a standards framework that our state hasn't adopted.
While I'm not a text-bound teacher of the sort that an earlier commenter lamented about, I at least would like to be clear on what standard set I'm teaching from.

Tony G

8/15/2013 08:31:04 am

I agree, developmental psychology is a good guide to how children learn but observing the child is the best way to figure out what they are ready for next. However, there are definitely times in a child's life where learning a particular task or set of information is easier. It is more in line with nature's biological plan of human development. Walking, talking and writing in cursive are three examples.

Think about how acquiring a language naturally occurs with infants and toddlers but if a high school student wants to learn a new language they must study and practice and, may never get it just right. The natural time to learn a language, or multiple languages is from birth to five years, or so. The same goes for walking and controlled bodily movement such as running or skipping, except the age range is a bit longer.

As for writing in cursive, I have been told repeatedly that children aren't “developmentally ready” to write in cursive until second or third grade. However, children in kindergarten regularly learn that skill, with ease in my Montessori school. Think about a toddler with a pencil. What is called scribbling is the unrefined motion for cursive writing.

I would venture to guess that most adults don't give enough credit to children's abilities and chances for success.

Della Palacios link

8/15/2013 12:01:53 pm

Tony,

Yes, I agree adults don't give enough credit to children.

Enabling students to achieve beyond expectations is my mantra and personal mission.

I recently had the pleasure of visiting a preK-12 Montessori school and wrote about it from the perspective of my traditional training.
http://sensablelearning.blogspot.com/ (I have learned more from a 40-year Montessori practitioner about educational practice than all my years attending universities.)

john edelson link

8/21/2013 02:40:18 am

Dan, I mostly share your skepticism about how developmental stages is a solid foundation for curriculum. As part of this discussion, I think we should mention the big movement with the opposite view is the Classical Educationalists with their concept of trivium..

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