Promoting Children’s Social and Emotional Development Through Preschool Education

 

 

To be prepared for school, children also must be excited and curious about learning and confident that they can succeed.  They should be able to recognize and understand their own feelings as well as others. They must be able to control their own feelings and behaviors as well as get along with others and their teachers.  Unfortuantely, many kindergarten teachers express concerns that children entering kindergarten are not ready for the challenges in their new environment. These skills begin with the relationships children from with people around them that includes parents, family members, teachers and other children.

The Role of Family

Parents and families play an enormous role in shaping a child’s social and emotional development. Early relationships with parents lay the foundation on which social competency and peer relationships are built.

 

The Role of Teachers/Early Childhood Educators

Just as parents who are warm and responsive are more likely to promote strong social and

emotional skills in their children, so too are early childhood educators and teachers, which means that

the classroom environment must enable teachers the time to focus on individual children. Just as it is

important for a consistent attachment to form between a parent and child, so too is such an attachmen

important for caregiver and child. That means that staff turnover in preschool programs should be kept to minimum.

The Role of Peers
Through play children learn how to work in teams and cooperate with others. Their behavior is influenced by the way teachers them and they way they are treated by other children. As early as preschool, the relationships children develop with one another can have a lasting impact on academic achievement, because they can contribute to more positive feelings about school and eagerness to engage in classroom activities. It is important to have skilled preschool teachers who can intervene when they see children having difficulties with peers and help the children learn how to resolve conflicts, regulate emotion, and respond to the emotions of others.

Some of the strongest evidence for the benefits that preschool programs can produce on children’s social and emotional development is derived from demonstration projects begun in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

The High/Scope Perry Preschool Project: A recently released report of outcomes through age 40 confirms the economic benefits of investing in the education of young children.Throughout their school years, the children from the program groupoutperformed the control group on achievement tests, had better attitudes about school, and were more likely to graduate from high school. As adults, the preschool participants attained higher levels of educationand were more likely to vote in elections, find and maintain employment, and own their own homes,than children in the control group.
The Syracuse University Family Development Research Program:This program offered education, nutrition,health and safety, and human service resources to low-income, primarily African-American families from 1969-1975.At follow-up, when children were 13-16 years old, 6 percent of the intervention group versus 22 percent of the matched comparison group children had been processed as probation cases (juvenile delinquency) by the County Probation Department, and the cases for the youth in the comparison group were much more severe and chronic.
 

The Houston Parent Child Development Center: In 1970 this program was designed to promote social and intellection competence in children from low income Mexican Families. Families received two years of services, beginning when children were one year of age. These services included participating in weekend sessions of decision making and family communication, child development and child managment. Five to eight years afther the teachers rated children in the program were more considerate and less hostile.

 

 To understand the impact of quality preschool education  the first step is providing programs that foster healthy emotional development  that requires foresight, planning and the support of politicians, communities and families. The child’s ability to control his or her emotions and the ability to socialize and interact appropriately with others is a key developmental stage needed before a child is ready to set in a classroom ready to focus and attend to the task of learning.

 

While teachers all over the world are equally held responsible for molding students into intellectual beings, preschool and kindergarten teachers have an exceptionally important role in establishing the foundational building blocks that that are instilled in young children forever. Like a domino effect, what a child retains from his or her preschool or kindergarten class can affect their progress in all aspects of life, including the success or failure in other grade levels and career choices. Reading many of the articles helps me to appreciate my career choice greater and provides and eagerness to learn more.