Journal Of Developmental Education

Developmental Education is an approach to education in school that aims at promoting children’s cultural development and their abilities to participate autonomously and well-informed in the cultural practices of their community. From the point of view of Cultural-historical Activity theory (CHAT), a play-based curriculum has been developed over the past decades for primary school, which presents activity contexts for pupils in the classroom that create learning and teaching opportunities for helping pupils with appropriating cultural knowledge, skills, and moral understandings in meaningful ways. The approach is implemented in numerous Dutch primary schools classrooms with the explicit intention to support the learning of both pupils and teachers. The book focuses especially on education of young children (4 – 8 years old) in primary school and presents the underpinning concepts of this approach, and chapters on examples of good practices in a variety of subject matter areas, such as literacy (vocabulary acquisition, reading, writing), mathematics, and arts. Successful implementation of Developmental Education in the classroom strongly depends on dynamic assessment and continuous observations of young pupils’ development. Strategies for implementation of both the teaching practices and assessment strategies are discussed in detail in the book.

The National Study of Developmental Education was funded by the Exxon Education Foundation. The project was designed to assess the efficacy of various courses and services provided in support of underprepared students enrolled in American colleges and universities. The initial study ran from 1989 through 1997 and examined various developmental program activities and outcomes from a randomly selected sample of 150 institutions and 6,000 students. The major goals were to identify the state of the art in developmental education, identify effective teaching and learning strategies, identify effective models for the delivery of developmental and learning assistance services, and identify future research issues for the field. Findings have been presented at a variety of professional conferences and have appeared in Research In Developmental Education and the Journal of Developmental Education.

This comprehensive handbook has brought together the leading practitioners and researchers in the field of developmental education to focus on the developmental learning agenda. This work advocates a process approach to education where learners were characterized in terms of specific behavioral areas. Learning style differences are recognized, along with the premise that learning occurs at different rates. Alternative learning settings like industrial education centers and alternative learning centers provide a focus, for which lifelong learning is viewed as a matter of survival for American employees and employers. Handbook of Developmental Education begins with a description of the developmental process as a holistic approach to the development of the whole person. The emotional state of the individual is of critical importance. Curriculum theory is addressed, followed by information on learning centers and human factors research. Educators and educational researchers will find a wealth of material in this volume.