Pedagogy of an Early Childhood Educator
What is Pedagogy
What we miss about Pedagogy
Depending on your entry point into early childhood education, there is an excellent chance you may not know or have not frequently come across the word pedagogy. I first started to see pedagogy in my undergraduate studies. It took me a long time to pronounce it correctly.
Then even longer to feel confident in adding it to context for early childhood. My pedagogy is about owning my ideas, knowledge, teaching, and understanding of how children learn. Depending on your entry point into early childhood education, there is an excellent chance you may not know or have not frequently come across the word pedagogy. I first started to see pedagogy in my undergraduate studies. It took me a long time to pronounce it correctly. Then even longer to feel confident in adding it to context for early childhood. My pedagogy is about owning my ideas, knowledge, teaching, and understanding of how children learn.
My best guess why pedagogy is not more commonly used is that we train early childhood teachers. Training pushes information into someone hoping that a standard practice arises after two hours of in-service on a topic. Alternatively, if you took the academic route, the training is described as a preservice early childhood teacher or teacher preparation program. Little less training, little more educational learning. However, pedagogy is more than training. It is a reflective understanding of teaching and learning.
What is ECE Pedagogy?
Pedagogy starts with theory and practice in ECE. Waring and Evans (2014) suggest that pedagogy begins with reflecting on old practices to advance and evolve the vision and definition of ECE. These new visions and definitions promote teachers as learners who feel empowered, have a voice, reflect, and have critical awareness. This allows early childhood educators to be deliberate, critically reflective, and make genuine choices (Waring and Evans, 2014). It continues with how adults are educated about young children.
Does early childhood have a signature pedagogy? Having a signature pedagogy would answer “what is ECE pedagogy?” Ødegaard (2021) asks whether ECE has “a set of assumptions about how best to use certain forms of knowledge and skills.” Odegarrd (2021) concluded that ECE has a deep structure of “ideal” assumptions about using knowledge and implicit structures, such as attitudes, values, and dispositions found in the literature, to provide a foundation for ECE pedagogy. Research showed that a framework for teaching styles emerges, not a pedagogical framework, due to the individual nature of how children and their teachers learn and interact with the world. ECE teachers must learn and develop skills and be able to switch between using their knowledge and being responsive to the child’s own learning and development (Odegarrd, 2021). These skills and responses or teaching styles are only part of the pedagogical picture for ECE.
Pedagogy is the center of an intricate web formed through culture, experience, and the education of a teacher. To move into a deeper understanding of your pedagogy. Critical, reflective, and structured evaluation or study of your thoughts, ideas, assumption, and knowledge about the relationships between education, learning, and young children. Then ask yourself what that means for my teaching and professionalism.
Pedagogy is personal and considers culture, experiences, and education. Pedagogy can be gained through thoughtful reflections on ideas, assumptions, and knowledge of ECE theory, practices, relationships, and assessments. Our growth and development are in ECE Pedagogy.
References
Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 2022). Pedagogy. he Merriam-Webster.Com Dictionary. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pedagogy
Ødegaard, E. E. (2021). Reimagining “Collaborative exploration”—A signature pedagogy for sustainability in early childhood education and care. sustainability, 1 (9), 1–18. ttps://doi.org/10.3390/su13095139
Waring, M., & Evans, C. (2014). Understanding pedagogy: Developing a critical approach to teaching and learning (1st ed. [E-book]. Routledge. ttps://doi.org/10.4324/9781315746159-1
Comments
Post a Comment