Early Childhood Education

Students completing this program should acquire the following skills and abilities:

• Create and maintain a safe and healthy environment for young children and families
• Discuss how children differ in their development and approaches to learning
• Apply knowledge of child development to intentionally support physical, social, emotional and cognitive growth
• Develop interpersonal skills to build relationships with children and families, enhancing children's self-esteem, social and emotional development, and problem solving skills
• Utilize theory, research, developmentally appropriate practice and a variety of instructional strategies when planning and implementing curriculum
• Individualize guidance and problem solving techniques to support social and emotional development
• Assess a variety of tools to strengthen the home to school connection
• Examine features of an anti-biased, culturally relevant environment/curriculum, not exclusive to race, ethnicity, family diversity, learning styles and abilities
• Create a professional development plan to maintain knowledge of current issues and trends in the field
• Communicate effectively through the spoken and written word and through visual materials for varied audience and purposes
• Compare and contrast a variety of observation and assessment tools, to analyze data with the purpose of developing age and developmentally appropriate curriculum
• Utilize critical thinking strategies to evaluate the validity of sources, and credit ideas or sources appropriately
• Analyze numerical data from child assessments to plan and implement developmentally appropriate teaching strategies