Abstract
<p>Globally, Early Childhood Education (ECE) has been governed by National Association of the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). This organisation concerned about the welfare and education of young children (0-8years) produced guidelines for practitioners and all involved in the teaching of young children on how best to teach and educate young children. These guidelines state that children need to be taught content that is developmentally appropriate. This means that content should be designed to suit the age, individual nature of the child as well as the culture of the child. While Botswana has taken bold steps in providing ECE to children who would not have been able to enrol in ECE one wonders whether the provision afforded meets the requirement of providing these children with Developmentally Appropriate Practices (DAP) as mandated by NAEYC. The absence of such practices may impact on the learning of young children. This paper argues for the importance of the DAP practices in the current ECE provision. It is suggested that the DAP can provide children with quality education that they deserve; it can also allow children to learn at their own pace. The absence of such a practice can impact the quality of ECE consequently impacting on the proper development of children holistically. Data collection and analysis used mixed methods being qualitative and quantitative. Questionnaires and interviews were uses as data collection instruments. A total of 15 questionnaires were distributed to ECE teachers in the Greater Gaborone Zone of which 11 were returned. A total of 11 interviews were conducted. The participants were mostly women with a few men. </p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0736/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>
Highlights
Botswana has over the past 40 years been amongst the list of countries with the fastest growing economies in the world, characterised by an impressive record of prudent macroeconomic policies and good governance
The above dimensions form the core of any Developmentally Appropriate Practices (DAP), Early Childhood Education (ECE) programs should be adhering to the above in order to provide the quality education that young children need to have as outlined in ETSSP is ‘Strengthening Skills Development’ is to “provide children with an excellent start in education so that they have better foundations for future learning” (9)
Aim of the Study In the meagre literature that exists on ECE in Botswana, none has focused developmentally appropriate practices as a pedagogical strategy to be used in the ECE curriculum
Summary
Botswana has over the past 40 years been amongst the list of countries with the fastest growing economies in the world, characterised by an impressive record of prudent macroeconomic policies and good governance. This track record of achievement has moved Botswana from the list of least developed and poorest countries in the world, to an upper-middle income country. The country’s current economic and social performance continues to be shaped by this remarkable record of appropriate macroeconomic policies and good governance. The economy grew faster than expected and reached a real rate of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of about 5.9 per cent in 2013. Projections expect GDP growth to decline and are expected to decrease to 4.8% by 2017.ii (p.14)
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