How to Teach to the Child When the Stakes Are High: Examples of Implementing Developmentally Appropriate and Culturally Relevant Practices in Prekindergarten

Abstract

The landscape of publicly funded early education in the U.S. has changed significantly. For instance, policy makers have increased access to such programs as prekindergarten, and at the same time, required these programs to align their goals and practices with those found in K–12 education systems. Other changes include increased cultural and linguistic diversity among children attending these programs. Such transformations have created new challenges for early educators as they strive to meet their children's developmental, individual, and cultural needs. This in turn has affected the field of early childhood teacher education. Teacher educators are trying to address these issues by providing their students with meaningful coursework and field experiences, but putting such components in place can be difficult. This article addresses this issue by developing a case study of how three exemplar pre-K teachers met these challenges in teaching a diverse population of children in a high-stakes context. Through using the lenses of developmentally appropriate and culturally relevant instructional practices, the study presented in this piece provides illustrations that teacher educators can use with their students to discuss what they can do to be early educators in a high-stakes contexts who focus on children's needs.