Singapore University of Social Sciences

Throughout the past century, child development theories have become the dominant source of knowledge informing early childhood curricula and pedagogy. ECE262, provides a more detailed understanding of how we study and understand young children’s development and learning. While theories are helpful, they are not absolute. Students are introduced to research paradigms, assumptions and key methods used to study children, so as to appreciate and be prepared to work with human diversity in their classrooms. The course is largely chronological, beginning with early humanistic conceptions of early childhood education created by Pestalozzi and Froebel. This is followed by the origins of Hall’s child-study movement, the subsequent emergence of disparate bodies of research focusing on the behavioural, cognitive, moral, emotional or psychoanalytical factors, until the more recent ecological and socio-cultural views of human learning and sociology of childhood.