What is Indiana's early learning development framework? Each state has its own early childhood education standards. These standards help preschools, daycares, and similar programs to create curricula, define content areas, and maximize learning potential. If your child is ready for their first preschool experience, take a look at what you need to know about learning in Indiana.
What Are Early Learning Standards?These standards provide a framework or guide that can help individual programs create a curriculum or develop activities. Specific early learning standards and the way schools or programs use these standards vary by state.
The standards may include learning or development expectations by age or age grouping (such as infants, toddlers, and preschoolers), educational outcomes, goals, and objectives or results.
According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), early standards should include relevant practices that are research-based. These should help the child to develop to their fullest potential in meaningful ways that consider the individual learner and cultural community.
Some states or local areas use the early learning standards as part of a licensure or accreditation process. This helps to ensure the quality and continuity of daycares, child care centers, preschools, and other similar programs.
Do These Standards Differ By State?The answer to this question isn't easy to define. Think of the word standard. This implies one set level, measure, or norm. Standards by definition are uniform. But this doesn't necessarily mean that early childhood education standards are uniform across the country.
Many states have similar early learning standards. The specific standard areas and points, goals, or outcomes within these standards may differ or vary. Along with local variations, many states continually revise the standards. This means the standards could change from one year to another.
In 2002, educational stakeholders (experts in early education, learning, instruction, and similar areas) developed the Foundations to the Indiana Academic Standards for children ages three through five. The first revisions (2004 and 2006) included the addition of standards for children ages three and under.
The state revised the standards for children in 2012 to align the content with an educational assessment tool (the ISTAR-KR), the Common Core Standards, and the Indiana Academic Standards.
The Foundations were revised again in 2015 and align with the 2014 Indiana Academic Standards. Additional feedback from early childhood practitioners and professionals and research in the educational arena helped to shape the latest version of Indiana's standards.
What Do Indiana's Early Learning Standards Include?Indiana's early learning standards provide a comprehensive framework for preschool, daycare, and other early learning program experiences. These standards are not a curriculum and do not include individual activities or lesson plans for programs to follow. Instead, the Foundations can help programs to choose curricula and guide educational and developmental content creation.
The Foundation, like many other states' early learning standards, includes specific content or developmental areas such as English/Language Arts, Mathematics, Social Emotional, Approaches to Play and Learning, Science, Social Studies, Creative Arts, and Physical Health and Growth. Indiana's Foundation standards also include sections for dual language learners and support for exceptional learners.
Indiana's standards break down each general content area into specific topics with concepts and skills. The Foundations outline the age ranges (such as infant, younger toddler, older toddler, younger preschool, or older preschool) and indicators for each concept or skill area. The Foundations also links these standards to the matching state kindergarten standard.
How Do Daycares and Preschools Use These Standards?Will your child go to a daycare or early learning center in Indiana? How will the state's Foundations standards affect what your child does at school or learns in the program? Again, the standards aren't a curriculum. But they will inform or help to shape the curriculum.
The teachers can use the standards to create lessons that benefit the child across the developmental domains (cognitive, social, emotional, and physical), help them to reach their fullest potential, and prepare them for kindergarten. To learn more about how your child's school or future school uses these standards, talk to the director and the educators.
Is your child ready to start preschool? Contact
Riviera Daycare & Preschool
for more information.
